Semiotic analysis of photojournalism captions: A comparison of Korean–English and Korean–Japanese translations

要旨

Photojournalism relies on a polysemiotic text of visual and verbal signs. Verbal signs are usually shaped as captions and cutlines. In photojournalism, the text producer uses captions to limit the polysemic nature of photographic images. These captions can either limit the denotative meaning of the visual image or interpret and limit the connotative meaning. The purpose of this study is first to examine any differences between languages and cultures in how captions are used to limit the meaning of photographic images, and then to investigate whether these differences are reflected in translations of Korean photojournalism. Towards this purpose, the study progresses in two main directions. First, we investigate whether there are cultural differences between US and UK, Korean, and Japanese media, realized via the varying methods they use to limit photo captions. Having identified the differences between these three cultural groups, we will proceed to analyze and discuss from a semiotic standpoint how these differences are reflected in Korean-to-English and Korean-to-Japanese translation strategies.

主題