On the Translation of Documentaries Themed on the Chinese Nation from the Perspective of Translinguality: A Case Study of Chinese Children

Abstract

With the development of media technology, documentaries of the Chinese nation are used more and more as a vehicle to present natural scenery, local customs as well as the traditional culture of ethnic groups. Little research has been conducted on the translation of documentaries themed on the Chinese nation despite of the study of such documentaries in terms of video creation and intercultural communication. The translation of documentaries is mainly constrained by the co-existence of the sound and the visual channels. This study applies translinguality in the analysis of Chinese Children, a multilingual and multimodal documentary space loaded with symbolic resources of Chinese ethnic groups, examines its transcending, converging and performative features and reveals how those features facilitate the translation. This study concludes when viewing the documentary as a translingual space, translation can better overcome the constraints. In languages, language boundaries can be transcended to find an equivalent translation creatively; In modalities, translation can draw on multiple modalities to bridge linguistic and cultural differences, as well as reach a balance between the sound and visual channels; In symbolic resources, translation should pay special attention to the expression process of semiotic resources in both acoustic and visual channels and how the symbols become performative.