A Study on the Subtitle Translation of A Long Cherished Dream From the Perspective of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The documentary is an important medium for cross-cultural communication, and its subtitle translation has gradually become increasingly important. The emergence of multimodal discourse analysis theory extends the study of single discourse to multimodal discourse, and at the same time broadens the depth and breadth of subtitle translation research. This paper selects the subtitle translation of the documentary A Long Cherished Dream as a case study for analysis. Based on the multimodal discourse analysis framework proposed by Zhang Delu, this paper explores how translators translate the subtitles according to the coordination of various modalities to convey the overall meaning of the documentary at the cultural level, the contextual level, the content level and the expression level respectively. The main research results are as follows. Firstly, translators should pay attention to cultural phenomena at the cultural level and the literal translation method is usually adopted. Secondly, the translator should consider the contextual background to adopt an addition or omission translation method at the contextual level. Thirdly, the translator can adopt the omission translation method to maximize the complementary effect of the English subtitles and multiple modalities at the content level. This study will be expected to be useful for the subtitle translation study of documentaries.