International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
The International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation (ISSN: 2617-0299) is a double-blind peer-reviewed, monthly, open-access journal published by Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development. It publishes high-quality articles across the breadth of linguistics, literature and translation research. With its uniquely broad coverage, all articles are free to access across the globe, allowing authors to share their research and maximise its impact. The journal is led by expert international editorial board members who take an objective approach to peer review, ensuring each research paper is reviewed and evaluated on its own scholarly merits and research integrity. Publishing your work in the International Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Translation means you will receive prompt and reliable publishing and a global platform for your research to reach its full potential. The journal is published in both online and print versions.
Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development
On the Cognitive Traps in Physics and Its Teaching Strategies: An Analysis Based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Conceptual metaphor is the core tool of physical thinking, but it may become the source of misunderstanding in learning although it has helped students understand abstract concepts. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory, this paper systematically discusses the metaphor trap in physics learning and its teaching strategies. The findings are as follows: (1) Metaphorical language of concepts such as force, current, heat and wave-particle duality leads to systematic mistakes such as consumption misunderstanding, path selection misunderstanding, storage misunderstanding and tunneling misunderstanding; (2) These misunderstandings stem from the interactive cycle of grammatical structure in language, ontological dislocation in cognition and lack of metaphorical consciousness in teaching; (3) To break this cycle, we need to cultivate metaphorical awareness, coordinate the use of multiple metaphors, carry out "removing metaphor" training, and integrate historical reflection and other teaching strategies. This study provides a theoretical basis and practical path for physics teachers to identify and deal with cognitive obstacles caused by language.
Conceptual metaphor; physics learning; cognitive trap; ontology dislocation; teaching strategy
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Can AI-based Translation replace Human Translation within Psychology Settings? A Corpus-based Research
As we all know, AI has irrupted in our lives, and its adoption has led to substantial job losses in recent years. Consequently, the field of translation studies and professional translation renderings is also at risk. Hence, within this research paper we are aimed at unveiling whether professional translation could be the exception to the rule by providing the target readership with more accurate translation renderings (as compared to the ones provided by AI translation). Accordingly, we focus on a specific field featured by the use of literal translations, anglicisms and lexical calques, i.e., the field of Psychology. Subsequently, we selected a highly demanded field, which is the field of emotional states. In order to fulfil our goal, we selected 15 lexical items from the aforementioned field, provided a definition, and contrasted their translation renderings (AI translation with DeepL and Google Translate versus human translation). The research outcomes are striking in a sweeping majority of cases from our corpus, IA-based translation tools cannot replace human translation renderings, since most of these translations were inaccurate, unreliable and too vague.
IA-based Translation; Human Translation; Psychology; Emotional States; Translation Accuracy
The Role of Postmodern Avant-Gard Narrative Experimentation in Creating the Theme of Cultural Transformation in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge
This study attempts to explore the thematic significance of postmodern experimental narrative in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge. It focuses on Pynchon’s innovative and creative use of storytelling techniques, like the narrative point of view, characters, textual description, and setting to develop the theme of cultural transformation. These techniques will be interpretive as being experimental i.e., they are not created by the traditional composition of literary works. Instead, they will be perceived as being avant-garde as they reflect the authorial perception of cultural transformation at critical times. Therefore, the study’s methodology will be qualitative concentrating on the literary techniques that are the core of the novel. Furthermore, it follows a textual analysis of the narrative point of view, characters, textual description, and setting to reveal Pynchon’s realistic depiction of contemporary cultural transformation through fictional events. The study applies a narrative theory to unravel the role of postmodern narrative experimentation in creating thematic layers within fictional plots.
