How existing literary translation fits into film adaptations: the subtitling of neologisms in Harry Potter from a multimodal perspective

Abstract

Existing literature on adaptation studies focuses primarily on analysing film adaptations from an intralingual and monomodal rather than an interlingual and multimodal perspective. To fill this gap, this study addresses the relatively under-researched issue of applying existing literary translation to the subtitles of film adaptations by the film subtitle producers. Concentrating on the Chinese subtitling of neologisms in the Harry Potter films (2001–2011) and by drawing on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)-informed multimodal framework, the aim is to investigate how subtitles and other multimodal resources interact to make meanings and their potential effects on the subtitled films when the film subtitle producers apply literary translation to subtitles of film adaptations. The results show that the application of literary translation to subtitled films by the film subtitlers may run the risk of downplaying some crucial elements of the original, such as the relationship between the fictional world and the audience. This study highlights the importance of considering more than just the literary elements when analysing film adaptations and points out broader possible areas, such as multimodality and audiovisual translation, which have only been partly recognized in adaptation studies.