2026· International Journal of Languages Literature and Linguistics· 0 citations· 12 references
Abstract
— With the global dissemination of Chinese palace dramas, the honorifics employed in these series reflect the hierarchical social structures of imperial China. To ensure target audiences comprehend the hierarchical relationships and plot developments embedded in these linguistic forms, the translation of honorifics has become a critical concern. The American version of Empresses in the Palace features a well-defined honorific system, making its official English subtitles particularly representative for examining interpersonal meaning transmission. This study employs a combined methodology of literature review and case study, establishing an integrated theoretical framework drawing on Halliday ’ s Systemic Functional Linguistics and Brown & Levinson ’ s Face Theory. Using the official American subtitles as corpus data, this research analyzes translation strategies for honorifics and the cross-cultural transmission of interpersonal meaning, investigating how translators reconstruct comprehensible “ face mechanisms ” for target audiences. This framework offers analytical support for honorific translation in palace dramas, while the summarized strategies provide practical guidance for similar subtitle translation projects.
The translation of Devkota’s Pagal into The Lunatic by himself is an equivalent linguistic transfer from source to the target language. The paper observes the literary gaps in the course of linguistic transfer between the Pagal and its English translation. The transfer of its cultural, emotional, religious and spiritual uniqueness has created a negotiating space to the target reader. Therefore, the English version of Pagal struggles to carry the essence of the poet’s experience in its fullest form. The paper adopts translation approaches, methods and theories as a conceptual frame under a qualitative approach. Clifford E. Lander’s view in literary translation, Jiri Levi’s ‘On the Poetics of Translation’, and Anthony Appiah’s theory of ‘Thick Translation’ serve as the major conceptual gateway to assess Devkota poem and its translated equivalence. The study unfolds the compromise presented in the target text, contending the cultural, religious, emotional and spirituals nuances which remain partially transferable. The English version of ‘Pagal’ proves as a creative reimagination of its original, not merely a linguistic transfer of Pagal. The representation of linguistic richness, religious annotations, and emotional dynamics is under- question and carves a new space in translation. Interestingly, even in auto-translation, the target text fails to capture the multilayered meaning, linguistic/literary nuances; therefore, a complete literary translation is impossible.
Bhagabat Paudel· Academia Research Journal· 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
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.
The study concludes that, in postcolonial Arabic literary translation, human mediation remains essential for preserving figurative meaning and narrative positioning, while AI tools may serve only as preliminary support rather than as a replacement for human judgment.
Haitham M. K. AlYousef· International Journal of Tra...· 0 citations
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
How does multilingualism function not just as a biographical condition but as a political, aesthetic, and pedagogical practice? In this interview, Julia Alekseyeva, a multimodal scholar, graphic memoirist, translator, and leftist activist whose scholarship spans Soviet, French, Japanese, and US cultural contexts, reflects on language acquisition through displacement, translation across media, and the role of comics and documentary forms in antifascist politics. The conversation foregrounds Alekseyeva’s perspective as a post-Soviet Jewish immigrant to the US working across four languages and multiple artistic registers, from graphic memoir to academic monograph and public-facing essays. It offers an account of how multilingualism shapes intellectual formation, creative practice, and political commitment, while also advancing a critical argument that multilingualism can challenge ethnonationalist identity frameworks. The interview presents multilingualism as a form of intellectual and political bridging that unsettles fixed identities and speaks directly to urgent contemporary cultural debates.
Ioana Luca, Julia Alekseyeva· Journal of Literary Multilin...· 0 citations
