Adaptation as Intersemiotic Translation in Multimodal Texts: Adapting The Tale of Kiều into The Cải Lương Film Kim Vân Kiều
Abstract
Multimodal texts are regarded as the result of ongoing resemiotization processes in the cultural milieu. The power of adaptation and intersemiotic translation is demonstrated in the characteristic that the text’s signs are constantly circulated and resemiotized across genres and mediums in different contexts and cultures to construct new texts thanks to the tremendous support of digital technology platforms. Although The Tale of Kiều (written by Nguyễn Du) borrows the plot from Qingxin Cairen (青心才人)’s The Tale of Jin, Yun, and Qiao, in the context of Vietnamese art, this work is still regarded as a source text given its ability to provide abundant materials for a variety of adaptations, notably cải lương (reformed theater) and cải lương films (as a basic hybrid medium between reformed theatre and film). The article investigates the cải lương film Kim Vân Kiều (director by Nguyễn Bạch Tuyết) to identify procedures of intersemiotic translation from narrative poem to cải lương film. Owing to intersemiotic translation between two media, adapters change the original text The Tale of Kiều and encode its verbal signs into multiple signs. Specifically, the study examines several poetics aspects that are either present or absent during the adaptation of The Tale of Kiều from narrative poem to cải lương film.
Keywords: The Tale of Kiều, Kim Vân Kiều, intersemiotic translation, reformed theater, cải
lương film, linguistic anthropology