International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies

The Translation Gap in Moment in Peking and its Metaphor of Identities

Yihe SUN — 2023-01-31

Lin Yutang adopted two translation methods at the same time, including foreignizing and domesticating, to demonstrate the names of the female roles in Moment in Peking, forming an obvious translation differences in the text. As the subject of the writing and translation process, Lin Yutang took use of this language difference to suggest the identity symbols behind the characters, implies the social and cultural identities of them. Combining their words and deeds, personalities in the life and their destinies, Lin Yutang tried to reveal the social reality of modern China , showing the fusion and conflict of Chinese and Western cultures in the wave of cultural change, calling for the transformation of social thought so as to realize his literary intentions.

Colored Music in America: a Colored Sense of Belonging? A cultural-linguistic study of hip-hop music lyrics

Nesrine Alouane — 2023-01-31

As all people and nations experience a state of flux, national culture loses its solidity in the context of a global unified culture to which we are called, or rather forced, to belong. Here arise such vital questions as identity and belonging. The case study of this paper concerns the African-American sample as a minority group striving to seize its proper status in a ruthless West. This struggle comes highly significant when treading the edge of popular culture. The research is an inquiry into the extent to which belonging is felt, expressed and staged by the community in question throughout their representative popular culture, to mention hip-hop music. The complex nature of the topic requires, in fact, a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses, first, an anthropological examination of the backgrounds of the African-American ethnical group; second, a linguistic investigation of the African-American musical discourse (hip-hop lyrics); and third, a critical analytic deduction of the activist mission played by such musical genre concerning questions of identity and belonging. Practically speaking, the linguistic part will analyse a selected corpus of hip-hop song lyrics. The methodological process will use a qualitative content analysis technique to extract the linguistic patterns reinforcing the scope of identity and belonging. The concluding part will state some limitations that the research had encountered.

Critique of the Arabic Translation Strategies of Verbo-Pictorial Gendered Metaphor: Doris Lessing's The Cleft

Nour Elhoda Sabra — 2023-01-31

This article is mainly concerned with the strategies employed in translating verbo-pictorial gendered metaphor when used as a literary work cover. It focuses on the translation strategies employed by Arab translators in translating the cover of Doris Lessing's novel The Cleft. It raises the questions of to what extent translating a verbo-pictorial gendered metaphor employed as a literary work cover may clarify and elucidate nontraditional new images in different cultures. The article also emphasizes how a verbo-pictorial gendered metaphor plays a role in structuring gender relation new images. The article argues that the translation of gendered metaphors that appeared in feminist literary works invites different translation strategies when it is translated from English into Arabic.

Code-Mixing and Code-Switching in Cameroon Social Media

Camilla Arundie Tabe — 2023-01-31

This study examines code-mixing and code-switching in Cameroon social media to find out the languages that are mixed or switched to and the reasons for the phenomenon. Insights came from the structural approach to code-switching, which measures the degree to which an L2 is incorporated into an L1 or vice versa (Poplack, 1980, 2000; Poplack & Meechan, 1995; Myers-Scotton, 1993b, 2002). Data comprises 245 e-messages which were drawn from e-mail(s) (100), Facebook (60) and WhatsApp (85). The data were collected through screenshots with the use of android phones. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of data show the presence of code-mixing and code-switching from English to French (48%), English to Cameroon Pidgin English (18.4%) and English to home languages (11.5%). It was construed that Cameroons mix or switch codes because of their multicultural and multilingual backgrounds.

Predicted Conversational Speech: Accuracy and Epistemic Markers

Edona Jahiu — 2023-01-31

This paper analyzes prediction of speech in conversational interaction realized by informants aged 21-27, which in our context expresses possible future utterances of subjects acquainted with each other. The data is compiled by recorded spoken interaction and interview, where 37 respondents projected utterances that would be said in a certain topic or context by their bestfriend, colleague, crush or a person of certain profession. In total, 1102 options were articulated. When they resulted in coherence with their friend’s, sister’s or colleague’s response (after confirmation through telephone), they stressed the high level of mutual recognition and possibility of psycho-social perception of a person to serve as source for predicting future utterances. Therefore, it is concluded that accurate prediction is highly based on the density of pre-communication, episodic memory of conversations with that person in certain topics, epistemic stance/authority, habitual linguistic behaviors etc. There are found variety of pragma-linguistic manners in which the speaker shows her/his version of what someone else would say. Higher scale of accuracy has been noticed at family members and close friends.

Saudi Students' Attitudes toward Using Blackboard as the Medium of Education During the Pandemic

Hanan Albar — 2023-01-31

This study aimed to (1) investigate the overall effects of online education on TUELC students' learning and (2) investigate the attitudes of TUELC students towards using Blackboard as a medium of education at all TU levels. The participants consisted of 121 male and female EFL students who took a questionnaire consisting of 19 items (9 items investigating the overall effects of online education on students' learning and 10 items about the effects of online learning on TUELC students' motivation). Students showed a high level of acceptance and support shown by students for Blackboard. Additionally, Blackboard was perceived to have mostly positive effects on their engagement in class but did not lead to an increase in interaction. Furthermore, the majority of the students agreed that Blackboard sessions were easier to participate in than traditional face-to-face sessions.

The Impact of the School Grade on the Significance of the Motivating and Demotivating Factors in Foreign Language Learning

HANAN EL OUANJLI — 2023-01-31

Promoting autonomous learning has been of much concern in second/foreign language acquisition for decades. Corroborating evidence from theoretical and empirical research in this field has asserted the importance of several factors in attaining this goal. Motivation has been a critical factor that enables learners to become self-directed and successful. Yet, it has been demonstrated that the motivation level may vary due to the influence of some internal and external factors. Therefore, the purpose of this study aims. To this end, 178 students took part in filling in a questionnaire. The data were analysed statistically using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software, version 20. The study's results revealed that Moroccan learners were interested in learning English, but their motivation levels varied significantly. This variation was ascribed to the effect of several motivating and demotivating factors, which were, in turn, substantially affected by the school grade of students. Hence, it is crucial to consider the impact of this variable on such factors to control their influence on learners’ motivation.

Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by Saudi Female EFL Learners

Kholoud Alzahrani — 2023-01-31

The present study aimed at investigating vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) applied by ten adult female EFL learners at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. In addition, it explored how the current widespread of internet-assisted tools have influenced vocabulary learning strategies and how participants treat new words after encountering them. The data of this study consists of a mixed-methods approach. First, introspective and retrospective verbal reports of ten English-major learners who met new vocabulary while reading a passage. Secondly, in the interview stage, participants were asked about how the internet and mobile resources affect how they approach new words and their lexical knowledge/size. Furthermore, they were asked if they follow specific strategies to commit new vocabulary to memory. The findings of this research showed that the participants used similar vocabulary learning strategies. During the reading task, the most preferred strategy was guessing the meaning of the words from the context. Consulting a monolingual or bilingual dictionary was the second most used strategy, while the least used strategy was asking the teacher to discover the meaning of the unknown words. Participants in this study reported that they prefer memory strategies over cognitive strategies. Moreover, they said that the accessibility of internet learning tools has contributed to increasing their vocabulary size and lexical knowledge.