Aug 2026· Dialogica· Vol 2, pp. 134-148· 0 citations· 9 references
TL;DR
The study demonstrates the value of context-sensitive, linguoculturally informed evaluation of AI-assisted phraseological translation by illustrating successful preservation of conventional target-language equivalents in some items and literal rendering, metaphorical-image mismatch, reduced emotional expressiveness, pragmatic weakening, or loss of cultural symbolism in others.
Abstract
Artificial-intelligence-assisted translation of culturally marked phraseology may produce semantically plausible output while failing to preserve affective valence, pragmatic force, register, or cultural symbolism. This study examines English and Azerbaijani zoonym-based phraseological units in bidirectional AI-assisted translation. A qualitative corpus-based comparative design was applied to 100 units (50 English and 50 Azerbaijani) selected from phraseological dictionaries and literary and digital sources. Translations were generated with ChatGPT (OpenAI GPT-5.5) through the official web interface between 15 and 20 July 2026. Each source item was tested three times in newly initiated sessions using a standardized prompt. Outputs were compared with reference equivalents identified in the cited lexicographic sources and verified by the author across six dimensions: semantic adequacy, idiomatic naturalness, affective equivalence, pragmatic function, cultural appropriateness, and register preservation. The qualitative case analyses illustrate successful preservation of conventional target-language equivalents in some items and literal rendering, metaphorical-image mismatch, reduced emotional expressiveness, pragmatic weakening, or loss of cultural symbolism in others. Because corpus-level frequencies and the complete item-level record are not presented in this version, the findings should be interpreted as qualitative patterns rather than statistical estimates. The study demonstrates the value of context-sensitive, linguoculturally informed evaluation of AI-assisted phraseological translation.
Machine translation has become more fluent and contextually accurate with recent advances in artificial intelligence. However, terminological consistency has been underexplored, particularly in political and electoral discourse where lexical repetition and conceptual precision are critical for cohesion and clarity. This study investigates terminological consistency in AI-generated English–Arabic political translations produced by ChatGPT and Google Gemini Advanced. The translations were generated and analyzed between January and June 2026 using the systems’ default settings to ensure comparability and avoid potential variations resulting from user-configured parameters. The study employs a mixed-methods corpus-based approach. The study analyzes 30 political and electoral texts with 60 recurring key terms. Quantitative analysis measures the degree of consistency in the form of stability percentages, and qualitative analysis studies lexical variation and its effect on discourse cohesion and clarity. The adequacy and consistency of the translation were checked against a reference translation based on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Arabic Lexicon of Electoral Terminology. The results indicate that ChatGPT achieved higher terminological consistency than Google Gemini. ChatGPT’s lexical equivalents for repeated political and electoral terms were more stable than its Gemini counterpart, which showed more lexical variation, especially in context-sensitive terms such as campaign, electoral law, and judicial review. The study concludes that terminological consistency should be considered as a separate dimension of translation quality and emphasizes the importance of terminology control and human post-editing in AI-assisted political translation
Osama Bala· (Faculty of Arts Journal) مج...· 0 citations
The paper argues that NLP should operate as an interpretive assistant rather than an autonomous literary translator in translating Iraqi poetry into English, and proposes a culturally aware, human-in-the-loop framework for supporting literary translation.
Whaj Mneer Esmail· Iraqi Literary and Cultural...· 0 citations
This pilot study examines how the English adverb actually is rendered in Slovak translation, drawing on a corpus of literary texts and their translations. As a multifunctional item, actually performs a range of syntactic and pragmatic functions in context, most notably those of emphasizer and disjunct. The analysis draws on three Slovak translations of works by the same English-speaking author. Although each translator worked on a different set of books, the corpus still makes it possible to compare translation strategies within a relatively consistent authorial style and to observe how individual translators deal with the same multifunctional source item. The study combines qualitative functional analysis with quantitative observations in order to identify recurrent Slovak renderings of actually, including lexical substitution, structural reformulation, attenuation, and omission. The findings suggest that translation difficulty arises not from the lack of Slovak expressive resources, but from differences between English and Slovak in the grammatical encoding of discourse-related meaning. In particular, functions expressed in English through sentence adverbials do not always correspond to a single formal category in Slovak, which increases the likelihood of functional shift or translation loss. The study contributes to translation studies and contrastive linguistics by showing how the pragmatic contribution of a frequent multifunctional item may be preserved, reinterpreted, weakened, or omitted in translation, and how these outcomes vary across translators.
