Translation Of Documentary And National Image Construction From The Multimodal Perspective

In early 2020,the sudden COVID-19 epidemic swept across the world.After the outbreak,some Western false arguments maliciously smeared China,bringing new challenges in constructing and spreading a three-dimensional and real China’s image.As an important carrier of "national memory" and "the Chinese story",documentaries contribute to the exchange of culture and its irreplaceable social and cultural responsibility has become increasingly obvious.The Lockdown: One Month in Wuhan(hereinafter referred to as The Lockdown)is the first English newsreel that shows the full course of the fight against COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan.Based on the relations among different modes in this documentary,China Global Television Network(CGTN)shows the real situation of China during the epidemic from multiple perspectives through subtitle translation,eliminating the wrong perception of China’s image by the outside world to a certain extent.On broadcast,The Lockdown has caused widespread heated discussion and been highly praised after it was replied in more than 20 countries and regions.In this context,multimodality is applied in this thesis to analyze the subtitle methods and the national image constructed in The Lockdown.Based on the synthetic theoretical framework for multimodal discourse analysis put forward by Zhang Delu(2009),this study categorizes the subtitles according to the multimodal relations and divides them in terms of complementary and non-complementary relations.Then,through the sample study,it probes into the main translation methods adopted in The Lockdown respectively,and the detailed national image is summarized according to translation methods from multimodality perspective.This thesis intends to answer the following three questions:(1)How do different modalities interact to express an integrated meaning in The Lockdown?(2)What translation methods do translators mainly adopt based on multimodal relations when translating this documentary’s subtitle?(3)What kinds of national image does The Lockdown build through subtitle translation methods with multimodal relations?First,with the literature analysis approach,this thesis makes a comprehensive and diachronic analysis of multimodal relations,subtitle translation and national image construction.Then data collection and sampling analysis are used to collect and select the Chinese and English subtitle texts as well as the corresponding screens.On the basis,the author adopts the multimodal discourse analysis method to discuss the main translation methods according to the complementary and non-complementary relations among different modes and further discusses the specific national image.Through the in-depth study,the findings are as follows:(1)The discourse meaning of this documentary is conveyed through the integration of linguistic modality,visual modality and audio modality.Generally speaking,the linguistic modality plays a major role in constructing the communicative meaning,and the visual is a main favorable mode,followed by audio modality.(2)Integrating various modes,translators flexibly choose translation methods and adopt expression methods suitable for Western audiences.Specifically,in The Lockdown,subtitle translators adapt transformation of the hyponym,deduction,condensation,transliteration and imitation etc.under the complementary relations.What’s more,in terms of non-complementary relations,literal translation,variation translation,amplification and others are chosen to render the original subtitle.All of those translation methods contribute to the good communication effect of The Lockdown.(3)Through subtitle translation from the perspective of multimodal relations,this documentary connects the China’s image with stories of different factors.It shows the society of solidarity,mutual support and friendliness through addition,explanation and deduction,presents dedicated and selfless medical staff in the way of addition and free translation and hardworking,brave and optimistic ordinary people by amplification,variation translation and reductive paraphrasing,so as to clarify the previous vague perception of China’s image and eliminate relevant misunderstanding.This thesis has certain implications for exploring the methods of film subtitle translation by using the theory of multimodal relations,and its study on national image construction helps to expand the research perspective and contribute to the construction of Chinese discourse and narrative system.