Cross-modal Translation: A Study of English Subtitle Translation from the Perspective of Multimodal Interaction

Under the guidance of Systemic-functional synthetic framework for multimodal discourse analysis, this paper collects corpus from classical American TV show Friends and undertakes a thorough qualitative analysis how cross-modal relations influence Chinese translation English subtitles. As is shown, in order to give viewers better understanding subtitles contexts, different translational approaches should be used that are relations, which categorized into two general types, is, complementary relation on one hand non-complementary other hand. The finds though strategies appropriate make use process include amplification, paraphrasing, annotation, direct translation, free linear choice approach directly influenced by relations. For example, belong reinforcing relation, it advisable translators paraphrasing annotation highlight foregrounded meaning expressed dominant modality hand, explicitly verbally express background information provided backgrounded if discourses modalities same scene form highlighting. communication becomes continuously widespread popularity shows keep arising China, endeavors provide some useful implications subtitles, as verbal auditory part larger films.