Literary Translation Research Articles

This study explores the translation strategies employed in the Arabic dubbing of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man, focusing on the interplay between semantic fidelity, cultural relevance, and lip-sync accuracy. Dubbing, as a core form of audiovisual translation, requires more than linguistic precision—it demands cultural sensitivity and technical synchronization to ensure that meaning is not lost in translation. The research analyzes ten selected phrases from the dubbed Arabic version of the play, categorizing them according to four main strategies: literal translation, interpretive translation, omission, and substitution. Each method was evaluated based on three criteria: semantic accuracy, cultural adaptability, and synchronization with lip movements and facial expressions. The findings reveal that substitution was the most effective technique in achieving cultural relevance and contextual appropriateness, followed by omission, which supported time synchronization. Literal translation, while semantically accurate, often lacked cultural nuance and presented synchronization challenges. Interpretive translation struck a balance by maintaining intended meaning within a culturally coherent framework. The study contributes to the field of audiovisual translation by demonstrating the importance of balancing linguistic accuracy with cultural and technical requirements, offering helpful tips to practitioners and scholars of Arabic dubbing.

This study analyzes the strategies used in the Spanish translation of the metaphors present in Chapter 10 of Susan Hill's (1983) The Woman in Black, titled "Whistle and I'll Come to You". In the context of Gothic literature, metaphors play a crucial role in creating atmospheres of tension, mystery, and fear. The main objective of this research is to identify and classify the metaphors present in Chapter 10 of the work in order to determine the translation strategy in each case. Through a qualitative, descriptive, and analytical-comparative methodology, 10 significant metaphors were selected to identify the type of metaphor and classify the metaphor translation strategies proposed by Peter Newmark (1988). A literary analysis of the stylistic role of each metaphor was also conducted. The findings reveal that the predominant strategy is the reproduction of the original image; therefore, the aim was to preserve the emotional effect of the original text, prioritizing semantic fidelity without sacrificing the fluency or naturalness of the Spanish language. This demonstrates a deep understanding of the Gothic genre and the function of metaphor as a narrative device. Furthermore, it is concluded that the effective translation of literary metaphors requires not only linguistic competence but also aesthetic sensitivity and knowledge of the cultural context. This analysis provides tools for translation practice and at the same time emphasizes the importance of metaphors as fundamental elements in literary translation, especially in genres that rely on figurative language to convey their atmosphere and deeper meaning.

This study explores the translation techniques and ideological orientations found in English–Indonesian texts produced by EFL learners with the aid of AI-assisted tools. The rise of platforms such as Google Translate, DeepL, and ChatGPT has reshaped translation practices in educational contexts. Against this backdrop, the research seeks to identify the strategies students employ and to examine the dominant translation ideology reflected in their work. This study employed a qualitative descriptive design with an embedded case study approach. Data were collected through translation tasks, where EFL students at Universitas Bumigora were asked to translate English texts into Indonesian using AI tools such as Google Translate, DeepL, and ChatGPT. The participants consisted of ten eighth-semester EFL students, purposively selected for their academic proficiency in English. The translations were analyzed using Molina and Albir’s (2002) framework and interpreted through Venuti’s (1995) theory of translation ideology. The findings reveal that Literal Translation emerged as the most frequently used strategy (25%), followed by Modulation (16.67%), with Established Equivalent and Transposition each accounting for 12.5%. Amplification and Description were each applied at a rate of 8.33%, while Particularization, Generalization, Linguistic Amplification, and Borrowing were each used at 4.17%. Overall, 70% of the strategies leaned toward the target language, reflecting a preference for fluent and culturally adapted translations. These choices illustrate how students, whether consciously or unconsciously, adjusted their work to align with the communicative norms of the target language. Consequently, the dominant translation ideology evident in their outputs aligns with Venuti’s concept of domestication.

The global popularity of Korean films and dramas has heightened the demand for high quality subtitle translations. Such translations must preserve both linguistic meaning and cultural authenticity for audiences unfamiliar with Korean culture. Therefore, this study is to examine how Korean culturally specific terms were translated into English subtitles in the film 20th Century Girl (2022), focussing on the strategies used in negotiating meaning between authenticity and accessibility. Using a qualitative content analysis supported by descriptive quantification, 60 culturally significant terms were identified and analysed. Translation strategies were categorised following Newmark's (1988) translation framework and compared with perspectives from Venuti (1995) and Nida (1974) to provide a broader theoretical grounding. The findings reveal eight strategies word-for-word, literal, faithful, semantic, adaptation, free, idiomatic, and communicative translation were employed to varying degrees. Literal and faithful translations to maintain accuracy, but sometimes produced awkward phrasing in English. By contrast, communicative and idiomatic strategies tended to capture tone and emotional nuance more effectively. In situations where no direct equivalent was available, adaptation and free translation were used to convey the intended meaning without losing clarity. These findings suggest that subtitling extends beyond a linguistic task to a cultural act requiring careful negotiation of meaning, tone, and context. By addressing the challenges of cross-cultural communication in subtitling, this study contributes to the growing scholarship on audio visual translation. It also highlights the value of culturally sensitive translation methods in helping global audiences appreciate Korean culture more deeply. Overall, the study offers insights into the challenges of subtitling and underscores the importance of cultural sensitivity for translators, scholars, and practitioners engaged in cross-cultural media.

