A Study Of Audio-visual Products And Translation From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Multimodal Discourse Analysis suggests that discourses exist as multimodal forms rather than mono-modal forms. They use sounds, visual images, animations and colors. Meanwhile, audio-visual products adopt language, sense of hearing and sight to combine different semiotic resources to construct the whole meaning of the discourse. Traditional theories of audio-visual products and translation that have been done so far are largely restricted to language itself. Namely, most of attentions have been paid to the subtitles but other semiotic resources such as visual images and sounds are ignored. Multimodality Discourse Analysis, which started in 1990s in the western countries, provides a more comprehensive perspective.Therefore, this thesis is to analyze the audio-visual products and translation under the theoretical framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis. That is to say, this thesis focuses on the following areas:how the different modalities are combined to construct the whole meaning; how their relationships affect the audio-visual subtitles; and what suggestions are proposed to deal with subtitle translation. Firstly, Multimodal Discourse Analysis is briefly introduced from its origin and present status, and its theoretical framework. Secondly, the traditional audio-visual theories are summarized. And it is found that traditional audio-visual translations are limited to language and ignore the other semiotic modalities such as visual images and sounds. However, the Multimodal Discourse Analysis provides a new approach to study and review the audio-visual products and translation. It provides a potentially theoretical framework for the comprehensive analyses of how languages, visual images and sounds are combined to construct the whole meaning. Therefore, it, to a certain extent, solves the limitations of the traditional studies of audio-visual products and translation. Thirdly, If You Are the One is selected as case studies to show how subtitles as language, pictures as visual images and music, monologue or dialogues as sounds combine together to construct the whole meaning. And subtitles in audio-visual products are impacted by their roles to achieve the communicative effect. Consequently, several audio-visual translation suggestions are proposed to deal with subtitles and their translation. They include double-lined subtitles, reduction, omission, and structural discrepancy.