Intersemiotic Shifts in the Subtitle Translation of Journey to the West via a Multimodal Framework

Abstract

Journey to the West is one of the four famous Chinese classical works and it was reproduced into TV drama both at home and abroad, which has aroused great concern. However, current studies mainly compare the English translated versions with Chinese one, focusing on the translation strategies for the verbal texts or on the cultural level. Therefore, this study explores different kinds of intersemiotic shifts in the subtitle translation of Journey to the West and reasons that have caused these intersemiotic shifts via a multimodal analytical framework. Ten episodes chosen according to the plots will be analyzed. Findings show that there are mainly six kinds of intersemiotic shifts in the Journey to the West. Image and para-/non-verbal modes can supplement the meaning expressed in the verbal texts.