International Linguistics Research

Corpus-Driven Translation Studies and Exploration from the Perspective of Ecolinguistics

Pengfei Bao — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Utilizing a corpus, this paper delves deeply into the intrinsic connection between translation and ecolinguistics. Through meticulously constructing a corpus comprising diverse source texts and their corresponding translated texts, and employing scientific methods such as context analysis, the study comprehensively explores ecolinguistic issues in translation. The research reveals that translators consider the language habits, cultural backgrounds, and ecological contexts of the target language when dealing with vocabulary related to the ecological environment. The translated texts not only carry the ecological environmental information of the source texts but also reflect the translator’s ecological awareness to a certain extent. This study provides a fresh perspective and empirical evidence for the crossover integration of translation studies and ecolinguistics, facilitating the further development of interdisciplinary research.

A Study on Translation Strategies for Localization of Chinese Elements in Black Myth: Wukong Based on Cultural Adaptation Theory

Jiayuan Chuang — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0800

In today’s globalized world, the video game industry has become a major cultural and economic force. Therefore, successful game localization is crucial to bridge cultural gaps. Game localization isn’t just simple language conversion, but a cultural collision. The lack of cultural content in games makes them lose their original meaning and style. Therefore, to make games popular in target markets and respond to the national call for promoting Chinese culture abroad, this paper studies the cultural adaptability in game localization to help them flourish in overseas markets.

This paper takes Black Myth: Wukong, the first Chinese 3A game as a case study. Using the Cultural Adaptation Theory, it analyzes the localization strategies of traditional Chinese cultural elements in the game and how the localization team adapts traditional Chinese cultural elements for a global audience while keeping the essence of Chinese culture.

The research combines Cultural Adaptation Theory with game localization principles, exploring the challenges and solutions in balancing cultural authenticity and accessibility for non - Chinese players. It focuses on strategies for presenting mythological themes, translating cultural - rich language, and creating appealing visual elements. The findings stress the significance of culturally adaptive localization for enhancing the global appeal of Chinese - themed games and offer insights for future projects to bridge cultural gaps in the gaming industry.

A Praat-Based Study on the Vowel Features in Chongqing Hip-Hop Lyrics

Jiang Xin — Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Chongqing dialect, having experienced the waves of ethnic migration, has given birth to distinctive linguistic features. Since the 1980s, academic research on the Chongqing dialect has gradually increased. However, most studies have only scratched the surface in terms of vocabulary, semantics, and phonological characteristics, with few attempts to delve into its internal phonetic structure. This study addresses this gap by using Praat software and theories of tongue position and formants to analyze rhyme vowels in Chongqing hip-hop lyrics. It examines formant frequencies (F1, F2, F3), pitch, and duration of vowels from local hip-hop artists' works. Results reveal that these vowels have distinct regional acoustic characteristics, differing from standard Mandarin, with lower formant frequencies aligning with the dialect's low-pitched nature. In addition, the study confirmed the phonetic changes that occurred in the 1970s, such as /ɤ/ → /ɛ/, /aʊ/, /uɔ/. This research enriches our understanding of Chongqing dialect's acoustic features and offers new insights for interdisciplinary studies in dialect phonetics and music linguistics.

A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of Reuters' News Coverage of the 2025 Sino-U.S. Trade War

Xu Tongkai — Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This study conducts a Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis (CBCDA) to analyze Reuters news coverage on the Sino-U.S. Trade War in 2025, using a mixed approach that combines Corpus Linguistics (CL) with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The study mainly examines how Reuters constructs narratives surrounding the trade war. It focuses on linguistic patterns in the period from February 1 to May 1, 2025, a time marked by intensified conflict. By analyzing keywords, collocates, and concordances, the study uncovers ideology in Reuters’ reporting, revealing asymmetries in the portrayal of the United States and China. The findings suggest that Reuters’ coverage positions the U.S. as the active agent in the conflict, with China portrayed as reactive and defensive. The study also explores the broader implications of these discursive choices in shaping global perceptions of economic conflict, highlighting the role of media in constructing power dynamics and ideologies. This research contributes to the understanding of media neutrality, global power relations, and the discursive construction of economic narratives.

Language Use and Preservation Among the Naxi Ethnic Group in China: A Sociolinguistic Review and Recommendations

Xiao Huang — Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800

The Naxi ethnic group in China possesses distinctive linguistic and cultural characteristics. Its Naxi spoken language and Dongba written script are of great values to the world’s rich linguistic diversity. However, as Chinese Han language dominates most sociolinguistic contexts, Naxi native language is at great risk of being endangered. An increasing proportion of Naxi youth no longer speak their native language, not to mention the rarely transmitted Dongba written script. Protecting and preserving the Naxi language is not only the responsibility of the indigenous community, but also an undeniable task for both the local and central governments. Actions such as implementing high quality bilingual education of Naxi language in elementary and secondary schools, launching and promoting programs about Naxi language, literature and cultures are discussed.

