Translation Practice and Cross‑Cultural Communication

Construction-based Shanxi Merchants Residence Couplets Translating

Junfang Chen — 2026-02-26

As the quintessence of Shanxi Merchants culture, Shanxi Merchants couplets reflect the way of merchant success, so their translation and spreading are of great significance. However, so far there has been no related research results. The approach to construction-based translation is an efficient way to couplet translation. It’s because the two lines of the couplet have same number of characters, part of speech, syntactic structure, harmonious rhythm, related meanings, shared purpose, rich culture, and approach to construction-based translation stresses taking multiple elements of construction into consideration and balance them. In this paper a multi-dimensional couplet analysis frame has been designed and applied to criticize and better existed Shanxi Merchants couplet translations.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Large Language Models in Machine Translation: Trends and Advancements (2020-2024)

Yulong Li — 2026-02-26

This bibliometric analysis of 460 peer-reviewed articles (2020–2024) maps the rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) in machine translation. The study reveals a significant surge in research, driven by advances in transformer architectures and characterized by robust international collaboration. Key themes identified include pre-trained models, neural machine translation, and specialized applications in domains like healthcare, highlighting the field’s interdisciplinary nature. The findings offer valuable insights into current trends and future trajectories for LLM-driven translation.

A Functionalist Perspective on Translating Traditional Chinese Patterns: A Comparative Analysis of Large Language Models vs. Human Translation

Jing Guo — 2026-02-26

Grounded in the functionalist Skopos Theory, this study systematically compares the English translations of traditional Chinese patterns produced by professional museum translators and Large Language Models (LLMs). It constructs a four dimensional evaluation system covering cultural information accuracy, visual imagery fidelity, cultural adaptability, and linguistic expression quality.

The findings indicate that human translation significantly outperforms LLMs in in-depth cultural transmission, systematic symbolic interpretation, and reader reception. By flexibly employing strategies such as annotation, cultural adaptation, and free translation, human translators effectively achieve the cross-linguistic transfer of cultural functions. Conversely, while LLMs demonstrate high linguistic fluency and efficiency, they struggle with highly culture-loaded symbols, often leading to metaphor loss, contextual dislocation, and cultural simplification, revealing a lack of genuine interpretive capabilities.

Based on these insights, this paper proposes an optimized “human-led, LLM-assisted” collaboration model to enhance both the quality and efficiency of pattern translation. This study provides a theoretical basis and practical strategies for the international dissemination of traditional cultural symbols.

Risks and Strategies in the Translation of Scientific and Technical Texts: A National Security Studies Perspective

Qingxue Li — 2026-02-26

Science and technology security is a vital component of national security. Currently, the rapid advancement of AI technology has led to widespread issues such as data breaches, mistranslation of information, and algorithmic biases. These problems pose a significant threat to security in the translation of scientific and technical texts. This paper studies the current security risks in the target texts on China’s leading science and technologies in the era of AI. From the perspective of the theory of ruling by both law and morality, this paper explores strategies to address security risks in terms of translator’s subjectivity, translation media, risk assessment, and security guarantees. It is hoped to be of some help for the improvement of national translation security.

Current Status, Characteristics, and Future Research Perspectives on the Translation and Dissemination of Chinese Calligraphy Culture

Junhu Lu — 2026-02-26

In response to the various “bottlenecks” faced in the research on the translation and introduction of Chinese calligraphy culture abroad, this paper briefly reviews the current research status of Chinese calligraphy culture “going global” from two aspects: overseas dissemination and development, and domestic inheritance and translation. It summarizes the basic characteristics of research on the translation and introduction of Chinese calligraphy culture. Furthermore, it looks forward to research on Chinese calligraphy translation from three perspectives: communication studies, cultural translation, and terminology translation. The paper aims to further open up new ideas for the smooth advancement of research on the translation and introduction of Chinese calligraphy culture abroad.

