A Case Study of Intercultural Expression of Digital Exhibitions at the CGCM from a Multimodal Perspective

Main Article Content

Chengkai Wang

Keywords

digital exhibition, multimodality, Grand Canal, international communication

Abstract

The Grand Canal of China, as a World Cultural Heritage, serves as a vital carrier for fostering international cultural communication through its digital exhibitions. While the scale of digital exhibitions in Chinese museums continues to expand, prominent issues still exist, including insufficient multilingual resources for international audiences, inadequate adaptation to cultural contexts, and underutilization of multimodal functions. Furthermore, case studies from a multimodal perspective remain scarce. Taking the digital exhibitions at the China Grand Canal Museum as the research subject, this study adopts methods of multimodal discourse analysis, case study and literature review. Six core exhibitions are selected to constructs a Chinese-English parallel research corpus of over 21,000 Chinese characters and their corresponding English translations. The characteristics of intercultural expression are examined from three types of modalities. The findings reveal that the museum reaches a relatively high level of digitalization in China, yet deficiencies remain during the adaptation of English interactions. This paper analyzes the underlying causes and proposes optimization strategies, which not only expand the application scenarios of multimodal theory but also provide practical references for the international communication of Grand Canal culture.

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