Zuzana Knižková· Studies About Languages· 0 citations
The results show that LLMs and Google Translate consistently outperform specialized MT systems in terms of fluency, meaning preservation, and lexical-thematic alignment.
Beatriz Ribeiro Borges, P. H. R. Gabriel, E. Faria· International Journal of Dat...· 0 citations
We compare six purposively selected term pairs using an English-language web corpus composed mainly of encyclopedic sources: engawa/veranda, tsuboniwa/impluvium, shōji/fusuma, tokonoma/chigaidana, ma/mu, and wabi/sabi. The pairs form three groups: cross-cultural comparisons, related Japanese architectural elements, and conceptual or aesthetic pairings. The study applies an audited corpus-based Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) analysis. Each pair is tested across predefined seed-based fields under FULL corpus conditions and CLEAN conditions that remove glossary-like and explicitly definitional sentences. In the tested corpus, the pairs do not behave as simple equivalents or oppositions. In cross-cultural comparisons, engawa is more strongly associated with indoor–outdoor boundary vocabulary, while narrowly specified boundary and transitional probes also favor engawa; veranda is more strongly linked to circulation and sheltered outdoor use. Tsuboniwa leans toward meanings of miniature gardens, whereas impluvium is strongly associated with water, basins, and Roman domestic systems. Within Japanese architectural vocabulary, fusuma dominates partition-related fields, whereas tokonoma and chigaidana remain mostly weak or non-separating. Among abstract terms, ma and mu show an asymmetric bidirectional pattern, with correction-supported separation more consistent for ma-directed than for mu-directed fields. Wabi and sabi show high contextual similarity in the selected English-language corpus, with correction-supported separation only for impermanence and melancholy. The field comparisons identify where the paired terms differ, where no difference was detected, and where one term was more strongly associated with several fields. The findings concern contextual usage in this corpus rather than definitive architectural, historical, or philosophical meanings of the terms.
Background and Purpose: The translation of Prophetic Hadith involves mediating meaning across linguistic, cultural, and religious boundaries, where lexical choices significantly influence interpretation. A persistent challenge concerns how translators adjust the level of specificity when rendering culturally embedded Arabic expressions into Malay. Despite increasing attention to religious translation, limited research has examined how generalization and specification, as semantic strategies, reshape meaning and affect interpretive accuracy. This study investigates the occurrence and function of these strategies, as proposed by Chesterman (1997), in selected Malay translations of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (TSB) published by the Prime Minister’s Office of Malaysia (JPM).
Methodology: Adopting a qualitative approach, the study employs componential and descriptive analyses to examine shifts in conceptual specificity between the source and target texts. Through componential decomposition, it identifies how core semantic features of Arabic cultural items are either generalized or specified within Malay interpretations. The study analysed seven material cultural items extracted from selected hadiths in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, namely burd, al-tharīd, al-qiththāʾ, al-utrujjah, al-raiḥānah, al-ḥanẓalah, and al-bitʿu.
Findings: The findings indicate that generalization enhances accessibility but often reduces culture-specific semantic detail, while specification narrows meaning to dominant Malay conceptualizations, potentially limiting semantic richness. These shifts reflect deliberate translational choices shaped by linguistic, cultural, and pragmatic factors.
Contributions: This study highlights the importance of semantic sensitivity and demonstrates the value of componential analysis in evaluating meaning shifts, advocating balanced strategies that preserve interpretive depth while ensuring clarity.
Keywords: Generalization, specification, cultural items, prophetic hadith, Sahih Bukhari.
Cite as: Abd Rahman, L., A. Bakar, A., Ramli, S., Doll Kawaid, A. I. S., Abu Bakar, A. I., Harun, H., & Mat Zaki, M. A. A. (2026). Generalization and specification in translating prophetic hadith: A componential analysis of cultural items in the Malay translation of Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 11(2), 401-420. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol11iss2pp401-420
Lubna Abd. Rahman, Arnida A. Bakar, Sulhah Ramli et al.· Journal of Nusantara Studies...· 0 citations
