KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study defines adaptation of the TV drama The Little Drummer Girl from John le Carré’s novel The Little Drummer Girl as an example of intersemiotic translation. To analyze the visual images that stand out among different multimodal elements in the drama, Kress and van Leeuwen’s concept of visual grammar was used. The analysis shows that the visual images serve three metafunctions to the viewers. First, the outfits and possessions of the characters serve the ideational metafunction that presents the characters’ identities and roles to the viewers. Second, TT shows the change of the characters’ gaze and spatial division using the camera, which serves the interpersonal metafunction as it represents the change of relationships among characters and also changes the relationship of the characters and the viewers. Third, the visual images are related to one another and repeated throughout the drama, serving the textual metafunction as they allude to the incidents in the plot and form the connections in the overall contents. This article has implications as a case study that analyzes the intersemiotic translation of linguistic signs to visual signs and shows the universality of visual images in that Park Chan-wook, a Korean director, adapted an English novel for an English television.

audiovisual translation, adaptation, intersemiotic translation, multimodality, visual grammar