Female Image Reshaping From The Perspective Of Multimodal Metaphor

Film subtitles play an important role in assisting audiences in understanding a movie plot.In the past,people tended to seek film subtitle translation strategies from the perspective of culture,communication,and linguistics,pursuing linguistic faithfulness.Now,considering the nature of film art,paying attention to the interplay between film subtitles and non-verbal symbols,such as pictorial and auditory signs,people explore some broad translation techniques from the multimodal perspective based on systemic functional linguistics and systemic functional semiotics.However,the number of multimodal studies on film subtitle translation is still not big,and studies for a specific film genre or communicative purpose are even fewer.To enrich this kind of study and anchor subtitling skills to a more tangible object,the author takes live-action Disney Princess films that communicate the feminist theme as an analysis object.The thesis explores the requirements for subtitle translation imposed by the film’s female image rebuilding from the multimodal perspective.As a significant factor influencing the topic expression of live-action Disney Princess movies,female image reconstruction requires the cooperation of subtitle translation.Observing these films,the author finds them teeming with multimodal metaphors that serve the films’ female image building.“Multimodal metaphors are metaphors whose target and source are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes”(Forceville,2009: 19-42).In live-action Disney Princess movies,these metaphors are constructed together by the film subtitles,acting as the verbal mode,and other non-verbal film modes.In the movie’s cross-cultural transmission process,the non-verbal modes,such as background music,props,and the character’s appearance and facial expression,are maintained,while the translated subtitles become different from the original ones.The quality of subtitle translation influences the multimodal metaphor reconstruction and then affects the female image reshaping.Disappointing,there is no unified film subtitle translation strategy that targets rebuilding character images,and translators’ subjective tastes are different.As a result,the quality of live-action Disney Princess movies’ Chinese-translated subtitles is uneven.Some poor subtitle translations cannot help reconstruct the films’ multimodal metaphors,influencing the reproduction of female images and the audience’s viewing experience.To improve the interlingual subtitle quality,the author takes the Chinese subtitle translation of Aladdin(2019)as an example and analyzes its losses and gains in terms of reshaping the Princess image based on the multimodal metaphor theory to summarize some translation techniques.The author detects specific multimodal metaphors in selected key film clips based on Bobrova’s(2015)integrated theoretical framework for multimodal metaphor identification and analysis and uses the annotation tool ELAN to record the specific film subtitles and non-verbal modes that involve the detected multimodal metaphors.According to the recorded information,the author compares the original subtitles and the translated subtitles in terms of their role in constructing the multimodal metaphor and the two Princess images shaped by them.Focusing on the similarities and differences between the two Princess images,the author examines whether the translation closely cooperates with the relevant non-verbal modes and reproduces the Princess image.The author finds in Aladdin(2019)that each mode that engages in constructing Princess-image-shaping multimodal metaphors provides irreplaceable contextual information for the audience.However,the Princess’ s dialogue,intonation,stress,and expression can show her personality,mood,and attitude better than other modes in the film.Inappropriate subtitle translation is almost all produced when the translator is unconscious of relevant multimodal metaphors or neglects related non-verbal modes.Thus,the author summarizes corresponding translation techniques in the light of three prominent multimodal metaphorical design methods in Aladdin(2019).As for the subtitles involving animal metaphors that tend to employ intonation and stress to portray the Princess’ s personality,the translator could recreate their image-shaping effect in subtitle translation through explicitation,sentence structure adjustment,or lexical substitution.As for the subtitles involving female-objectifying metaphors designed to reflect the Princess’ s attitude by her facial expression,the translator is supposed to present her unspoken attitude and view in the relevant subtitle translation.Some multimodal metaphors highlight the conflict between the Princess’ s inner desire and her actual situation by the target and source domains’ contrast.When translating subtitles that engage in constructing this kind of multimodal metaphor,the translator needs to examine the narrative tone,refer to the film’s background information and the Princess’ s setting,and recreate the contrast on the linguistic level.