Re-instantiation of multimodal meaning in the translation of Chinese comic Zhuang Zi Speaks: The Music of Nature

Abstract

ABSTRACT With a growing increase in the study on multimodality, translation scholars begin to take the visual mode into account. Comics, as a typical kind of multimodal texts which combine image and words, can be considered as multimodal meaning construction. In comics translation, multimodality could serve as a resource for translation. Drawing on studies of visual grammar, image-text relations and re-instantiation, this paper adopts an approach which encompasses both verbal and visual aspects of the meaning to investigate the translation of comics. By analyzing examples from Zhuang Zi Speaks: The Music of Nature, it aims to explore how semiotic resources are exploited in translation and how the visual meaning affects the re-instantiation of the target text. It is found that comics translation is a process of multimodal meaning re-instantiation with visual meaning largely activated in the process, motivating changes in actual choices of the verbal and justifying the strategies of condensation, addition and liberal translation. Correspondingly, the image-text relationships have undergone modifications, achieving better visual-verbal coherence. This research has extended both multimodal and translation studies, shedding a new light on translation as re-instantiation and validating the potential of visual mode as a resource for translation.