Multimodal Translations of Contemporary China. A Case Study of 21st-century Drama Film Posters for Festivals

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore a corpus of multimodal translations of 21 st -century movie posters for globally acclaimed Chinese drama films. Since all verbal and visual factors contribute as the paratext to attracting the audience from different markets at first sight, monomodal analyses of posters are not suitable for the exploration of functional metafunctions. Drawing on visual grammar, and providing both a qualitative and quantitative analysis, the paper analyses 66 posters of 20 drama films which were awarded, nominated or screened on the occasion of international film festivals, where multimodal translations play a crucial role in relation to the transmission of meaning across different countries. Empirical results suggest that designers apply resemiotisation, recontextualisation and reinterpretation in the inter-modal and intra-modal translations for internationalisation purposes and with the scope of providing a portrayal of contemporary Chinese society. Results also suggest that further steps towards the integration of internationalisation and idiosyncrasy in the visual grammar of multimodal translations are necessary for reception issues in overseas markets.