Cohesive Ties in Promotional Texts: A Multimodal Translation Perspective on Film Posters

Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 2: Языкознание. 2025. Vol. 24. No. 2. P. 73–85.

Svetlana Yu. Pavlina, Marina R. Safina, Prasolova O.D.

This study considers multimodal texts of film posters in the light of functional pragmatics and intersemiosis.  Film posters lie at the intersection of cinematic and advertising discourses, they cross national boundaries promoting films globally. It informs our investigation of these promotional texts in the light of multimodal translation. Our research is set in the integrative framework encompassing Social Semiotics and Multimodal Translation. The focal point of our investigation is the semantic linkages between verbal and non-verbal components of semiotically complex texts of original posters and their translations. The sample for this empirical study includes 45 original texts and 45 translations for the Russian audience. The texts are analyzed at the levels of meaning-building and reception. At first, we examine cohesive linkages between different semiotic modes in the original posters, then we reveal if these ties are preserved or broken in the course of multimodal translation. Finally, we analyze how the translated versions are perceived by the viewers. To this end, we conduct an experiment in the form of an interview. The findings reveal the relevance of cohesion for the perception of translated film posters highlighting its genre specificity. Our research derives implications for investigations of different types of multimodal promotional texts, it also opens new avenues for translation studies.

Keywords: когезия, cohesion, поликодовость, multimodal translation, мультимодальный перевод, multimodality, film poster, promotional text, кинопостер, продвигающий текст