Abstract This article investigates a borderline case between inter- and intralingual translation , viz. the interregisterial rewriting of Greek-derived English medical terms into plain-language wordings for lay readers. Applying the well-known coupled-pairs method , the investigation charts the different types of micro- and macrostrategies observable in this particular type of translation. Since the ST medical terms sampled are all one-word items, microstrategies are, for the particular purposes of this study, defined as those applying to the translation unit of morphemes. For macrostrategies , the translation unit is ST words as a whole. Regarding microstrategies, different types have been identified for lexical morphemes as opposed to affixes. Among those applying to ST lexical morphemes, by far the most frequent type identified has turned out to be literal lexemic translation . In terms of macrostrategies, six different types or gradations on a scale of iconicity or literalness have been identified. Three types of macrostrategy were found to be the most frequent: One represents a non-morphemic approach, i.e., one not based on the translation of individual morphemes, and two represent morphemic approaches with partial literalness, i.e., strategies where all morphemes are translated individually, but not all literally.

Against the backdrop of globalization, China is committed to constructing a culturally distinctive discourse system and enhancing its influence in international communication. As one of the most eternal classics in the history of Chinese philosophy, Laozis translation plays a crucial role in promoting Chinese cultures global dissemination. Based on the three principles of Skopos Theory, and combined with the five cultural classification systems of material, social, ecological, religious, and language, this paper studies the translation of the Chinese-English version of Laozis Chinese version of the Library of Chinese Classics. Through the analysis of specific translation examples, this paper concludes that this translation starts from the cultural cognition of the target reader, gives priority to the use of free translation to ensure the accurate transmission of the original connotation, and reconstructs the word order with foreignization, domestication, and literal translation to adapt to the target languages idiom. It also proves that Skopos Theory has a high applicability in the study of culturally loaded words.

With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), its application in literary translation has become more widespread, raising new possibilities and challenges for translating classical Chinese poetry. Against this backdrop, Qiangjinjiu is examined as one of the representative works of classical Chinese poetry, while relevant research from the perspective of Reception Theory remains scarce. Drawing on this theory, this paper compares AI and human translation of Qiangjinjiu from language, culture, and emotion. Findings show that although AI translation has advantages in terms of the information storage and translation output efficiency of poetry, it has significant deficiencies in conveying the imagery connotations, cultural metaphors, and rhythmic beauty of ancient poetry. Human translation, though less efficient, allows for deeper interpretation and more faithful restoration of the poems emotional and aesthetic depth, thereby better realizing its literary value. Based on this, this article believes that AI translation cannot completely replace human translation. In the future, it is necessary to promote the deep integration and coordinated development of the two, using AI to improve translation efficiency and human translation to optimize translation quality, ultimately facilitating the international dissemination and overseas inheritance of ancient poetry. The comparative study in this article can provide more powerful theoretical support for future research in the field of poetry translation, and at the same time guide translators to create poetry translations from the perspective of readers and take into greater consideration the degree of acceptance by readers.

The translation of stream-of-consciousness narrativecharacterized by fragmented psychological time and disrupted syntaxposed a significant challenge in literary translation, especially between distantly related languages. This study examined this mechanism through Fyodor Dostoevskys psychologically innovative work,Notes from Underground. A purpose-built parallel corpus was constructed, comprising three representative interior monologues in the original Russian alongside English translationsRichard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonskys foreignizing version and Constance Garnetts domesticating approachas well as Zhonglun Zangs Chinese translation, which employed language-specific compensatory strategies. Manual syntactic annotation, combined with reader-response experiments, was used to quantify key metrics including syntactic transformation, punctuation fidelity, and the preservation of Bakhtinian polyphonic contradictions. Results revealed a core tension: the foreignizing strategy of Pevear and Volokhonsky effectively recreated the originals "neurotic rhythm", yet compromised readability for English readers. Garnetts domesticating translation enhanced fluency at the expense of psychological authenticity. Constrained by the typological distance between Chinese and Russian, Zangs Chinese version employed creative compensatory mechanisms unique to the target language. This study provided a novel empirical framework for translating stream-of-consciousness features and offered practical strategies for retranslating Russian literary classics into both Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages.

