Translation and Metaphor Research of Mulao Ancient Songs from the Multimodal Perspective

Most of The Mulao Ancient Songs are preserved in multimodal method, which integrates language, music, ritual scenes and body movements. Theses songs carry the historical memory and cultural identity of ethnic group of Mulao. Translators mostly focus on word to word translation while fail to convey multimodal semantics and cultural metaphors, which restricts the the accurate and complete cultural exchanges. Taking the multimodal discourse analysis theory as the framework and combining cases in the Mulao Ancient Songs, this paper explores the translation of text, musical rhythm, and ritual actions in the songs and the translation strategies for metaphors. The research shows that multimodal translation needs to take into account the interaction of various modalities. Semantic integrity can be achieved by adapting text to melody and supplementing context with annotations. The translation of metaphors needs to be combined with the cultural background and local language. This paper provides multimodal theoretical guidance for the translation of Mulao Ancient Songs and also offers reference for the inheritance of ethnic oral culture and cross - cultural communication.