Intersemiotic translation of <i>The Song of Everlasting Sorrow</i> from narrative poetry to dance drama: a multimodal stylistics perspective

Abstract By examining the narrative poem The Song of Everlasting Sorrow and its dance drama adaptation, this study explores the intersemiotic translation features of poetry on the basis of multimodal stylistic theory. The findings show that intersemiotic translation of narrative poetry to dance drama involves a transformation from written language to the collaboration of verbal, sound, and dance mode. The foregrounded features of the poem include material processes, relational processes, and locative and temporal adjuncts functioning as themes, conveying Emperor Xuanzong’s grief over the loss of Yang Yuhuan and the poet’s lament for the prosperity and decline of the Tang Dynasty. While the dance drama employs different foregrounded features such as behavioral processes in verbal mode, activated pitch movement and increased pitch range in sound mode, stage space that merges real and virtual elements, and various body movements in dance mode. All of these foregrounded multimodal features, along with their complementary relations, emphasize the cultural richness and prosperity of the Tang Dynasty, as well as the fulfilling love between the emperor and the consort. These differences in mode choices and stylistic features are the results of different context of situation and context of culture. Based on these features, this article also outlines the strategies for the intersemiotic translation of poetry, including replacing phonological features with multimodal representations, collaboratively utilizing multimodal foregrounded structures, selecting key events and revising story endings to express discourse meanings, and aligning contextual changes with the selection of meanings to cater to new audiences.