On Documentary Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

With the rapid development of multimedia technology and information and communication technology, the audiovisual work takes on an explosive growth trend all around the world. As a direct and distinct approach, the audiovisual work plays an increasingly prominent role in the process of intercultural communication. Subtitle translation, an important medium, is of great value and significance. Documentary, which is taken as a special genre of audiovisual works and is known for being authentic, tells true stories by presenting factual scenes to its viewers. As Chinese food documentary—A Bite of China becomes hit at home and overseas, Chinese documentary films rise to prominence in the worldwide documentary field. But the deficiency of the corresponding subtitles reflects that China’s documentary industry is still underdeveloped in the global documentary market. Thus, the present research studies the subtitle translation of a BBC documentary with the same topic of Chinese delicious food, which is Exploring China:A Culinary Adventure. It is expected that this study could provide some references for the subtitle translation of Chinese documentary, and make a meager contribution to the "going global" of Chinese documentary.The previous audiovisual translation (AVT) studies focus on the single linguistic symbol and the subtitle text. But the audiovisual work itself is a dynamic text consisting of multiple symbolic resources. The linguistic transfer of subtitles alone cannnot make a comprehensive and precise manifestation of the cultural connotation and social meaning that audiovisual works wish to express. Multimodal Discourse Analysis, which rose up in the 1990s, is an independent academic field based on systemic functional linguistics. It aims to study how multiple symbolic resources coordinate in a text to realize conveying the meaning and communicating. Therefore, Multimodal Discourse Analysis provides a new perspective for subtitle translation. The present research attempts to study the case of Exploring China:A Culinary Adventure under the theoretical framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis which is proposed by Professor Zhang Delu. The study is conducted from four levels, namely the cultural level, contextual level, content level and expression level, to analyze how the subtitle translation in this documentary coordinates with other modes to make the whole meaning and demonstrate the culture and meaning in that documentary. Furthermore, it discusses the influences and functions on the subtitle translation exerted by various modalities.This study firstly makes a transcription of the documentary, and then according to the four levels of the theoretical framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, relevant scene examples are extracted to give a descriptive analysis about the question how the subtitles are translated to coordinate with other modes to construct the expressive meaning of the text and to reach the aim of communication.Through the illustrative analysis of the subtitle translation in Exploring China on the four levels, the major findings are as follows:Firstly, Multimodal Discourse Analysis offers a new perspective for documentary subtitle translation, along with a theoretical guidance for a better presentation of the works’cultural connotation and social meaning and for a better understanding and appreciation of the works by viewers. Secondly, the documentary subtitle translation needs to take the cultural background and difference into consideration; the three determinants of the situational context affect the precision of subtitle translation; the discourse meaning, esp. the meanings of culture-specific words, should be presented by adopting different translation strategies and methods in particular circumstance; every expressive form in the documentary requires appropriate attention.In a word, under the theoretical framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, the study of subtitle translation of documentary, on one side expands the applied fields of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, and on the other side provides a new approach and a theoretical guidance on studying and interpreting documentary subtitle translation.