This chapter aims to rethink the topic of media translation by focusing on its faults. It argues that translation faults – errors, failures, mistranslations and misrepresentations – signal pressure points or cracks vital to the re-evaluative objective of this book as a whole. Specifically, I am interested in examining ‘errancy’ as a fault line that is rapidly spreading across the surface of the contemporary AVT landscape, becoming increasingly relevant to the ways in which screen translation is produced and received. The rise of amateur translation and media piracy, for instance, indicates vast areas of practice largely defined in terms of illegality and non-professionalism. This chapter does not deplore, celebrate or seek to remedy wayward forms of screen translation. Rather, it examines their mechanisms, causes and effects, acknowledging their unwieldy productivity and politics: how they bring into relief the unequal power dynamics that attend screen media in the global era. It concentrates on two areas of practice where mistranslation is dominant: censorship and the ‘guerrilla translations’ (see Dwyer 2012a) of media piracy. Consistently challenging professional norms and standards, these two areas of activity testify to the prevalence and persistence of non-qualitative criteria in translation practice and politics.

Since the emergence of mass media forms and increasingly in the global era, translation provides a routine yet little discussed mode through which media censorship operates. While censorship itself is often identified as a negative, repressive practice, it can also, conversely, be promoted as a defence against harmful elements and influences, as I explore in relation to screen regulating bodies and ratings systems. These shifting evaluations concern the why of censorship practice. By concentrating instead on how censorship operates – through deliberately erroneous instances of translation – I approach this thematic from a different angle. In focusing on concrete practices and pragmatic considerations, I explore how censorship pervades professional subtitling and dubbing operations, expanding notions of translation errancy and intimating new conceptual possibilities. I then proceed to examine the types of amateur, unskilled translations that commonly aid and abet piracy operations.