A Study On The Subtitle Chinese Translation Of The Musical Cats From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

With the continuous exploration of artists and the success of the commercial operation model,musicals have become one of the most important entertainment activities in people’s leisure life.Cats was introduced to China in 2003 and has been screened for over 70 performances with great success.After reviewing the literature,it is found that most of the literature that takes subtitle translation of musicals as the research object takes the subtitle text as the focus point,and the translation theories adopted are limited to text translation.In this thesis,from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis,the author will take the subtitle translation of Xue Fan in the musical Cats as an example and take a research at four levels: cultural level,contextual level,expression level and image-language level,based on the comprehensive theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis by Professor Zhang Delu.The main issues addressed in this thesis are:(1)at the cultural level,which is divided into four major cultural components,it explores how the translator breaks through the cultural barrier and delivers a good translation effect through translations;(2)at the contextual level,how the translator bridges the differences in understanding caused by different cognitive contexts,situational contexts,and linguistic contexts through translation;(3)at the expressive level,how the translator combine companion language and non-language media for subtitling in addition to purely language media;(4)at the image-language level,this paper explores how the relationship between different modalities affects translation.The following conclusions can be drawn from the study of translation cases:(1)at the cultural level,the translator conveys the main plot information to the target audience in the shortest possible time by adopting the translation strategy of domestication,using culturally loaded words,rewriting,and colloquial expressions;(2)at the contextual level,when the audience can obtain the main contextual information from other modalities such as visual and auditory,subtitle translation often adopts the translation technique of omission.Otherwise,the subtitle translation often adopts the translation technique of addition.In addition,the same word may have different meanings in different contexts,which requires specific analysis by the translator;(3)at the expressive level,this thesis points out that in the process of subtitle translation,besides paying attention to pure language,the influence of accompanying language features such as tone,rhythm and rhyme on subtitle translation should also be paid attention to.Meanwhile,non-verbal media such as facial expressions,gestures,postures and movements as well as tools and environments can have an impact on subtitle translation;(4)at the image-language level,when multiple modal forms act on the expression of a meaning at the same time and different modalities contribute differently to the expression of the meaning,reinforcement and complementary relationships will arise.Moreover,both language and non-language media complement each other and jointly construct discourse meaning.