BILINGUAL SUBTITLE: A snap of the documentary Cosmos—A Space-Time Odyssey. The subtitle translator is a Chinese living in New Zealand (WANG XIANG)

For China's foreign film lovers, nothing is more vital than quality subtitles. Thankfully, with legions of fans doing the translation themselves, often completing it within just a few days and offering the fruits of their labor for free, enjoying overseas TV and movies used to be an easy thing--until December 20, 2014.

On that fateful day, YYeTs.com, a major website that provided Chinese subtitles for English-language movies and TV dramas, announced its closure. "We are sorry to announce that the website is now officially closed. We would like to extend our gratitude to all the members of the community that helped along the way. Farewell."

However, it was actually a month earlier, on November 22, that YYeTs.com suspended operations. "The website is undergoing maintenance. Thank you for your love, support and accompanying all the way since we--a group of students studying in Canada--set up the website in 2004," its statement read.

Also on that day, shooter.cn, a non-profit website that provides free Chinese subtitles, also announced that it was stopping operations.

"I have run shooter.cn for 15 years. The website hoped to bridge the gap between countries and promote understanding between cultures. If it helped anyone, I can feel satisfied. However, the time of shooter.cn has passed," wrote Shen Sheng, the website's owner.

The dilemma

Many connect the sudden, simultaneous fall of the two sites with the recent rules from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which asked companies that have obtained the broadcasting rights to foreign TV dramas to submit the whole season, and all accompanying subtitles, for approval before they can be broadcast in China.

These measures were a huge blow to subtitle websites. "The establishment of shooter.cn was to help satisfy the appetites of TV lovers," said Shen with Shooter.cn. "In the eyes of many movie and TV fans, the subtitle groups are the perfect embodiment of the sharing spirit of the Internet."

Translators of the subtitles available on sites like shooter.cn and YYeTs.com were created for fun. "We don't earn a penny out of this," said Yueya, a woman working with shooter for four years. "Most of us have full-time jobs. We do this purely out of passion."

The passion for sharing overseas dramas with Chinese audiences started more than a decade ago. The American TV sitcom Friends is believed to be the earliest to attract a community of amateur translators. The translators and fans of the show created a forum online that is said to be the cradle of many subtitle translation groups in China.

These groups started to turn their translation skills to many other dramas. In 2006, Prison Break, an American series, became a hit in China and put translation groups in the spotlight once more. In its heyday, members of YYets.com translated more than 130 TV series at the same time and had millions of followers.

There were different job assignments among the team, including downloading the source videos, translation, adding special effects to the subtitles, proofreading and adding the subtitles to the original source video.

"I appreciate the help of the translators very much," said Yu Xiaohua, a fan of English movies and dramas. "Some translating teams even offer bilingual subtitles and it is very helpful for learning English. Comparing translations of different teams is also fun."