Cultural Transformation, Experimentation, Fiction, Narrative Techniques, Postmodernism, Pynchon
A Comparative Study of ChatGPT and DeepSeek on Syntactic Ambiguity
Linguistic ambiguity poses significant challenges to natural language processing (NLP) systems, particularly in context-dependent tasks such as machine translation and dialogue generation. While large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and DeepSeek exhibit advanced language capabilities, their efficacy in processing ambiguous structures remains understudied. This study constructs a systematically annotated corpus comprising 100 English sentences and two supplementary test sets, focusing primarily on three types of syntactic ambiguity: prepositional phrase (PP) attachment, attributive modification, and coordination scope. Adopting a dual-phase experimental design, we evaluate and compare the capabilities of ChatGPT-5 Mini and DeepSeek-R1 across two dimensions: (1) ambiguity detection accuracy tested through 100 separate dialogues to ensure controlled experimental conditions, and (2) disambiguation performance assessed by comparing model outputs across different contextual conditions. The results indicate that: (1) both models demonstrate strong competence in ambiguity detection, with DeepSeek-R1 achieving an accuracy of 85%, marginally outperforming ChatGPT-5 Mini (77%); (2) in context-dependent disambiguation tasks, neither model effectively utilizes contextual information to resolve PP attachment ambiguities; (3) similarly, both models fail to leverage contextual cues to disambiguate attributive modification structures. These findings suggest that LLM performance may rely more on surface-level statistical patterns than on deep syntactic reasoning, particularly struggling with non-local dependency resolution and probabilistic attachment interpretation. Furthermore, this study contributes to LLM interpretability research and provides implications for developing ambiguity-aware NLP applications.
ChatGPT; DeepSeek; syntactic ambiguity; ambiguity detection; disambiguation performance
Iconicity, Indexicality, and Symbolism in the Name of Sūrah al-Nabaʾ: A Peircean Semiotic Analysis
While the names of Qurʾānic sūrahs have been extensively studied for their thematic coherence and suitability (munāsaba), their semiotic function as interpretive structures remains comparatively underexplored. This article examines the name of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ through the triadic semiotic model of Charles Sanders Peirce. Employing a qualitative micro-semiotic textual analysis, the study argues that the name al-Nabaʾ operates simultaneously across three semiotic modes: as an icon through its phonetic and semantic properties, which reflect the gravity and urgency of the Great News; as an index through its deictic and socio-historical relation to the Makkan controversy surrounding resurrection; and as a symbol through its established theological conventionality within Islamic eschatological discourse, functioning as a Peircean Legisign. Together, these dimensions produce what the study describes as hermeneutic pre-positioning, whereby the sūrah name shapes the reader’s interpretive orientation prior to engagement with the body of the text. The findings suggest that sūrah names function not merely as thematic labels but as active semiotic structures participating in the communicative and rhetorical architecture of Qurʾānic discourse. The study contributes to Qurʾānic onomastics by proposing a functional-semiotic framework for analysing sūrah names and further demonstrates the analytical adaptability of Peircean semiotics within non-Western sacred textual traditions.
Peircean Semiotics; Qurʾānic Onomastics; Sūrat al-Nabaʾ; Iconicity; Indexicality; Symbolism; Sacred Discourse
On the Category Structure and Metaphorical Extension of "声(Sheng)", "音 (Yin)" and "乐(Yue)" in Chinese Musical Discourse
In Chinese musical discourse, "声(Sheng, raw sounds)", "音(Yin, modulated sounds)" and "乐(Yue, music)" constitute a hierarchical and progressive category sequence. Based on the prototype category theory of cognitive linguistics and combining Rosch's category hierarchy theory with Lakoff's conceptual metaphor theory, this paper systematically investigates the category definition, progressive mechanism and metaphorical expansion of this tripartite hierarchical structure. The hierarchy of "声(Sheng)-音(Yin)-乐(Yue)" established in Yueji corresponds to physical category (Sheng, the subordinate level), artistic category (Yin, the basic level) and value category (Yue, the upper level) respectively, and the leap among them is embodied in the three cognitive mechanisms of category promotion, metonymy operation and cognitive subject differentiation. "Yue", as the upper category, integrates the triple meanings of playing music, ritual music and spirit, and realizes the cognitive leap from sensory experience to political insight through the metaphorical chain of "To discriminate raw sounds is to know the modulation of sounds; to know the modulated sounds is to know the music; and to know the music is to know (the character of) the government". Through the method of knowledge archaeology, this paper also reveals the flat compression of the modern concept of "music" to the traditional tripartite structure, and advocates the restoration of the original cognitive appearance of the hierarchical distinction between "声(Sheng, raw sounds)", "音(Yin, modulated sounds)" and "乐(Yue, music)". This category structure is not only a conceptual tool for Chinese music classification, but also a genetic code for understanding the music cognitive style of Chinese people.