In recent years, the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI) has brought new momentum to literary creation and cross-cultural communication. However, its widespread use in language generation and text reconstruction has revealed limitations in conveying Chinese traditional culture across languagessuch as misinterpreting cultural context, lacking aesthetic depth, and oversimplifying poetic imagery. Understanding how AI can accurately reconstruct classical Chinese poetic imagery across languages is therefore of both theoretical significance and practical value. This paper examines the "pine" imagery in classical Chinese poetry to assess Generative AIs ability in linguistic transformation and cultural representation in translation. Through case analysis and by drawing on literary translation theory, this study evaluates AI-generated translations in detail. Findings show that AI excels in semantic accuracy, fluency, and translation efficiency, but falls short in capturing cultural nuance, poetic rhythm, and contextual appropriateness. The study concludes that AI is best used as a supportive tool rather than a replacement for human translators in deep interpretation and creative expression. Future research could analyze more types of imagery, develop a broader framework for cross-linguistic reconstruction, and explore human-AI collaboration models to better integrate technology and culture.

In the context of "Chinese-Cultures-Go-Global," effectively communicating Chinese culture to the world has become a significant challenge. Numbers in literary and cultural texts are not merely quantitative markers but carriers of emotions, thoughts, and cognitive connotations, making the translation of numbers an increasingly important area of focus. Drawing on the prototype theory in cognitive linguistics, with an empirical survey, this paper offers an additional defense of Howard Goldblatt's translation of "六个姐姐 (liù gè jiě jie)" as "seven sisters". First, the paper explores and explains the rationale behind Goldblatt's choice of "seven sisters," arguing that "seven sisters" is more typical than "six sisters" because it embodies more core features of the source text, while the latter exhibits more peripheral ones of the source text. Second, the paper proposes a new standard for evaluating a literary translation: The core feature—fidelity to the source text—takes precedence over other factors; diversified versions of translations (i.e., "seven sisters" and "six sisters") belong to a family category of varied versions of the original. Evaluating the versions requires balancing core and peripheral features rather than solely emphasizing fuzzy fidelity to the original, which is adhered to by traditional translation studies, and the assessment of literary translation becomes more objective than before. By conducting a comparative analysis of the cultural connotations and cognitive characteristics of the source and target texts, this paper not only defends Goldblatt's translation choice but also provides new theoretical supports for translating numbers in literary texts and a new literary translation standard. It is both realistic and valuable for literary translation studies as well as constructive to cross-cultural communication.

Theatre language is a distinctive mode of communication characterized by its performative nature, oral orientation, and integration within a multimodal artistic context. Unlike traditional literary texts, dramatic language functions not only as written material but as a blueprint for live performance, combining dialogue, physical gestures, timing, and spatial dynamics to create a holistic theatrical experience. Translating theatre texts, therefore, presents unique challenges that extend beyond linguistic equivalence to encompass cultural specificity, performative feasibility, and audience reception. This paper investigates the essential characteristics of theatre language and explores the inherent difficulties encountered in its translation across languages and cultures. Employing a qualitative methodology that includes a comprehensive literature review and comparative textual analysis of selected dramatic works—ranging from Shakespearean classics to contemporary European drama—the study identifies key features such as colloquialism, dialectal variation, wordplay, and multimodality that complicate the translation process. The results reveal that theatre translation requires creative strategies to negotiate cultural references, humor, and performative constraints, often demanding adaptive solutions rather than literal translations. The discussion highlights the translator’s role as a cultural mediator and creative collaborator within the theatrical production process. This paper contributes to the growing field of theatre translation studies by emphasizing the interplay between language, culture, and performance, and suggests directions for future research including empirical studies on audience reception and collaborative translation practices.

Certainly! Here is a literary English translation of your fragment, suitable for scientific or academic publication: Assessment of coronary artery calcium (CAC) is an important factor in the timely identification of patients at high risk for coronary events. According to the 2024 guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology for the management of chronic coronary syndromes, multislice computed tomography (MSCT) with CAC quantification has been proposed as one of the models for risk restratification in coronary artery disease (CAD). The CAC marker is particularly relevant for asymptomatic patients. This study consecutively included 733 patients with suspected CAD based on clinical data and/or the results of an exercise stress test (bicycle ergometry). The results obtained confirmed the necessity of incorporating coronary calcium assessment into the standard evaluation of patients with low cardiovascular risk, in order to optimize management and treatment strategies.

