ABSTRACT
Picturebook, a unique type of children's literature, is characterized by a close interaction between the verbal and the visual. This chapter investigates the translation of picturebooks from a multimodal perspective, with a special focus on the images of book covers. On the theoretical basis of multimodal concepts in translation, this chapter regards picturebook translation as an intersemiotic translation and employs visual grammar as an analytical tool to analyse the visual representation of images in picturebook translation. Kaindl's typology is also used as a supplement to further discuss the multimodal and cultural elements in picturebook translation. With five bilingual picturebooks of Mulan as the data, the chapter first conducts a comparative analysis of the book covers to examine the intermodal translation of images of the heroine and then performs a textual analysis on the transcultural translation of the legend in the books. The research results show that through intersemiotic translation in picturebooks, the identity of Mulan as a Chinese heroine in the ancient legend has been culturally reconstructed into a hybrid Americanized tomboy for contemporary readers in the global market.
