2026· International Journal of Languages Literature and Linguistics· 0 citations· 15 references
Abstract
— This paper compares Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang’s 1953 translation and Julia Lovell’s 2009 translation of The True Story of Ah Q to examine how translators construct Chinese cultural identity in cross-cultural communication. Drawing on the cultural perspective in translation studies and narrative construction theory, this study examines how translators’ identities and historical contexts inform their strategic choices. Findings show that Yangs ’ version employs cultural amplification and foreignization, emphasizing the depth and scholarly value of Chinese culture, in line with the nation’s early cultural diplomacy. Lovell’s version favors reduction and domestication, prioritizing readability and literary appeal within a globalized market. The study demonstrates that translation is not merely linguistic transfer but a vital practice of cultural identity reconstruction.
This study demonstrates that the primary challenge in translating Indonesian literary works into Arabic lies in the cultural elements embedded in metaphors, proverbs, and local expressions. Employing a qualitative textual analysis of Hamka’s Di Bawah Lindungan Kaʿbah, the research reveals that differences in worldview between Indonesian and Arab societies influence lexical choices and stylistic expressions, making literal translation insufficient. The findings highlight the necessity for translators to grasp the cultural context of the source text to ensure comprehensive meaning transfer. The study contributes to translation studies by formulating strategies that integrate semantic and stylistic approaches, including transliteration with explanatory notes, functional equivalence in the target culture, and the preservation of social metaphors. These strategies prove effective in maintaining cultural authenticity while ensuring readability for Arabic audiences. Overall, the research reinforces the view that literary translation is an act of intercultural mediation, synthesizing linguistic, semantic, and cultural dimensions to preserve meaning, aesthetic nuance, and cultural resonance in the target language.
Literary translation involves more than linguistic conversion; it also entails the reconstruction and re-encoding of cultural meanings. From the perspective of cultural translation theory, this study takes Liu Cixin’s original Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem and its Spanish translation El problema de los tres cuerpos by Javier Altayó as the objects of analysis. Drawing on Nida’s framework of cultural classification, culturally embedded elements in the source text are grouped into five categories: ecological, material, social, religious-philosophical, and linguistic. Through a comparative reading of the Chinese and Spanish versions, the paper examines the translator’s shifting strategies among foreignization, domestication, and cultural negotiation. The analysis suggests that the translation does not rely on a single or fixed strategy. When dealing with culture-specific elements that carry strong historical or regional specificity, the translator is more likely to preserve foreignness through transliteration, literal translation, or brief explanatory additions. In contrast, for expressions that may hinder comprehension or lead to cultural misinterpretation, freer rendering, generalization, or contextual adjustment tend to be adopted in order to reduce the cognitive burden on target readers. Overall, the Spanish translation of The Three-Body Problem reveals a flexible negotiation process, in which cultural difference is retained to varying degrees while comprehension is facilitated and narrative flow is maintained. This case offers a useful reference for the Spanish dissemination of Chinese science fiction and more broadly for the cross-cultural transmission of heterogenous cultural elements.
Yueyang Zhang· Journal of Language, Culture...· 0 citations
Yueyang Tower is a famous piece of classical Chinese prose, and it contains many culture-specific items. Using Aixelá’s theory of culture-specific items and Nida’s cultural classification, this paper makes a comparison of the translation strategies in the English versions by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang and by Luo Jingguo, focusing on ecological, social and spiritual culture-specific items. The comparison shows that the Yangs kept the cultural images and sentence structures of the original text, while Luo used free translation, put fluency and readability first, and added notes to explain cultural information. These different choices came from different translation purposes and target readers, so the two versions achieved different degrees of balance between keeping cultural meaning and helping readers understand.
Ziqi Zhou, Li Liu· Journal of Research in Socia...· 0 citations
Du Fu has long been regarded as the greatest poet in Chinese literary history. Both American sinologist Stephen Owen and Chinese historian William Hung have highly praised his literary achievements and cultural significance. As one of Du Fu’s most representative long narrative poems, Five Hundred Words from Ch’ang-an to Feng-hsien embodies profound social criticism, personal concerns, and rich cultural connotations, making it an important text for the translation and dissemination of classical Chinese poetry. Drawing on Chesterman’s (2016) memes of translation, this study aims to investigate how translation strategies shape the transmission of cultural, ideological, emotional, and poetic memes in the English translation of Du Fu’s poetry, thereby deepening understanding of the preservation, adaptation, and transformation of Chinese classical poetry across cultures. Using qualitative textual analysis, it compares the translation strategies adopted by the two translators and investigates how these strategies influence the transmission of poetic memes across linguistic and cultural boundaries. The analysis focuses on the translation of cultural images, historical allusions, poetic language, and emotional expression. The findings reveal distinct strategic preferences between the two translators. Owen generally adopts a source-oriented approach that emphasizes linguistic fidelity and cultural preservation, whereas Hung tends to employ a more target-oriented approach characterized by explicitness change, interpretation, and cultural filtering, prioritizing readability and accessibility for English readers. These differences influence the fidelity, fecundity, and longevity of poetic memes in the target culture. The study argues that effective meme transmission requires a balance between preserving source-cultural meanings and addressing target readers’ communicative needs.
Hongyuan Feng, Roslina Mamat, Zaid Mohd Zin· International Journal of Eng...· 0 citations
Tang Tri-colored Glazed Pottery represents a pinnacle of ancient Chinese ceramic art. Its specialized terminology poses significant challenges for English translation due to its deep cultural and historical connotations. This paper applies Eugene Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory to analyze the translation strategies employed for Tang Tri-colored Glazed Pottery terminology. Through a comparative examination of existing translations in museum catalogues, academic publications, and official documents, the study identifies four major strategies—transliteration, literal translation, free translation, and transliteration plus annotation—and evaluates their effectiveness in achieving communicative and functional equivalence. The findings suggest that a flexible, multi-strategy approach, guided by the target audience and communicative purpose, best serves the cross-cultural transmission of Tang Tri-colored Glazed Pottery.
Hong Chen· Scientific Journal Of Humani...· 0 citations
The Last Quarter of the Moon is a classic work of contemporary Chinese ethnic minority literature. It chronicles the century-long migration history of the Evenki hunting tribe and richly incorporates the religious narratives of Evenki shamanism. Its English translation has gained wide recognition overseas; however, current research lacks a specialized investigation into how these shamanistic religious narratives have been rendered in English. The present study focuses on Humes’s English translation of The Last Quarter of the Moon. Through comparative textual analysis, it examines the translator’s strategies from three dimensions: deity names, sacrificial rituals, and cosmology. The findings show that Humes adopted different translation strategies depending on the type of religious elements. For shamanistic deity names, he combined transliteration with annotation or literal translation to preserve local cultural symbols. For ritual and religious object descriptions, he used cultural addition and semantic explicitation to address overseas readers’ cognitive gaps. For metaphors that embody Evenki shamanistic cosmology and views of life and death, he avoided assimilating them into western religious imagery, retaining the original metaphorical expressions. Taken together, these strategies balance cultural authenticity with reader acceptability, accurately conveying the essence of Evenki shamanism while offering a reference for translating ethnic religious literature into English.
Furong Liu· International Journal of Soc...· 0 citations