Shasha Zhang

Keywords: Documentary translation, Chinese TV documentaries, cultural representation, national identity, ideological dynamics, multimodal analysis, Belt and Road policy

Documentary is commonly perceived to be the authentic representation of reality. However, in film studies, the discursive nature of documentary is reflected upon (Renov, 1993) and the presumed objectivity is argued against (Nichols, 1991, 2010). In this sense, the study of documentaries has the potential of unearthing the ideologies and identities of the producer. Combined with the special situation that the production of Television documentaries is state-owned in China, China Central Television produced documentaries on China can be seen as self-representations where the national identities and ideologies at different levels can be retrieved. Since audiovisual translation can be regarded as a representational practice (Pérez-González, 2014), the translation of the narrative texts of the aforementioned documentaries adds another layer of self-interpretation, which is especially salient when it is guided by the “Belt and Road policy” and “Going-out Policy” and the overall goal that the translated documentaries are to be viewed by global English viewers.

Therefore, this paper explores the dynamics of Chinese national ideologies during the production and the translation (dubbing) of China-produced documentaries. In order to achieve so, multimodal video analysis (O’Halloran, 2004) and multimodal transcription (Thibault and Baldry, 2000) are adapted and adopted to describe the interaction of narration and image and identify the ideologies hidden under the screen. The study can give an insight into China’s national identity in global media; it may also contribute a methodology for further research on cultural representation and ideology identification in audiovisual translation.