Yueji; Sheng-Yin-Yue hierarchy; Prototype category; Conceptual metaphor
Translation as Protection: Conceptual Foundations of an Emerging Field for Human Rights Settings in the Arab World
In settings where rights are granted or withheld – asylum hearings, civil registration, the recognition of qualifications, the documentation of gender-based violence – translation does not simply carry meaning across languages. It decides whether a person can be heard at all. Yet, the Arabic – speaking world, which sits at the center of some of the largest migration corridors of our time, still lacks a shared conceptual vocabulary for studying translation in these settings. This article offers a first step toward that vocabulary. Drawing on seven established strands of translation studies, it presents a trilingual glossary (French, English, Arabic) of thirty-eight working concepts and organizes them into a single map of the field. The glossary is framed by a simple but consequential claim: that translation in protection settings operates on two thresholds – a threshold of recognition, which decides whether a person is admitted as a legitimate speaker, and a threshold of participation, which decides the quality of that person’s presence in the procedure. The aim is neither exhaustive nor final. It is foundational: to give researchers, trainers, and practitioners in the Arab world a common ground on which an emerging field can be built.
Translation studies; Human rights; Protection settings; Trilingual glossary ; Arab world
A Detector of Saudi Proverbs in Diplomatic Discourse: A Comprehensive Algorithmic Framework for Representing the Kingdom's Oral Memory and Safeguarding It in Simultaneous Interpretation
This study presents an integrated theoretical and applied framework for developing an intelligent algorithm specialized in detecting Saudi folk proverbs—derived from the oral memory of all regions of the Kingdom—within diplomatic discourse, and "preprocessing" them for the simultaneous interpreter through complex contextual diplomatic analysis and the provision of weighted functional translation packages. The algorithm, named the "Saudi Proverb Detector," aims to address the critical problem of discourse misinterpretation leading to the distortion of folk linguistic heritage during its transfer into foreign languages in sensitive political and diplomatic contexts, which may result in crises of understanding or the malicious exploitation of meaning. The study adopts a hybrid methodology combining ethnographic fieldwork for proverb collection and documentation, cultural-cognitive analysis to extract underlying intellectual models, and intelligent systems engineering to build the detection and preprocessing mechanism. The algorithm draws upon a comprehensive knowledge base representing the Kingdom's oral memory in its full geographical diversity, grounded in encyclopedic references such as the work of Al-Juhaiman (1982), which documented nearly ten thousand proverbs. The study culminates in a detailed vision for a preventive digital ecosystem that transforms Saudi Arabia's geographic expressive diversity from a challenge in representation into a source of strength and enrichment, rendering proverbs an effective tool for soft power and strategic clarity in international dialogue.
