A Multimodal Discourse Analysis-based Research On The English-chinese Translation Of Print Commercial Advertisement

This thesis mainly discusses the translating of multimodal print advertisement discourse. Print advertisement is composed of image and text, the two basic kinds of modes, so it is the easiest one to start with in a new interface research field and it is typical to form a research model for further studies. Here the author mainly focuses on the translation study based on image-text relations, and this focus could be divided into three questions: the typical kinds of image-text relations; the significance of image-text relations in translating studies; the manipulative rules for guiding translating on the basis of imagetext relations.The author proposes that Martinec and Salway’s system of combined status and logico-semantics is appropriate in this research. It is based on both Barthes’ and Halliday’s testified studies, and it clarifies the specific visual and semantic relationships in print advertisement. It not only focuses on the surface structure, but also explains the deep image-text organizational mechanism. Meanwhile the author applies Gestalt psychology, especially five of its main concepts, as an explanatory theory to demonstrate the advertising effectiveness generated from image-text coordination, bringing inspiration for summarizing some guidance of translation practice.With these theoretical tools the author constructs a translation analytical framework called "the integrated framework of print commercial advertisement translation based on multimodal discourse analysis" including a dominant principle, five sub-principles, six translation strategies and five operational procedures. The basis of this framework is to maintain or enhance the original image-text relations as well as the original advertising effectiveness in the target advertisement when translating.The present study is a qualitative analysis; it analyzes 26 pieces of digital product advertisement translation within the integrated framework, and it contrasts different translation versions. With reference to these cases, readers could easily understand the translation principles, strategies and the operational method.This thesis is a primary interface study of multimodal discourse analysis, Gestalt psychology and advertisement translation. The findings of this thesis would not only contribute to multimodal discourse translation practice, but also benefit a further and better development in related studies.