Communication across Borders: Translation & Interpreting

Localization and Cultural Adaptation of Museum Websites

2023-03-10T03:23:26-06:00

This paper examines the approach to localizing a high-level website through cultural adaptation, focusing on six elements of cultural adaptation in web localization: spatial orientations, navigation modes, translation equivalence, country-specific symbols, icons, and color symbolism. Using the 10 most-searched Chinese museum websites as reference objects, the paper analyses the level of cultural adaptation in the Chinese website of TBM and provides suggestions to increase its localization level, including the use of sticky sidebars, icons plus textual descriptions, and bright colors. The paper highlights the importance of understanding cultural differences in website design and the potential impact on user experience. Overall, the paper offers insights and practical recommendations for web localization practitioners to effectively adapt websites to different cultures.

Aesthetic Pursuit and Cultural Metaphor of Piano Music Based on Traditional Chinese Culture

2023-05-11T20:07:41-05:00

The cultural values of Chinese piano music are the humanistic spirit and cosmology of “the harmony between man and nature” and “the beauty of equilibrium and harmony” in traditional Chinese culture. The piano art itself has a strong Western artistic flavor. But in the context of the integration of multiple musical cultures, Chinese piano music not only embodies the essence of traditional Chinese music culture, in line with the aesthetic interests and aesthetic concepts of the Chinese nation, and contains the beauty of profound classical aesthetic connotations, placing emphasis on meaning rather than form, pursuing the mood beauty, and putting emotion in the scene. It also reflects the pursuit of traditional Chinese culture, showing the cultural metaphor of patriotic feelings, harmony in diversity, and innovative transformation in the beauty of artistic fusion. The article analyzes the aesthetic pursuit and cultural metaphor of Chinese piano art in terms of the cultural connotation of Chinese piano art.

On C-E Translation Strategies of Corporate Publicizing Video Based on Variational Translation Theory

2023-05-08T02:58:13-05:00

Corporate publicizing video has been widely used in international publicity and image building. Against this background, its translation quality becomes increasingly crucial. According to communication science theory, translation quality depends on whether good communication effect can be achieved and corporate image can be built. However, Chinese corporate publicizing video is characteristic of culture-loaded words, novel metaphors and abstract expressions, which seriously interfere with communication effect. To deal with these issues, the author combines communication science and variational translation theory to study the subtitle translation of Chinese corporate publicizing video. It is found that variational translation strategy should be adopted, as a way to adapt to the social and cultural customs of target consumers and reduce communication “noise”, thus enhancing communication effect.

Oral Poetry

2023-04-17T09:37:28-05:00

The beauty of poetry is fully achieved when presented in the oral form. However, many poets nowadays seem to be engrossed in the written form only, giving little or no credence to the oral form –whose absence arguably invalidates poetic aesthetics as metre, tone, rhyme and rhythm, just to mention a few. Hence, this study captures selected lullabies in their oral art form through audio recording before transcribing and translating them to the written form in this paper. This study basically describes some Yoruba lullabies as a form of oral poetry and how they function in the Yoruba sociocultural structure. It adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods by using two field agents as active participants who interviewed and collected six lullabies from two aged Yoruba women (in Ibadan, Oyo state and Ikire, Osun state) as a representation of the Yoruba society; and consulting conceptual materials from books in libraries and on the cyberspace. Using the functionalist theory as hermeneutics, it assesses the contribution of lullabies to the maintenance of the Yoruba culture and social structure as it is today. This study aims to add to the existing knowledge in the lore of oral poetry in general, and translation of selected Yoruba lullabies precisely.

A Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis of Sino-U.S. National Defense White Papers Images, Problems and Strategies

2023-06-22T00:01:27-05:00

The English translations of China’s national defense white papers play crucial roles in conveying China’s defense and military policies to the international community. Their accuracy and authenticity directly impact foreign readers’ understanding of China’s defense policies and shape their perception of China. However, previous English translations have been problematic, with lengthy and difficult-to-read texts, excessive and complex nouns, and a writing style that does not conform to English conventions. This paper explores the specific translation problems, analyzes the underlying causes, and proposes feasible translation strategies. Using China’s National Defense in the New Era (CNDNE) and 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy (2022 NDS) as sample texts, we established corpora of the national defense white papers for the two nations. With the assistance of Weiciyun and AntConc, we conducted a contrastive analysis between the original Chinese discourse and its English translation, as well as between the Chinese and American defense white papers. The analysis focused on high-frequency words and subjects to explore the images of the two countries constructed by each national defense white paper. Furthermore, this study compared the features of CNDNE and 2022 NDS using AntConc and established a parallel corpus of CNDNE by aligning sentence pairs through Tmxmall. We then utilized CUC_Paraconc to analyze the words and sentence structures in the Chinese and English versions of CNDNE, identifying translation problems in the translation and providing strategies. The findings provide insights, directions, and methods for the writing, translation and post-editing of China’s defense white paper and open new avenues for further research.

The English Translation of Indeterminacies in Tao Yuanming's Poetry from the Perspective of Reception Aesthetics Theory

2023-05-09T02:30:44-05:00

Tao Yuanming, known as "the ancestor of reclusive poets" and "the originator of pastoral poetry", occupies an important position in the history of Chinese poetry. Like many excellent poems, Tao's poems also use a large number of blank spaces, which makes his poems concise but meaningful. From the perspective of the concept of "indeterminacies" in the theory of reception aesthetics, combined with the characteristics of the blank spaces in Tao’s poems, this paper classifies them into: linguistic indeterminacies, syntactic indeterminacies, imagery indeterminacies and cultural indeterminacies, analyzes and compares it with the original text and translation, and discusses the English translation methods of blank in ancient Chinese poetry.

Chinese-English Translation Strategies of Children’s Picture Books from the Perspective of Multimodality

2023-04-28T03:14:55-05:00

Children's picture books are a marginal genre of children's literature, and their expressions are rich in pictures and texts, which plays a good role in promoting the overall development of children's language and cognition. In recent years, many foreign children's picture books have been introduced and translated into China, but relatively little attention has been paid to the original Chinese picture books, and the search for children's picture book translations rich in Chinese elements and culture has not attracted much attention. Therefore, this study first selects the original Chinese picture book The Monkey King and then uses literature review and case study methods, to discuss the translation strategies of children's picture books from a multimodal perspective, hoping to provide a preliminary reference for the translation practice of original Chinese children's picture books.