Occasionalism is very important to the imaginary world, how characters develop, and how the story is told, so translators need to find a balance between being faithful to the original and creating linguistic and cultural substitutes for the audience. This study explores the difficulties in converting nonce words inside the Harry Potter books, and it stresses their stylistic, semantic, and cultural subtleties. This study also explains the particular foreignization as well as domestication that is applied for the transfer of English occasional words into Russian along with the Kazakh language. Some instances within certain studies show how many translations encounter those problems. The research utilized a comparative and corpus-based approach by creating a parallel corpus of the texts in English, Kazakh, and Russian, finding 100 occasionalisms, and analysing their translation strategies which included borrowing, calque, substitution, and descriptive translation. In addition to the textual analysis, using the surveys to collect evaluation data allowed us to analyse the audience perception with regard to the clarity, culture, and acceptability of the translations of occasionalisms. This paper highlights the importance of specific inventiveness, subtle cultural awareness, and expert language skills in translating nonce words. By examining the multiple strategies along with specific challenges within the Harry Potter translations, it offers useful insights into the wide-ranging field of literary translation, in addition to the detailed interplay between language and imagination.

This study compares generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and neural machine translation (NMT) systems in translating Uighur literary text (قۇتادغۇ بىلىك)into English. Two NMT systems, Google Translate and Bing Translator, were evaluated alongside ChatGPT, a GenAI large language model, under two prompt strategies. Translation quality was assessed through automatic metrics (BLEU, ROUGE-N/L, METEOR, and BERT-based semantic similarity), automated error counts (grammar, spelling, style), and expert ratings across four dimensions. Qualitative examples of culturally sensitive excerpts were also examined to illustrate success and failure cases. Results show that ChatGPT, especially with a concise instruction prompt, generally outperforms NMT systems in semantic accuracy, fluency, and cultural adequacy. Bing Translator produced the highest number of errors, particularly spelling mistakes, while Google Translate demonstrated more stable but moderate performance. Statistical testing and expert evaluations supported these patterns, and case analyses revealed how NMT outputs often distorted meaning through polarity reversal and semantic shifts. The findings highlight prompt engineering as a key factor for improving GenAI-based literary translation while recognizing the complementary strengths of GenAI adaptability and NMT stability. Future research should expand language and system coverage and examine the role of human post-editing in enhancing translation quality.

This study addresses the lack of a comprehensive synthesis of translation strategies in Arabic–Malay religious texts despite the growing body of research. Guided by the PRISMA framework, it systematically reviews 15 Scopus-indexed studies published between 2011 and 2025 to identify recurring patterns, strengths, and gaps. The findings reveal that explicitation is the most frequently applied strategy, followed by functional equivalents, which together ensure cultural clarity and acceptability. Other strategies such as transference, calque, and literal translation are also used to maintain cultural and linguistic identity. Qur’anic translation, however, requires greater sensitivity to rhetorical devices, euphemisms, and lexico-semantic nuances. Although machine and neural-based translation tools show potential, they still require human post-editing to safeguard theological accuracy. Overall, this review maps the evolution of strategies from traditional to technology-assisted approaches and underscores their pedagogical and practical implications. It also highlights directions for future research, including expansion beyond Qur’anic texts, integration of cognitive and reader-response perspectives, and critical evaluation of AI-assisted translation in balancing accuracy with cultural fidelity.

When poetry travels across cultures, misunderstanding and mistranslation are almost inevitable due to differences in language, historical context, and cultural traditions. Yet, literary translation simultaneously facilitates the circulation, development, and renewal of culture. Ezra Pound, as both a distinguished poet and translator, assimilated elements from Japanese haiku and classical Chinese poetry to create unprecedented poetic imagery within modernist literature. On the one hand, he rendered a wide range of Chinese texts, including The Book of Songs and poems by Li Bai and Wang Wei. In traditional Chinese discourse, writing emphasizes the expression of “implication”, whereas translation must not only capture textual meaning but also anticipate the reception of unseen readers. On the other hand, Pound transformed poetic images into forms familiar to his cultural environment, thereby reshaping their resonance in English. Focusing on Pound’s translation of terms such as “city”, “wall” and “corner” in Li Bai’s poetry, this paper examines how imagery is transformed and reinterpreted in the process of cross-cultural communication.