Translation Strategies and Multidimensional Functional Analysis of Political Metaphors

Bingqing Yan — 2026-02-26

Conceptual metaphors in cognitive linguistics are an effective means of political communication in political texts. They can not only serve as a rhetorical device to enrich the expression of texts but also act as a thinking tool to assist in the transmission and reception of political information. This paper focuses on analyzing the bilingual texts of the 2024 Government Work Report by using AntConc, and studies the working mechanisms of metaphor translation from Chinese to English in political texts. It is found that structural metaphors often necessitate explanation strategies, orientation metaphors tend to entail retention and interpretation strategies, and ontological metaphors demand replacement strategies. It prominently presents the functions and values of the following metaphors: information simplification and screening, emotion arousal and persuasion, concretization of political metaphors, symbolism of political metaphors, and cultural nature of political metaphors, which deeply reflects the importance of the people in political life. Such findings further provide reference for metaphorical expressions in the writing of political official documents at all levels, enhancing the effectiveness of political communication.

Teaching Dilemmas and Path Reconstruction of Interpreting Courses in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Xiaochen Xu — 2026-02-26

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AIGC), represented by ChatGPT and DeepSeek, is reshaping the translation and interpreting industry in unprecedented depth and breadth, and at the same time profoundly impacting interpreter education in universities. Practical observation shows that current interpreting pedagogy has critical dilemmas: the weakening of students’ professional identity; cognitive load imbalance caused by the improper use of AI tools; and insufficient or even regressive training in core interpreting skills such as listening and analysis, note-taking, and immediate conversion. Simultaneously, AI translation possesses inherent limitations such as AI is not capable of recognizing or rendering the important nuances of human language, nor can it make the cultural adjustments necessary to convey meaning effectively; it struggles with even some of the most basic, normal parts of our language, like accents, dialects, slang, and idioms^[1]. In light of this, this study argues that it is an urgent need to shift the interpreting teaching paradigm from the traditional “language-skill-oriented” model to one that gives equal emphasis on “language skills, higher-order thinking, and interpreter agency.” This paper, by integrating Gile’s Effort Models, interpreter agency theory, and the framework of higher-order thinking, constructs a three-tier analytical model of “theoretical perspective—practical dilemmas—reconstruction path.” It proposes a phased cultivation pathway: at the foundational stage, the focus is on bilingual competencies, interpreting skills and establishing professional ethics; at the advanced stage, the emphasis should be placed on cultivating critical application of technology, problem-solving capabilities for ill-structured problems, and interpreter agency in complex situations. Ultimately, from the four dimensions, namely, teaching objectives, content, methodology, and assessment, this study constructs a novel pedagogical framework aimed at cultivating high-caliber interpreters possessing national sentiment, global vision, solid language proficiency, domain expertise, and outstanding digital literacy.

A Study on the Current Status of English Translation and Standardization of Nanchang’s Cultural Tourism Image Signs

Lian Dai — 2026-02-26

A city’s cultural and tourism image sign serves as a core text for its external communication. Taking Nanchang as the subject of this study, this paper examines the current state of its English translation and identifies issues such as inconsistent terminology, loss of cultural information and inappropriate use. The research establishes principles for standardization across four dimensions—accuracy, audience orientation, cultural adaptation and conciseness for dissemination. It proposes translation methods including the combined use of foreignization and domestication, cultural compensation and the reconstruction of functional equivalence, with the aim of providing theoretical and practical guidance for the English translation of cultural and tourism signs in Nanchang and similar cities.

