On Subtitle Translation Of Costume Drama From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

With their unique oriental aesthetics and abundant cultural connotations,costume dramas have gained widespread popularity around the world,which won’t fade away and once became the mainstream genre of TV dramas in overseas broadcast markets.In recent years,with numerous brilliant Chinese costume dramas going out of China,an unstoppable “Chinese flow” is sweeping the world and appealing to the international eyes.However,it should be noted that the function of subtitle translation cannot be underestimated concerning the success of the foreign promotion of films and TV dramas.Films and TV dramas are multimodal works of art that integrate sound,images,music,actions and language.Based on systemic functional linguistics,Zhang Delu(2009)proposed a comprehensive theoretical framework for multimodal discourse analysis by absorbing the previous research of predecessors.This theory integrates meaning modalities such as images,sound and language in a reasonable way,which makes up for the limitations of traditional subtitle translation research to some degree.In consideration of this,the thesis intends to take this theoretical framework as the basis,take the subtitle translation of The Longest Day in Chang’an on the Viki website as the research object,and then analyze the typical translation cases from four levels: culture,context,content and expression,so as to summarize the specific translation strategies used in different levels as well as the realized expression effects.Through analysis,the author draws the following conclusions:(1)In culture level,since the play is a costume drama,the lines in the play are half classical Chinese and half vernacular Chinese,which embody a wealth of cultural information.Therefore,in the translation process,in order to facilitate the foreigners to cross the cultural barrier,the translator extensively adopts the translation strategy of paraphrasing;(2)In context level,since the identities and traits of the characters in the drama are different,in addition to the literal meaning of the lines,the translator also has to carefully observe the true intentions of the characters and then select the appropriate language based on the concrete context;(3)In content level,the translator often omits the address words and other content that will not affect the translation language.In addition,various modalities are complementary to each other in the drama,and in particular,it is the visual and auditory modalities that demonstrate the most salient effects on linguistic modality;(4)In expression level,in addition to lines,other non-verbal factors such as background music,character actions,facial expressions and settings also play an irreplaceable role in the transmission of information.In conclusion,multimodal discourse analysis provides a new research perspective for the study of subtitle translation of costume dramas and enriches the scope of the study of subtitle translation of costume dramas.By studying the gains and losses of this subtitle translation,the author expects to draw some references for the translators,and also for the subtitle translation of other costume dramas in the future.