When the High language wins - and when it doesn’t: How diglossia and the timing of translation affect vernacular scripture use A Pilot Study Focused on Sulawesi
Aug 2026· Journal of Language, Culture, and Religion· Vol 6· 0 citations· 39 references
Abstract
The non-use of completed local language (LL) Scripture translations is a persistent and costly problem for the Bible translation movement. This article opens a broader Vernacular Scripture Use research program with a pilot study conducted across eighteen language communities in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Drawing on the sociolinguistic principle of diglossia and on Fishman’s lesser-known notion of media variance, the study advances a “timing of translation” hypothesis: a local language translation is unlikely to become the normative text for public worship if a national or regional language (NL) translation has already assumed that role, whereas a local translation established before the arrival of national Scripture stands a greater chance of continued normative use. Evidence was gathered through an intentionally evidence-based methodology combining historical research, observation, eighty-five interviews, recordings of worship services, and a Scripture photography tool, with findings triangulated across sources. Across the region, local language Scripture was read in public worship on average four Sundays per year, while national language Scripture was used weekly in every community surveyed. Reformed churches, guided by synod policy, accounted for most of the local language use observed. The Sulawesi data support the hypothesis and identify church policy as the one operative “ecology of resistance,” with implications for translation strategy and for the studies that will follow.
Poetry translation, which requires consistency in both artistic and semantic terms, has been one of the most controversial areas of translation studies, creating various obstacles to theoretical and practical discussions. While translation studies in the 1950s and 1960s were more linguistically oriented and focused on the language level, a cultural approach came to the forefront in the 1970s. Lawrence Venuti’s strategies of “domestication” and “foreignization” in translation are notable examples of this approach. Analyzing the translations produced by a Turkish translator (S. Behlül Toygar) and native English-speaking translator (Roger Finch), this study aims to determine which translation technique each translator primarily uses and the extent to which their translational decisions reflect domestication or foreignization tendencies. Moreover, the study comparatively examines how the translators dealt with the lexical, syntactic, semantic, phonological, and graphological elements of the source text. By comparing these linguistic and stylistic categories, the study identifies the parallels and discrepancies between the two translations, assesses how well they capture the aesthetic and semantic elements of the original poem, and highlights the gains, losses, and changes in poetic form and meaning in the translation from Turkish to English. It was concluded that poetry translation often requires a compromise between meaning, form, and culture, rather than achieving complete equivalence, and that Toygar and Finch, instead of copying Beyatlı’s poem “Flight,” recreated it within new linguistic and cultural contexts.
Senem Üstün Kaya· Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergi...· 0 citations
This article examines the role of embodied knowledge in translating practice-oriented religious texts through a case study of Livia Kohn’s
Sitting in Oblivion: The Heart of Daoist Meditation
. While Kohn’s translation of the Tang-dynasty
Zuowang Lun
坐忘論
exhibits clear markers of phenomenological literacy – experientially precise terminology, recognition of practice progressions, and technical accuracy in somatic descriptions – her systematic avoidance of positionality statements creates “unmarked phenomenological authority” that obscures how embodied knowledge informs interpretive decisions. This methodological ambiguity raises critical questions about verification, historical incommensurability, and translator objectivity. This paper proposes “triangulated transparency” – a framework integrating explicit positionality statements, collaborative translation models, and phenomenological annotation protocols – to harness somatic literacy’s benefits while mitigating risks of anachronism and sectarian bias. By reframing embodied knowledge as phenomenological competency rather than mystical privilege, this study contributes to methodological pluralism in religious translation studies.
Ziqiang Zhao· Method & Theory in the S...· 0 citations
As a female writer with social realist inclinations from Turkish literature, Sevgi Soysal portrays characters from different walks of life by maintaining an equal distance from varying categories of social difference, potentially turning into a label within society. Soysal incorporates vernacular language, shaped by local linguistic elements and containing important clues about indigenous ways of thinking from the Turkish context, into her works, ensuring the representation of several voices within her narrative universe. This study aims to discuss how elements of vernacular language are recreated in the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s Yenişehir’de Bir Öğle Vakti and Şafak in the light of the concept of foreignizing translation as an ethical act. This study comprises four parts. The first two parts draw on the main outlook of vernacular language and its potentiality in translation. In the third part, the interrelationships between Soysal’s tendency to form a social realist perspective and her use of vernacular language in her selected novels are examined. The fourth part provides an analysis of paratextual elements and examples of vernacular language from the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s Yenişehir’de Bir Öğle Vakti (2016) by Amy Spangler and Şafak (2022) by Maureen Freely. From an ethical perspective, it is concluded that Spangler and Freely show a limited extent of vernacularization based on their tendency toward foreignization in the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s novels, leading to lesser chances of promoting openness, dialogue, and cultural hybridity between the source and target cultures.
