Dubbing and reception: The revival of Chinese dubbese as internet memes on social media

Abstract

Chinese dubbese, a stylised register of Mandarin used in dubbed audiovisual content, originated in the pre-digital era but has recently undergone an unexpected revival on social media platforms. While existing research has focused on dubbese’s formal linguistic features, this study shifts the focus to its circulation, reception, and various functions in participatory digital culture. Drawing on a curated corpus of highly viewed dubbese-themed videos and user comments from Bilibili, China’s most popular video-sharing site, this article uses a qualitative analysis to examine how online audiences reappropriate dubbese as a memetic and performative linguistic resource. The findings challenge the prevailing assumption in audiovisual translation studies that audiences prioritise linguistic naturalness in dubbing. Instead, users embrace dubbese for its stylised foreignness, nostalgic resonance, and playful aesthetic, transforming it into a source of affective engagement and internet humour. Dubbese expressions function as both reusable phrasal templates and widely circulated catchphrases, revealing how language from dubbed media is revitalised as internet memes. By situating dubbese within the framework of internet memes and online subcultures, this study contributes to ongoing debates in audiovisual translation studies, and calls for a reassessment of how dubbed language operates in contemporary digital life.