Simultaneous diplomatic interpreting, folk proverb computation, contextual artificial intelligence, cultural-linguistic engineering, Saudi oral memory, strategic linguistic empowerment
Teacher Perceptions of AI-Assisted Language Learning in Moroccan EFL Contexts
The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced significant opportunities and challenges for English language education, transforming traditional teaching practices and creating new possibilities for learner support and instructional innovation. Despite the increasing adoption of AI-assisted language learning tools, limited research has explored how Moroccan English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers perceive their pedagogical value and implications for classroom practice. This study investigates Moroccan EFL teachers’ perceptions of AI-assisted language learning, focusing on its perceived opportunities, challenges, and future implications for English language education. The study adopts a qualitative exploratory design involving ten Moroccan EFL teachers and teacher trainees selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected using an online semi-structured questionnaire comprising open-ended questions and were analyzed through Reflexive Thematic Analysis following Braun and Clarke’s (2006, 2019) framework. The findings reveal that participants generally perceive AI as a complementary pedagogical tool that enhances lesson planning, instructional material development, learner autonomy, creativity, and teaching efficiency rather than replacing teachers. However, participants also expressed concerns regarding overreliance on AI-generated content, academic integrity, misinformation, privacy, and ethical issues. Furthermore, the study highlights the growing importance of AI literacy, effective prompting, and critical evaluation skills as essential competencies for language teachers in AI-enhanced educational environments. By providing qualitative evidence from the Moroccan EFL context, this study contributes to the emerging literature on AI-assisted language learning and offers practical implications for teacher education, professional development, and educational policy. The findings underscore the need for responsible and pedagogically informed integration of AI technologies while reaffirming the indispensable role of teachers in fostering meaningful and human-centered language learning experiences.
Artificial Intelligence, AI-assisted language learning, English as a Foreign Language, teacher perceptions, digital pedagogy, AI literacy, Morocco
From Psychological Modernism to a Poetics of Everyday Life: The Evolution of Wang Zengqi’s Fictional Style and Its Driving Forces
Existing scholarship has concentrated on the “poetics of everyday life” in Wang Zengqi’s post-1979 fiction, while his early modernist experiments have often been treated as an immature or separate phase. As a result, the mechanism of his stylistic transition and the continuity between his early and late artistic practices remain insufficiently explained. Taking “Fuchou” (Revenge), “Jiya Mingjia” (The Master of Poultry), “Shoujie” (Initiation into Monkhood), and “Danao Jishi” (Tales of the Big Marsh) as its core texts, this article combines close reading, diachronic comparison, and contextual analysis of Wang’s literary statements, artistic practice, and historical circumstances. It examines changes in narrative structure, characterization, linguistic rhythm, and aesthetic orientation. The analysis shows that Wang’s early fiction, shaped in important ways by Woolfian psychological modernism, renders tense subjective experience through psychological time, weakened plotting, structural discontinuity, and linguistic defamiliarization. His later fiction shifts its aesthetic center toward everyday life, local customs, and vernacular ethics, developing a poetics of everyday life marked by restraint, ellipsis, and the resilience of ordinary existence. This transition does not negate his early experimentation; rather, techniques of linguistic control, detail management, and weak plotting are internalized from conspicuous formal devices into an apparently effortless narrative mode. The transformation was jointly enabled by Wang’s modernist training at National Southwest Associated University, his grassroots experience, his work in traditional opera, and the cultural climate of the New Period. By conceptualizing the transition as “continuity within rupture,” this article reinterprets Wang’s aesthetic trajectory and defines his poetics of everyday life as a locally grounded paradigm distinct from both the aestheticization of everyday life in consumer culture and classical Chinese theories of artistic conception.
