Translation Strategies of Cultural Terms in the Play, Ngo Pa (Romance of the Sakai) Soraiya Satae*, Wanfatimah Saemasae, Valeeya Yanphayom, Nur-ainee Duereh
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus, Thailand
*6520210193[at]psu.ac.th
Abstract
This study aims to 1) categorize the cultural terms- and 2) identify the strategies used in translating the culturally specific items found in the portrayal of the wedding scene of a Thai indigenous group in a Thai play, Ngo Pa (Romance of the Sakai). The play was originally written by His Majesty King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), and was later translated by Malithat Phromthattavedi. Both Thai and English versions were used as the data for this study. The conceptual classification of cultural terms suggested by Nida (1964) was employed in the data analysis. The results indicate that the translation of 70 cultural terms from the selected part can be grouped into five main categories: (1) ecological cultural terms, (2) material cultural terms, (3) social cultural terms, (4) religious cultural terms, and (5) linguistic cultural terms. Among these, material cultural terms emerge as the most frequent, accounting for 44.3% of the total. In addition, both ecological and religious cultural terms contribute equally, with 20.0% each. Meanwhile, socio-cultural terms account for 12.9%, whereas linguistic-cultural terms represent the smallest proportion, at 2.8%. In terms of translation strategies based on Newmark^s (1988) framework, the most frequently used ones are neutralization, cultural equivalence, and transference, accounting for 35.7%, 25.7%, and 12.9% respectively.
Keywords: Cultural terms, Translation Strategies, Thai literature
Topic: Revitalizing Local Cultures through Interdisciplinary Approaches