Pragmatic Failures in Machine Translation of Cross-border Comments: An Intercultural Perspective

Mingzhong Jiang — 2026-02-26

From the perspective of cross-cultural communication, this study analyzes pragmatic failures in machine translation (MT) of cross-border user comments on TikTok and Xiaohongshu. Based on Thomas’s (1983) pragmatic failure theory, we compare original comments with MT outputs (Google Translate, DeepL) and human translations. Pragmalinguistic failures show up as literal or odd renditions of slang, irony, and internet neologisms. Sociopragmatic failures come from MT ignoring cultural taboos, face strategies, politeness norms, and humor—e.g., turning a Chinese self-deprecating expression into an embarrassingly direct English statement, which can cause negative emotions or stereotyping. Such failures hurt genuine cross-cultural understanding and may even trigger unintended offense. The study suggests boosting MT’s cross-cultural adaptability via culture-aware corpora and human-in-the-loop post-editing. This research offers empirical evidence for translation evaluation and cross-cultural communication education in the social media era.

On the Image of Xia Yu in Lu Xun’s Medicine from the Perspective of Cultural Poetics

Chunling Hu — 2026-02-26

Cultural Poetics emphasizes the interactive relationship between literature and culture, advocating for the exploration of a work’s deeper connotations through the integration of histori al context and close textual analysis. Lu Xun, a “giant of culture and thought,” demonstrated remarkable ingenuity in naming and characterizing Xia Yu, the protagonist of his short story Medicine. Guided by Cultural Poetics, this paper analyzes the logic behind the creation of Xia Yu’s image and its connection to the historical figure Qiu Jin. The research reveals that through the dual metaphors of the “human-blood steamed bun” and the “tragedy of Huaxia (China),” Lu Xun exposes the profound contradiction between the “disease” of the national spirit and the “medicine” offered by revolutionaries. Meanwhile, the symbolic substitution and gender transformation of Xia Yu embody Lu Xun’s profound reflection on the predicaments of revolution. By integrating Cultural Poetics with Lu Xun studies, this paper offers a fresh perspective for interpreting Medicine while demonstrating the practical application of cultural poetics.

Translating Core Legal and Business Term Families in Chinese-English Legal and Regulatory Texts: A Clause-Level Corpus-Based Study

Shenqi Yang — 2026-02-26

This article examines the translation of core legal-business term families in official bilingual legal and regulatory texts issued by China’s Ministry of Commerce and its affiliated official channels. Combining a corpus-based approach with a clause-sensitive analytical framework, it takes the term token as the primary unit of analysis and the clause or provision as the auxiliary unit. The study focuses on four concept families—liability, breach, termination, and indemnity—and evaluates how they are rendered across different legal-functional environments, especially obligation or prohibition clauses (OBL) and limitation or exemption of liability clauses (LIM). The completed coded dataset contains 218 tokens drawn from a parallel corpus of authoritative Chinese legal-regulatory texts and their official English reference versions. The results show that literal translation (LT) is the dominant strategy in the corpus, followed by normative modulation (NM), while free translation (FT), communicative restructuring (CR), and mixed FT + CR occur far less frequently. At the clause-function level, OBL clauses are strongly LT-dominant, whereas LIM clauses display a more mixed profile in which LT, NM, and FT all remain salient. The article supplements the descriptive counts with representative qualitative examples in order to clarify how strategy labels are operationalized in context. The findings suggest that, in this corpus, translators rely primarily on direct lexical correspondence and conventionalized legal-administrative formulations, with freer reformulation used selectively in functionally sensitive contexts. The article argues that legal accuracy in this corpus is achieved mainly through stable terminological transfer and normative conventionalization rather than through extensive adaptive reformulation, while also stressing that the results remain descriptive and corpus-specific.

Viewing the Concept of 'Harmony without Uniformity' from the Encounter of Notre-Dame de Paris and the Temple of Heaven — Taking the 2024 China-France Year of Culture and Tourism as an Example

Yaping Xu — 2026-02-26

The China-France Year of Cultural and Tourism 2024 serves as a significant bridge for cultural exchange between China and France, marking the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. This paper starts from the concept of " harmony without uniformity " and takes the China-France Year of Cultural and Tourism as the research subject to explore the role of "harmony without uniformity" in cultural exchanges, its specific manifestations in the China-France Year of Cultural and Tourism, and its significance at the level of international relations.