3. Active or non-active

As mentioned in 1.1, this question served to separate the respondents into two groups, the ones who can be considered as active within the community (they have translated a story within the last two years), and the ones who are not active anymore (it’s been more than two years since their last translated story). This is mostly an auxiliary question that allowed us to include both new and senior fans into the study and was incorporated in some calculations.

The two-year period may seem long. The rationale behind it was to factor in the “nomadic” character of fan communities, as pointed out by Jenkins (1992) based on de Certeau’s observation that fans tend to gradually move between fandoms and fan practices, “constantly advancing to another text.” (p. 32) According to this concept, fans do not suddenly leave one fandom, one activity or one practice in favour of immediately engaging in new ones, but the process seems to be much more fluid and gradual. The two-year period as used in this question was supposed to reflect that, presupposing for example a hypothetical situation, when a fan hasn’t been translating for a while but is still active within the fan community and only finds inspiration to translate new stories upon discovering a new fandom.

3. Are you an active translator, or has it been a while since you translated your last fanfiction?
Number of responses: 76
	responses	percentage
I'm an active translator (I have translated a story within the last two years)	46	60,5%
I'm currently not active as a translator (I translated my last story more than two years ago)	30	39,5%

Table 3.

4. Age

5. Period of activity

The results from these two questions, combined with the previous question and question 1), were designed to give a more accurate demographic overview.

4. At what age approximately did you start translating fanfiction?
Question for those respondents who declared to be an active translator in question 3)
Number of responses: 46
Number of respondents who chose not to declare: 0
5. At what age approximately were you involved in fanfiction translation? (please use a FROM–TO format)
Question for those respondents who declared to not be an active translator in question 3)
Number of responses: 27
Number of respondents who chose not to declare: 3

Based on the combined results, data about the average age, period of activity and some other interesting data could be obtained, the overview of which is presented below:

Mean age when started with fanfiction translation:	24,4
Mean age when stopped:	29,0
Median age when started:	21,5
Median age when stopped:	27,0
Modal age when started:	18
Modal age when stopped:	20
Activity in years (mean):	4,5
Activity in years (median):	3
Activity in years (modal):	3
Longest activity in years:	14
Longest activity (in years) while still being active in 2018:	14
activity in a specific period	respondents
Started before 2000	1
Started between 2000–2004	1
Started between 2005–2008	12
Started between 2009–20012	23
Started between 2013–now	33
Respondents who started before 2008 and are still active today:	8

Table 4.

The average age (mean, median and modal) seems to, again, be higher than for example Cupalová’s findings (18, 16 and 17 years old respectively). The differences were already touched upon in the subchapter 1.1. In contrast, the average time for which the translators were active, that is 4,5 years (mean) and 3 years (median), is much shorter than in the case of her respondents (9 and 9 years respectively). This difference might be a bit easier to explain by the fact that Cupalová focused on slash fans⁷⁴, a specific group of fanfiction writers, who are usually described as having a strong sense of identification with their community, for example in connection with its strong subversive character in relation to widely accepted social norms and namely heteronormativity (Hellekson & Busse, 2014) and who might therefore be more “loyal” to their selected fandoms and fan activity. The community of fanfiction translators, on the other hand, is a much looser group, identified only by the common interest in translating as an activity.

The breakdown of time periods, which is designed to show the ratio of new fans joining in the fandom in different eras, as seen in table 4, is based on several more or less symbolical years as outlined below.

• before 2000: the era before the first large media fandoms massively consumed online (Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings),

• 2000–2004: popularity of the Harry Potter series gradually grows, with the growth significantly speeding up in the three year gap between the fourth and fifth book⁷⁵ (published in 2004 in Czech), the first Harry Potter fanfiction in Czech

• 2005– 2008: influx of new fanfiction writers, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow, the last Harry Potter series book was published in 2008 the Czech republic

• 2009– 2012: second season of the BBC series Sherlock aired in the United Kingdom, ending with a cliffhanger

As also seen in Table 4, an absolute majority of the respondents started translating fanfiction after 2008 (the last Harry Potter book was published in 2007 in the UK and 2008 in the Czech Republic). While the low ratio of translators from the oldest era versus the last decade as suggested by these data may not be entirely and drastically inaccurate, it’s more likely that the failure of this survey to reach some of the veteran fan translators from the beginning of the millennium, who aren’t active anymore, played a role.