A Research On The Translation Of Commercial Advertisements-A Multimodal-Discourse-Analysis Approach

Nowadays,people are increasingly exposed to multimodal circumstances,receiving information from multiple semiotic modes,especially like advertisements,of which transnational businesses make use to market their products.To maintain a unique brand identity and cut costs,companies,especially leading and luxury brands,apply one advertisement to different markets,where advertisement translation under multimodal discourse analysis is a necessity.But translation studies in this regard are barely enough for lack of theoretical guidance or systematic analysis.This thesis focuses on the translation of multimodal advertisement discourses.Print advertisement usually composes of image and text,two basic semiotic modes.So it’s the easiest and most typical way to conduct multimodal discourse analysis and propose a research model for future studies.Here the author tries to answer three questions: the interpretation of visual communication of image in an advertisement from social semiotic perspective;the image-text relationship of an advertisement and its influence on advertisement translation;and translation principles and methods concluded based on visual grammar and image-text relationship.The author applies Kress and Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and color grammar to interpret the visual communication of advertisements,including their interactive and compositional meanings.Meanwhile the author uses Maltinec and Salway’s system of combined status and logico-semantics to figure out the image-text relationships involved.The image-text system theory addresses both its surface structure and deep organizational mechanism.Based on such analysis,the author concludes translation principles and methods to maintain or even strengthen the original advertising effect,generated from image-text coordination.With these theoretical tools,the author constructs an integrated system for print advertisement translation,including one guiding translation principle,four sub-principles and five translation strategies.Then,the author analyzes 24 pieces of advertisements of large transnational companies with the system,which are leading companies in their own fields respectively according to CNPP.Different translation versions are contrasted to help readers better understand these translation principles and strategies.This thesis will not only help expand the scope of translation research,and promote the development and improvement of modern translation theories,but also bring benefits to multinational companies in better marketing their products.