Attaining linguistic accuracy in the translation of Qur’ānic Arabic homographs, especially the lexeme al-Hawā (الهوى), into English has created a daunting challenge for linguists, interpreters, philologists, translators, and Qur’ānic scholars. This intricacy is due to the double meaning associated with these lexical items and the complicated exegetic and contextual nuances inherent in Qur’ānic discourse in terms of the general and specific meanings of Qur’ānic homographic lexemes. This analytical analysis aims to investigate the linguistic accuracy of translating the Qur’ānic homograph al-Hawā (الهوى). This study is conducted under the framework of the equivalence theory approach. Utilizing a qualitative, analytical methodology, it is based primarily on analytical frameworks and a comprehensive literature review, favoring qualitative over quantitative methods. The findings imply that Abdel Haleem, Pickthall, and Al-Hilali and Khan predominantly utilized a blend of dynamic, free, contextual, and literal translation strategies to capture the nuanced semantic dimensions of the Qur’anic Arabic homograph al-Hawā (الهوى). However, instances remain where strict adherence to literal translation leads to a failure to aptly express the connotation and implication of these Qur’ānic homographs.

This study investigates the translation capability of Filipino majors in rendering poems from Southern Leyte Bisaya into Filipino, addressing the challenges posed by the Philippines’ linguistic diversity and the complex issues inherent in literary translation. Guided by Newmark’s translation strategies, the research examines the students’ performance before and after a targeted pedagogical intervention. Initial findings from the pretest reveal a predominant reliance on literal translation, often resulting in loss of nuance, cultural imagery, and poetic rhythm. Following the intervention, however, there is a marked increase in the use of idiomatic and transpositional strategies, reflecting a shift toward more culturally sensitive and contextually faithful translations. The study highlights the critical need for instructional materials that do not only teach translation theory but also promote hands-on application and cultural awareness. Such materials are envisioned to foster a deeper appreciation of regional literature, enabling students to engage more meaningfully with texts that embody the cultural and historical identity of Southern Leyte and similar regions. By cultivating these skills, students can contribute to a more inclusive and representative Philippine literary canon. Furthermore, this research underscores translation as an essential tool for cultural exchange and academic discourse, allowing regional voices to resonate within broader national and scholarly contexts. The proposed instructional framework offers an innovative contribution to the pedagogy of literary translation in Philippine higher education, addressing gaps in current methodologies. Ultimately, this study affirms that effective translation bridges not only languages but also the diverse cultural narratives that define the nation’s literary heritage.

Turkish poetry experienced significant changes in the 1950s and 1960s with the Second New (İkinci Yeni), which brought about alterations in poetic structure and created a unique sensibility in modern Turkish poetry through its innovative use of language, inquisitive perspective on existence, and critical stance toward Modernism. Ece Ayhan, one of the leading poets of the Second New, is renowned for his innovative and often challenging use of metaphor. The present study explores the challenges of translating metaphor across linguistic and cultural boundaries through a comparative analysis of English translations of Ece Ayhan’s poem ‘‘Phaeton’’ (Fayton). George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) redefined the study of metaphor from a cognitive perspective, proposing that metaphor should not be regarded solely as a rhetorical or stylistic device, but rather as a fundamental mechanism of conceptualization. By examining two target texts created by the poet-translators George Messo and Murat Nemet-Nejat, the metaphors in the source text and their equivalents in the target texts are examined through a multi-layered analytical framework combining Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), and Newmark’s (1981) practical taxonomy of translation strategies. This study offers a multidimensional analysis of metaphor transfer by integrating Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) with Newmark’s procedural approach, highlighting the challenges of translating culturally embedded and poetically dense metaphors in Ayhan’s work, and contributing to broader discussions on literary translation, and the cross-cultural movement of avant-garde poetry.

With the development of the Internet, Network catchwords have become an important carrier for cross-cultural communication. However, their English translations often suffer from inaccuracy and do not conform to English expression habits. Guided by the Skopos Theory and adhering to the principles of "fidelity" and "eliminating cultural differences", this study proposes four specific translation methods for Network Catchwords: literal translation, literal translation with annotations, free translation, and transliteration. These methods are based on the three major characteristics:，that is，creativity, simplicity, and temporal spirit. The study validates these methods through recent popular cases such as "power of silver hair", "lying flat", "carry the can", and "Moutai". The research results show that choosing appropriate translation methods based on the characteristics of Network catchwords can effectively solve the translation pain points, accurately convey the meaning, and adapt to the cultural connotations. This study not only provides a practical path and abundant cases for the English translation of Network catchwords, filling the gap in theoretical research and standardized practice in this field, but also helps Chinese social culture reach the world through precise language conversion, enhancing the international dissemination and influence of Chinese culture.