On Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

In recent years,with the development of China’s network information technology and people’s cultural needs,excellent foreign films and television works have been introduced into China.As one of the important ways of cross-cultural communication,films and TV works directly or indirectly reflect a country’s cultural characteristics,language habits,ideology and other information.Under this circumstance,more and more attention has been paid to subtitle translation.The characters in the animated films have distinct personalities and the plots are mostly relaxing and enjoyable.These qualities make this kind of film very popular among Chinese audiences in their fast-paced life.This paper analyzes the animated film Me from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis based on M.A.K.Halliday’s systemic functional linguistic framework.In terms of ideational function,this paper analyzes the transformation of material,mental and relational processes between Chinese and English.As for interpersonal function,this paper presents the construction and communication of the interpersonal meaning of the film in terms of both mood and modality.Then,this paper explores the textual function of the subtitles from two cohesive devices:connection and substitution.The following conclusions are drawn from the case study:(1)The construction of meaning in film discourse is influenced by multiple modalities and therefore requires the translator to reflect the implicit meaning of these modalities in the translation.(2)In the translation of animated films,more dynamic descriptions should be used in the translated text,given the acceptability of the target language readers and the characteristics of the animated films themselves.(3)When studying the translation of the characters’ dialogues,attention should be paid to the interpersonal meaning contained in the original text and the translation and the translator may choose appropriate translation strategies to express the characters’ ample emotions.(4)Cohesive devices should be used appropriately to show the logical relationship of the original text by transforming and adding conjunctions,so that the target language readers can understand the intention of the original text more quickly.