Aug 2026· Dynamics of the Romance and Germanic Languages: Trends and Innovations· 0 citations· 4 references
Abstract
The translation of children's literature represents a complex process of linguistic and cultural mediation between the source text and the young target audience. Unlike other literary genres, children's literature requires translators to take into account the cognitive, emotional, and cultural development of young readers. The translator must not only render the linguistic meaning of the original text but also adapt cultural references, humor, and narrative elements to make them accessible and meaningful. This process often involves balancing fidelity to the source text with the need for cultural adaptation. Translators may simplify certain expressions, clarify implicit meanings, or replace culture-specific elements with more familiar ones. At the same time, they play an important role in introducing children to new cultural realities and perspectives. Thus, translation becomes a form of intercultural communication and education. The translator acts as a mediator who shapes the reception of the literary work in the target culture. Particular attention is required when translating idioms, wordplay, and stylistic devices frequently used in children's literature. These elements often demand creative solutions in order to preserve the expressive and aesthetic value of the original text. Therefore, the translation of children's literature is both a linguistic task and a cultural act that contributes to the formation of young readers' intercultural awareness.
This study critically examines the Interchange English language teaching series as both a pedagogical resource and a cultural artifact, focusing on the relationships among language, culture, ideology, and power. Drawing on a qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary approach, the analysis discusses how global ELT materials construct and disseminate cultural representations through topics, dialogues, images, communicative situations, and references to popular culture. Particular attention is given to the concept of conversion culture, understood as the process through which learners may be exposed to culturally hegemonic ways of speaking, acting, consuming, and representing the world as desirable or normative models. The study also considers the predominance of Anglo-American cultural references, the representation of diversity, the role of editorial updates, and the tension between global marketability and local cultural realities. The discussion suggests that, although Interchange has progressively incorporated more diverse and contemporary representations, global teaching materials may still reproduce symbolic hierarchies associated with the international circulation of English. The study therefore emphasizes the importance of critical pedagogical mediation, the inclusion of learners’ local realities, and intercultural approaches that enable English to function not as a means of cultural assimilation, but as a resource for pluralistic and meaningful communication.
D. S. E. Silva· Revista Ibero-Americana de H...· 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.
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
Children’s literature, as an important vehicle for cross-cultural communication, embeds culture-loaded words as core elements that convey distinctive national cultural traits, and translation just serves as a critical pathway to achieving young readers’ cultural understanding while preserving the textual charm and child-appropriate playfulness. Taking the Yang Jingyuan Chinese translation of the classic children’s literary work The Wind in the Willows as the research material, this study focuses on translation strategies for culture-loaded words under the guidance of Newmark’s text typology theory. Through a deep analysis of the Chinese translation of culture-loaded words—particularly those related to social interaction and dietary culture words, it clarifies that the Chinese translation of dialogues in children’s literature must balance the transmission of cultural connotations, alignment with children’s cognitive level, and the colloquial nature of dialogue in children’s literature. The findings aim to provide theoretical insights and practical guidance for the translation of children’s literature.
Yi-Fan Hou, Guangfang Huang· Studies in English Language...· 0 citations
Children's literature occupies a unique position at the intersection of language development, emotional growth, and identity formation. Within bilingual educational contexts, literary narratives may acquire additional significance, functioning as pedagogical resources and as symbolic spaces in which linguistic belonging and cultural continuity are negotiated. This article examines the formative value of children's literature through a theoretical and applied perspective that integrates narrative theory, developmental psychology, communication studies, and bilingual education. Drawing upon the works of Bruner, Vygotsky, Bettelheim, Nikolajeva, Cummins, and Krashen, the study explores the role of literary narratives in supporting meaning-making, emotional externalization, communicative development, and identity construction. Particular attention is devoted to Romanian minority education in Hungary, where children's literature may contribute to the development of an affective relationship with Romanian as a heritage language. The theoretical discussion is complemented by a case study based on the literary narrative ”A Carriage of One's Own”, (Birescu Iacob & Olteanu-Sturza, 2025), selected from the volume ”Stories from Romanian Homes”, illustrating how the same story may generate different forms of participation, interpretation, and identity work across developmental stages. The findings suggest that the educational value of children's literature resides not primarily in the transmission of cultural content, but in its capacity to create symbolic environments where communication, emotion, and belonging becomeinterconnected. Within such environments, identity is not directly taught, but gradually constructed through meaningful narrative experience.
The article examines the peculiarities of translating English psychological terminology into Ukrainian and identifies the most effective translation methods used to ensure semantic accuracy and communicative adequacy. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing popularity of psychological literature and the need for a consistent rendering of specialized terminology in Ukrainian. The research aims to analyze the main translation techniques applied to English psychological terms and to determine their frequency and effectiveness. The corpus of the study comprised 128 terms selected from English-language professional psychology texts and their Ukrainian translations. The findings indicate that the most frequently employed techniques are variant equivalent selection (33%), calque translation (25%), and dictionary equivalents (21%). Less common methods include concretization, generalization, contextual substitution, semantic development, descriptive translation, part-of-speech substitution, and transcoding. The study demonstrates that the choice of translation method depends on a term's semantic characteristics, its degree of standardization in the target language, and its use context.
N. Tymoshchuk, U. Shostak· Scientific Journal of Poloni...· 0 citations
We use cookies to run the site and, with your consent, for analytics and to show ads.
See our Cookie Policy.
