Translation Studies Of The Multimodal Text From A Cognitive Perspective

Since 1990 s,based on halliday's systemic functional linguistics,discourse analysis has been expanded,beginning to pa y close attention to other s emiotics in addition to text.Language is an important tool of comm unication,but it is not the only tool.As m ore and m ore nonverbal modes are applied to communication,the dominant position of language has been challenged.In other words,discourse analysis has shifted from monomodality to multimodality.This research focuses on the tran slation of picture books from a cognitive perspective and based on m ultimodal theory.Multimodal theory holds that languag e is a social sym bol,and that m eaning can not only communicated through language,but also can conveyed by other nonverbal modes.Therefore,these nonverbal symbols have the same meaning-making potentials as language.Text and pictures co-exist in picture books,so pictu re books are of multim odal nature.So in the translation of picture books,the interplay between the verbal and the visual is worth studying.What is the relationship between these m odes,and how their rela tions influence the translator's decision making and translation process.By means of data collecting,case study,concept analysis and interdisciplinary research,this thesis finally gives a reasona ble explanation to the translator's comprehension process and the translati on strategies he or she chooses.Through research this study holds that translators of picture books have to deal with two different modes,verbal mode,language and nonverbal mode pictures.So translator's translation solutions are based on the inte rplay between the two different m odes.According to the previo us researches,the relationships between words and pictures include elaboration,extension,and enhancement.In order to achieve coherence of the translation,translators shoul d employ different translatio n strategies when dealing with different visual-verbal relationships.The f requently-used translation solutions include condensation,addition and transformation.Therefore,in the trans lation of picture books,the translator should pay e nough attention to the pictures and their relations with the verbal text.