Göksenin Abdal· Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları...· 0 citations
This study examines how activist translation practice has been utilized to disseminate socialist ideology and related concepts in Türkiye through the case of Alâeddin Şenel. The theoretical framework of the study is twofold. First, as a historiographical method, it employs microhistory. This approach makes it possible to focus on ordinary people and supplement the missing fragments of historical processes that are typically viewed through a macro lens. The second pillar of the theoretical basis consists of Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concepts, specifically habitus, field, and capital. Rather than presenting a mere compilation of biographical details, these concepts enable a systematic analysis of Şenel’s role as an activist translator. Activist translation is a concept with fluid boundaries and has been practised by translators in various ways throughout history. The strategic selection of texts for translation, aimed at establishing a canon without manipulating content, can be considered a form of activist translation. Şenel, who translated books authored by Marxist and socialist writers whose works have been dominated by historical materialism, appears to have aimed not only to construct an alternative intellectual framework for Turkish readers but also to contribute to the global struggle against dominant historical, political, and social discourses. The case of Şenel demonstrates that translation can be conceived as a strategic ‘front’ within the ideological struggle. Ultimately, this study illustrates that advocates of socialism in Türkiye, despite never constituting a dominant political trend, were not merely passive supporters, but waged a quiet struggle to disseminate their ideologies.
Barbaros Uzunköprü, Neslihan Demez· Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları...· 0 citations
As a canonical Chinese primer, San Zi Jing (The Three-Character Classic) has an English translation history spanning over two centuries, during which translation styles have exhibited significant diachronic variation. However, existing research predominantly focuses on static assessments of translation quality. Such studies fail to elucidate why translators’ linguistic decision-making exhibits a paradigm shift from a “heteronomous interpretation” to a “reassertion of translator subjectivity,” nor do they address the underlying sociological generative mechanisms. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study conducts a multidimensional quantitative comparison of the English translations by Herbert A. Giles (1900) and Zhao Yanchun (2014) across three dimensions: lexical metrics, syntactic features, and discourse-level interpersonal dynamics. The data reveal that Giles’s translation constructs an explicating dialogic space via high-frequency function words and complex syntactic structures, reflecting the pragmatic habitus of early translators vying for symbolic capital within the sinological field. In contrast, Zhao’s translation achieves strict formal and semantic fidelity to the source text through exceptionally high lexical density and a trimetric rhythm. This demonstrates contemporary translators’ efforts to reconstruct the aesthetic discourse of Chinese classics by leveraging cultural capital under the “Chinese Culture Going Global” initiative. Ultimately, the study concludes that the evolution of translation style is essentially a textual representation of capital competition and structural power dynamics within the translation field, thereby providing replicable quantitative evidence for understanding the sociological mechanisms shaping the translation styles of Chinese canonical texts.
Xiaofeng Zeng, Wang Hai· International Journal of Eng...· 0 citations
This article reconsiders the linguistic equivalence in the conceptual history of International Relations (IR) by examining translation as a historical and political practice. Building on Reinhart Koselleck’s method, it calls for a translingual conceptual history that reveals how IR’s concepts acquire layered meanings across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Through a case study of the term ‘international’ in the Sinosphere, the article traces three distinct translations from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century:
wanguo
,
guoji
and
Yingtenaixiongnaier
. Each reflected different historical contexts, ideologies and political options, from Confucian legal universalism and positivist diplomacy to socialist internationalism. Rather than spontaneous equivalence, these translations illustrate how concepts are mediated through asymmetric and politicised localisation. In sum, this article sophisticates IR’s disciplinary understanding by situating translation at the core. It aims to challenge the current Anglophone hegemony and Eurocentrism by adopting global resources, thereby advancing a more plural and decolonised understanding of international thought.
Zizhu Wang· Millennium: Journal of Inter...· 0 citations
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