Maintaining Culture-Specific Items in the English Translation of Asal Usul Nama Cirebon: A Comparison Between ChatGPT and Human Translation

JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Translation Procedures in the Arabic Subtitles of “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania”: A Study of Culturally-Bound Content

Translation is considered the fifth dimension of language, a composite of the other four main language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The translation of culturally laden texts found in movies is an asset that connects cultures and communities by breaking down language barriers. This study attempts to identify and analyze the translation procedures applied to culturally-bound sentences in the Arabic subtitles of the animated movie: Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. The research used a descriptive qualitative method to analyze the Arabic subtitles, and thereafter, classified the translation based on Newmark’s taxonomy of translation procedures. Six translation procedures were identified in this movie: literal translation, paraphrase, compensation, cultural equivalent, shifts/transpositions, and descriptive equivalent. The study's findings indicate that one effective way to convey intended meaning, especially for concepts related to cultures that are foreign to the target audience in the case of movies is through frequent use of literal translation of dialogue. This can only be achieved by employing intensive and precise translation procedures. This research underscores the importance of adopting a flexible and procedurally focused approach to translation to preserve the entertainment and narrative value of the film and accommodate cultural diversity. The study’s findings are likely to be useful to all stakeholders in the field of translation.

Translation strategies in the Indonesian subtitles of the Women Talking movie: A study based on Gottlieb’s translation theory

Audio-visual translation (AVT) is an essential part of making films accessible across languages and cultures. However, there are few research on subtitling procedures in films with social and ideological complexity. This study aims at analyzing the types of translation strategies employed in the Indonesian subtitles of “Women Talking” (2022) based on Gottlieb’s classification of translation strategies (1992) as well as investigating the most frequently used translation strategies used in the Indonesian subtitles of the movie. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, a total of 300 of 1,318 subtitle units were purposively selected and analyzed using documentation and qualitative content analysis. The findings showed that 8 out of 10 Gottlieb’s translation strategies were identified that included Transfer, Paraphrase, Condensation, Imitation, Expansion, Deletion, Decimation, and Resignation strategies, while Transcription and Dislocation were absent. Transfer strategy is the most frequently used strategy with 160 occurrences (53.33%), followed by Paraphrase (50 occurrences, 16.67%), Condensation (30 occurrences, 10.00%), Imitation (17 occurences, 5.67%), Expansion (15 occurences, 5.00%), Deletion (15 occurences, 5.00%), Decimation (12 occurences, 4.00%), and Resignation (1 occurence, 0.33%). The prevalent use of Transfer strategy suggests the translator’s preference for retaining the original content via literal translation, but Paraphrase and Condensation were used to address linguistic and technical limits of subtitling. The results indicate that the translation of Indonesian subtitles of Women Talking put semantic correctness at the top of the priority list while still keeping the readability for Indonesian viewers.

Generalization and specification in translating prophetic hadith: A componential analysis of cultural items in the Malay translation of Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī

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

Reframing collocational errors as cultural collocational transfer: Insights from a Thai EFL learner corpus

This study investigates how culturally grounded conceptualizations shape English collocational usage in learner writing. Drawing on a 4.6-million-word corpus of Thai English as a foreign language (EFL) academic texts, collocations were extracted using corpus-driven association measures, including Mutual Information (MI) and t-score, and were manually validated against the British National Corpus (BNC). Of the 2,239 collocation types identified, 316 types (20,173 tokens) were classified through manual coding as cultural-transfer or culturally interpretable transfer-related forms when Thai linguistic patterning was accompanied by culturally salient conceptual motivation. Rather than viewing non-standard collocations as deficiencies, this study interprets this culturally classified subset as evidence of cultural meaning-making and lexical nativization. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed five domains: Kinship Hierarchy, Religious Practice, Food/Domestic Culture, Localized Service Economy, and Institutional/Media Discourse. Together, these domains accounted for 41% of all non-standard collocations, indicating that cultural transfer represents a systematic rather than incidental phenomenon in Thai learner English. The study contributes to applied corpus linguistics and World Englishes by showing how local cultural schemas are encoded in collocational choices. Pedagogically, the findings highlight the need to foster learners’ intercultural lexical awareness and to develop corpus-informed instructional practices that help learners negotiate cultural identity while maintaining communicative clarity.

Cognitive Misalignment and Categorical Reconstruction of Qi in English Translation

The translation of culture-specific items is difficult not merely because of lexical gaps, but because languages often organize experience through different underlying cognitive categories. This study examines the Chinese core concept qi (Gas), a radial category rooted in embodied experience and centered on the prototype of vital energy, and explains why it is frequently fragmented in English translation. A bilingual database of 49 high-frequency qi-compounds was built from the Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education and checked against the Modern Chinese Dictionary and Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. The static morphological comparison was then supplemented by qualitative analysis of authentic translations from medical classics, philosophy, literary theory, ethical discourse, and fiction. The results show a systematic mismatch: Chinese organizes the qi-word family through a shared morpheme and modifier-head construction, with 34 of 49 items placing qi in final position and 37 of 49 exhibiting modifier-head structure. By contrast, English renders these items through morphologically unrelated simplexes, derivatives, phrases, and one compound, thereby distributing a continuous Chinese category across discrete lexical domains such as air, strength, anger, courage, integrity, and atmosphere. Translation examples further reveal metaphorical rupture when the force, container, and flow schemas of qi are replaced by static English entities. To address this problem, the study proposes a cognitive compensation framework consisting of category transplantation, semantic compensation, category re-implantation, and context-sensitive modulation. The framework contributes to cognitive translation studies and offers practical implications for translating and teaching culturally dense Chinese key concepts in applied language-learning contexts.