The Relationship Between Academic Buoyancy and Academic Self-Handicapping in Foreign Language Learning Among University Students

Chen Qiuyu — Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Academic buoyancy refers to students’ ability to successfully overcome routine academic challenges and setbacks, representing a positive adaptive psychological mechanism. In contrast, academic self-handicapping describes students’ tendency to proactively create barriers in evaluative situations to avoid potential negative judgments resulting from failure. This study employs questionnaire data to examine the relationship between academic buoyancy and academic self-handicapping in college students’ foreign language learning, with a focus on gender differences in both constructs and their intercorrelation.

Quantitative Statistics and Analysis of Exercise Design in Comprehensive Chinese Course for Traditional Chinese Medicine

Lele yang — Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This paper takes Comprehensive Chinese Course for Traditional Chinese Medicine as the research object, and explores the scientificity, rationality and effectiveness of its exercise design through the combination of quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis. The study finds that the textbook has sufficient exercise quantity, rich exercise styles and comprehensive coverage of language elements, which conforms to the teaching principle of "explaining concisely and practicing more". At the same time, the exercise arrangement follows the cognitive law from easy to difficult and from controlled to open, which can effectively promote learners’ mastery of professional Chinese for traditional Chinese medicine.

A Pragmatic Analysis of Modality in English Academic Texts in Nigeria and Iraq

Mareb Mohammed Sangoor, Ahmed Mohammed Bedu — Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Despite scholars’ attention on the typology of modality as a linguistic phenomenon, yet the use of modality across varieties of English is not well visible in communication-based researches that take semantics, pragmatics and discourse issues as the objects for their investigation. The paper generates its data from six M. A. dissertations from Nigerian University and equal number of the M. A. dissertations from Iraqi University to qualitatively and quantitatively investigate the contextual use of modality within the pragmatic perspective. The data analysis reveals that modality such as usuality, potentiality, necessity, probability and obligation in the dissertations encapsulates interpersonal and authorial voice in which the meaning of a clause is qualified to reflect the writer’s judgment of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being true. The study findings also show the divergent use of modality to indicate certainty, possibility, probability and evidence and the nature of their illocutionary forces in the academic writings through verb modals and lexically modalized presentations in the MA. Dissertations that form the data of the study.

An Error Analysis of Students' Use of Passive Voice: Comparison between English and Non-English Majors

Sha Li — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This study empirically analyzes students' ability to identify various types of passive voice (PV) errors through a grammaticality judgment multiple-choice test and examines grammatical errors in constructing the PV in a Chinese-to-English translation (C-E translation) task. The study was conducted among English majors (EM) and non-English majors (NEM) from different universities. The research aims to identify and compare the common error types made by EM and NEM when constructing PV sentences and explore their potential causes. For this purpose, data was collected from a large sample of university students. The findings reveal that errors in passive construction manifest in various forms. The five most common issues are errors in tense, participles, word choice, by-transposition, and the insertion, omission, or misuse of the auxiliary "be". Another significant finding is that, in general, EM performed better than NEM. However, in some specific areas, NEM performed better than EM, which are, the wrong choice of patient-agent and incomplete translation aspects. Based on these results, this study offers pedagogical suggestions for teaching PV to EM and NEM, respectively.

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Japanese News Reports on Sino-Japanese Agreement on Fukushima Nuclear-Contaminated Water Discharge —A Critical Discourse Analysis

Shiyi Li, Qiuming Lin — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This study explored narratives of cooperation in international environmental governance through a Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinese and Japanese media reports on the agreement reached between the two countries regarding the oceanic discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water. This qualitative study combined Fairclough's three-dimensional model with van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach to analyze the linguistic devices, narrative structures, and ideological stances of relevant reports in China Daily and The Japan News. The comparative study revealed that China Daily emphasizes environmental security and multilateral cooperation through the narrative of China as a "responsible power," while The Japan News embeds this agreement within geopolitical contexts and focuses more heavily on the economic and diplomatic implications behind the agreement. These findings suggest that, even when constructing discourses of cooperation, media outlets adopt complex discursive strategies that reflect national socio-political priorities and serve national interests. This study provided a multidimensional perspective for discourse analysis of environmental diplomacy and offered insights into the challenges of cross-cultural communication in international environmental governance.

A Study on Translation and Introduction of the Yellow River Culture from the Perspective of Geo-Translation Studies —Take The Yellow River Culture in the Bilingual Series of “Chinese Civilisation: Stories from Henan” as an Example

Chenxin Du — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

The Yellow River culture is a significant component of Chinese culture. Its translation and introduction can enhance the global influence of Chinese culture and facilitate cultural exchange and interaction worldwide. This paper, based on The Yellow River Culture in the bilingual series of “Chinese Civilisation: Stories from Henan”, analyses the translator’s “topophilia” and translation strategies in the translation works related to the Yellow River culture from the perspective of Geo-translation Studies. Additionally, it explores how translators balance the dissemination of their native culture with the expectations of foreign readers during the translation process. This study aims to provide certain insights for the translation and introduction of the Yellow River culture and facilitate the global outreach of the Yellow River culture.