Cultural-Loaded Words in Journalistic Translation Between Arabic and English

An increasing number of contributions have appeared in recent years on culturally loaded words. This translation needs familiarity with cultural, linguistic and semantic features. Some news is full of culturally loaded words, strange terms and one of them is the religious or in general term ‘political words’ which play a key role in journalism translation through times. The cultural terms in journalism translation are definitely difficult and controversial to some journalist translators. This difficulty maybe because of the differences between different cultures, religions, ideologies, and beliefs. Translation of political writing or journalistic article needs great cultural familiarity with L1 and L2 and the targets receivers by the translator. Therefore; effective methods were provided to solve culture-bound problems in journalism translation from Arabic into English. This article suggests an article from CNN News translated into Arabic entitles“ Islamists Take Foreign Hostages in Attack on Algerian Oil Field” will be taken as a case study. The researcher applies some examples in the languages of English and Arabic to make the statements more clear. The main objective of this present paper is to show the problem of culturally loaded words in journalistic writing and explain different translations used in this article from English to Arabic. After analyzing all the samples, it has been also determined that the ideologies and politics influence the way used in journalistic translation which means that the journalist translator is not free but under the censorship of CNN Agency. Moreover; in this paper, the various cultural words must be translated in their own context in order to establish their significance when translated into another language and culture and the target audiences and amateurs must be convinced of this type of translation.

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Cultural Mistranslation and Intercultural Communication--A Case Study of Chinese Reports on Zhai Tiantian’s Incident in the U.S.A.

International Journal for Innovation Education and Research ◽

10.31686/ijier.vol2.iss6.198 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2 (6) ◽

pp. 95-101

Author(s):

Xiaochi Zhang

Keyword(s):

Mass Media ◽

Cultural Differences ◽

Intercultural Communication ◽

Mass Communication ◽

Cultural Backgrounds ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Specific Incident ◽

Different Cultures ◽

The Relationship

Globalization enters a world in which people of different cultural backgrounds and increasingly comes to depend on one another. To understand and accept cultural differences becomes imperative to be effective in intercultural communication in global society. In this process, translation has played an important role in intercultural mass communication connecting different cultures and different nations. However, people including translators and reporters from another culture sometime misunderstood some incidents and were unbelieving what happened with the specific incident due to mistranslation which resulted in misreports from mass media. Therefore, the author will take Zhai Tiantian’s incident in the U.S.A. as a case and make further analysis of the relationship between language and culture, and the function of translation in the intercultural communication. Finally, the author also discusses how to make intercultural translation better in order to promote intercultural communication between different people from different cultural backgrounds.

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(Mis)Matches in Translation – A Case Study of “The Big Fat Giant” and its Albanian Version

Vertimo studijos ◽

10.15388/vertstud.2018.4 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

pp. 49-61

Author(s):

Eriola Qafzezi

Keyword(s):

Full Article ◽

Comparative Study ◽

English Abstract ◽

Semantic Features ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Article Abstract

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] The aim of this article is to observe how semantic peculiarities travel across languages and cultures. The original book, The Big Fat Giant, by Roald Dahl lends itself perfectly to such a comparative study due to its linguistic and semantic features that need to be explored in order to understand how they were brought to the Albanian language and culture. Classifications of several levels at which mismatches occur are mentioned, such as mismatches at the level of syntax, semantics and phonetics. Examples are given to illustrate each level. The discussion is enriched with observations and examples from the intertextual level. The paper concludes with findings which refer to this tale in particular and recommendations for further research.

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What is the Colour of the Feeling (A Case Study of English Idioms with Colour Components)

RUDN Journal of Language Studies Semiotics and Semantics ◽

10.22363/2313-2299-2019-10-3-714-721 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 714-721

Author(s):

Tatyana B Pasechnik ◽

Inna G Savelieva

Keyword(s):

Color Naming ◽

Semantic Structure ◽

Huge Number ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Literal Sense ◽

Current Trends ◽

The World ◽

Similarities And Differences ◽

Different Cultures

The present article explores English phraseological units with the meaning of emotion that have been fully or partially rethought and have a colour component. The emotive component of the idioms mentioned, is, thus, the object of the present study. In this paper we endeavor to show that the colour nominations which correlated to the concepts of ‘warmth’ and ‘coldness’ define the semantics of the whole idiom which is used for figurative naming human emotions. Looking at the use of colour components in an idiom, we cannot, but consider the key element of an idiom, i.e. idiomaticity, which we understand as the reinterpretation of an expression and the murkiness of its meaning. The article contains the analysis of both idioms which can be traced to free collocations and expressions which are not used in their literal meaning. The group of idioms in question primarily comprises the expressions of murky semantic structure. The examples of colour names exemplify the situation, when reinterpretation can apply no just to a single expression, but also to its components. In this case the colour component of the idiom acquires new semantics, i.e. It no longer means the colour in its literal sense, thus adding the meaning of ‘emotion’ to the semantic structure of the idiom, giving it a new meaning. It is worth pointing out that the number of colour nominations that can be viewed from this perspective is limited. At the same time a huge number of words denoting colours and shades have now emotive meanings whatsoever. However, if we look at other languages, we might find such examples, which in turn can be explained by the fact that people of different cultures perceive the world differently. Language is very good at capturing similarities and differences. The questions raised in the article are of utmost importance as they resonate with the current trends in linguistics, namely with the theory of secondary nomination in various languages and the issues of ideas’ verbalization in phraseological units. Typological and etymological studies of dozens of languages have revealed a set of universal mechanisms in the system of color naming. However, along with universal mechanisms, there are language and culture specific ones. The analysis of such kind gives us a better understanding of this part of the worldview in different cultures.

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