The consumption and production of media have evolved from passive spectatorship to participatory culture, where audiences are emotionally invested and actively engage with media products. This paper examines this evolution on video-sharing and educational platforms. The traditional distinction between dubbing and subtitling is insufficient to describe today's complex mediascape, where various titling elements blend with audiovisual content. Innovative subtitles, such as abusive subtitling, creative subtitles, fundubs, fansubs, funads, danmuku subtitling, and non-representational subtitling, reflect this dynamic. While studies on multilingual scripts and multimodal resources in dubbing and subtitling exist, research on innovative subtitles embedded in contemporary social media with cross-disciplinary approaches remains limited. This paper aims to highlight the role of transcreated subtitles in expanding translation studies into interdisciplinary fields, particularly in humour translation, by focusing on user-generated content in Little Red Book and Rain Classroom. These platforms provide twofold benefits: Little Red Book showcases user-generated content and grassroots participation, while Rain Classroom demonstrates the educational value of social platforms using danmu technology. Rain Classroom's success in enhancing learning attainment is well-documented, but its reception from a student perspective, particularly the role of humour, needs further investigation. This study aims to fill this gap.

Existing research on humour translation primarily focuses on printed pages, theatre, and film. The paper reviews existing theories and methods for analyzing humour in social media. It draws on the polysystem theory (Even-Zohar, 1979) and multimodality (Baldry and Thibault, 2006) to understand the heterogeneous and dynamic subsystems involved in humour comprehension. It adapts Gottlieb's (1997) semiotic channels (verbal, visual, and combined), removing less contextually dependent categories to focus on the specifics of Little Red Book and Rain Classroom. The review examines humour in the Chinese context, noting the shift from the interplay of verbal and non-verbal modes to decontextualization and recontextualization within social media. It adapts Martínex-Sierra's (2006) humour classification (graphic, paralinguistic, and non-marked elements) and discusses the importance of danmu comments in creating humorous effects and the role of amateur translators in shaping humour on video-sharing sites. While studies exist on humour in various Chinese social media platforms like Weibo, WeChat, and Bilibili, research on Little Red Book and Rain Classroom, particularly focusing on humour translation, is lacking. The paper intends to address this limitation.

The study employs a qualitative approach using a case study design. The data consist of two datasets: one from Little Red Book videos by the popular uploader Adam Chen, focusing on humour-related posts and English learning posts; and another from danmu entries of 30 postgraduate translation students in a Multimedia Translation module at Sun Yat-Sen University. The Little Red Book data exemplifies user-generated content and audience interaction, highlighting transcreated subtitles and the role of danmu. The Rain Classroom data explores the interactive nature of humour in online education. The analysis focuses on how humour is created and translated through various semiotic resources within these platforms. The study employs a social semiotic lens to analyze the multimodal features of humour, considering the interaction of verbal and visual channels, as well as the use of emojis and danmu comments. Data analysis categorizes instances of humour based on their primary channel (verbal or visual) and discusses the role of users in creating and shaping humour through their comments and interactions. Specific examples are analyzed to showcase different types of humour and the translation strategies employed. The analysis considers various factors such as swearing, wordplay, orality, and in-class humour. It also examines how translation loss is compensated for through translation gains facilitated by multimodal interaction. The analysis includes screenshots from the selected videos and danmu comments, providing visual context for the discussion.

The study identifies several key characteristics of humour in the selected Chinese social media and online teaching platforms: (1) Light swearing, where swearing in the original content might be adapted or softened in the subtitles, but reinforced with emoticons or danmu comments; (2) Wordplay, using homonyms or puns which may require additional explanations in the comments; (3) Orality, focusing on how different accents, dialects, and styles of speech are used for comedic effect; and (4) In-class, unexpected humour arising from technical glitches, impromptu questions, and student interactions. The study finds that humour translation on these platforms is a collaborative effort, involving both creators and audiences through danmu comments, transcreated subtitles, and chat-box interactions. The translation process often involves both translation loss and translation gain. Loss can arise from cultural or linguistic nuances, but this loss is often compensated for by the creative additions and interpretations of users through the different semiotic resources available on the platforms. The study argues that social semiotics offers a suitable framework for understanding how humour is created and conveyed in these multimodal environments. The study notes the significance of user engagement and audience participation in shaping humour in the digital environment. Analysis of specific examples reveals how the multimodal nature of these platforms—combining text, visuals, audio, and real-time user interactions—contributes to the generation and understanding of humour.

The findings highlight the collaborative and creative nature of humour translation in the new media landscape. The study demonstrates how audiences actively participate in the meaning-making process, supplementing and enhancing the humour presented by the creators. This challenges traditional views of translation as a solely professional activity, highlighting the significant contribution of amateur users. The findings also suggest that the success of humour translation depends on the platform’s features, the audience’s understanding of the cultural context, and their active engagement through real-time interaction. The study confirms the use of danmu and transcreated subtitles as effective tools for enhancing humour and promoting user engagement in online education. This offers valuable insights into the pedagogical potential of incorporating humour and interactive technology in education. The blurring of professional and non-professional translation boundaries presents a new challenge and opportunity for translation studies.

This study contributes to translation studies by demonstrating how humour travels across social media platforms, highlighting the interplay between professional and non-professional translation. It introduces a new typology of humour in digital contexts and showcases how social semiotics and polysystem theory can be used to analyze humour translation in these dynamic environments. Future research could investigate more diverse social media platforms and explore how humour translation relates to ideology, gender, and sexuality in various national and cultural contexts.

The study's limitations include its focus on only two platforms and the Chinese context. The examples analysed are not exhaustive but rather representative. Future research should consider a wider range of platforms and geographical locations to provide a more comprehensive understanding of humour translation in the digital age. The research also focuses on translation from Chinese into English, limiting the perspective on potentially different humour translation dynamics in other language pairings.