Cultural Explicitation in Chinese-English Documentary Subtitling: Image-Text Relations in Festive China

Abstract

This study examines how image-text relations shape cultural explicitation in Chinese-English documentary subtitling. Using Festive China as a case, it combines Martinec and Salway’s image-text relation system with subtitle-explicitation categories developed by Perego and Nohovec and with Zhang’s principles of multimodal configuration. Twelve culture-related subtitle cases were coded across six categories. Six cases are discussed in detail, one from each category and selected to maximize variation in image-text relations and translation strategies. The analysis shows that elaboration, extension, and enhancement create different conditions for addition, specification, and reformulation. Visual information can support concise reformulation, while gaps between verbal and visual information can motivate more explicit lexical choices. The analysis also identifies omission as a boundary case: when images or later context already carry the relevant cultural information, verbal reduction may improve multimodal economy but should not be treated as explicitation in a strict sense. The findings suggest that cultural explicitation in subtitles can be more understood when verbal and visual information are considered together than through verbal comparison alone.