Wang Zengqi; psychological modernism; poetics of everyday life; stylistic evolution; continuity within rupture; Fuchou; Jiya Mingjia; Shoujie; Danao Jishi; novel style
Overcoming Barriers to the Proper Usage of Medical Terminology in English Language Communication at Almoosa College, Saudi Arabia: Instructors' Perspectives
To adequately prepare nursing students to learn medical topics, perform clinical work, and succeed in higher-education programs taught in English in countries where English is a second language, English Medical Terminology (EMT) teachers at medical schools continuously face challenges in educating students with low English proficiency. This qualitative study investigates barriers to English medical terminology at the Department of English, Almoosa College of Health Sciences, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, from the perspectives of English and medical instructors. This paper uses semi-structured interview data and is informed by recent scientific findings. Four broad obstacles that affect the ability of nursing students to improve their command of EMT include: (1) low levels of English language proficiency and a correspondingly heavy reliance on translation, (2) limited access to authentic medical language, (3) a lack of institutional development in English for Medical Purposes (EMP), and (4) insufficient identification and assessment of constraints in the learning design. The findings align with those from around the world and across the region, demonstrating that linguistic barriers lead to inadequate understanding and preparedness among nursing and medical students. A review of the literature indicates that certain teaching methods, including the use of EMP vocabulary, the creation of technology-facilitated exercises, the implementation of game-based language activities, a structured mentorship program, and access to medical interpreters during educational processes, reduce cognitive load and improve comprehension of medical terminology. This study will add original findings from a Saudi background. It presents a framework, guided by instructors, to help them strengthen their approach to teaching medical words in either preparatory or first-year basic health sciences courses. Understanding English terminology is fundamental to learning, preparing for clinical work, and achieving academic success in any health sciences education setting, especially for students in non-English-speaking countries. This study of nursing students, based on semi-structured interviews and a review of the latest scientific literature, identifies four barriers to the development of nursing students' English medical terminology proficiency: (1) low proficiency in English and excessive dependence on translations, (2) restricted access to and engagement with medical discourse, (3) lack of systematic English for Medical Purposes (EMP) development in health sciences education institutions, and (4) unawareness and assessment gaps in the impediments of instructional designs. These findings reinforce similar work published in other countries, including in the region, indicating that language difficulties lead to inadequate knowledge and preparation among nursing and other medical professionals. Recent research in EMP education shows that pedagogies such as vocabulary construction related to EMP, computer- and Web-based technologies, games, mentorship, and interpreter assistance can effectively reduce students' learning burden, resulting in better comprehension of medical terminology. From this perspective, this study contributes findings in the Saudi context, along with an instructor-perspective-based framework for improvement and future implementation of English medical terminology teaching in preparatory and foundational programs of health sciences education institutes.
(VR) Virtual Reality; (AR) Augmented Reality; rote learning: repeating and memorizing without thinking; digital 3D environments: where students can see organs, body systems, or medical procedures
From Conceptual Metaphor to Conceptual Blending: The Construction of Good and Evil through Light, Darkness, and Colour in The Lord of the Rings
This study investigates the metaphorical representation of morality in The Lord of the Rings by integrating Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT). Although previous studies have applied these frameworks to Tolkien's works, they have largely examined conventional conceptual metaphors and conceptual blends independently, leaving the relationship between these two levels of conceptual organisation insufficiently explored. Drawing on the complete text of The Lord of the Rings, the study analyses metaphorical expressions related to morality, focusing on representations involving light, darkness, and colour. It first identifies the conventional conceptual metaphors underlying Tolkien's moral system before examining how these conceptual metaphors are elaborated into more complex conceptual blends. The findings demonstrate that GOOD IS LIGHT and EVIL IS DARKNESS constitute the primary conceptual framework through which morality is represented, while white and black function as colour elaborations of the more fundamental light–darkness opposition. The analysis further shows that fictional representations in which moral qualities become physically embodied in characters or materialised in objects are better explained by Conceptual Blending Theory than by Conceptual Metaphor Theory alone. By integrating CMT and CBT, the study offers a more comprehensive cognitive account of moral representation in Tolkien's fictional world.
The Lord of the Rings; morality; Conceptual Metaphor Theory; Conceptual Blending Theory; metaphor; cognitive linguistics
Copyright (c) 2026 Ngoc Pham Thai Bao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Adjective Intensifiers in Najdi Arabic: A Case Study of Interviews on Al-Liwan
This study examines the use of Najdi Arabic adjective intensifiers in broadcast interview speech. Data were collected from six episodes of a Saudi television interview program (Al-Liwan) featuring three male and three female Najdi Arabic-speaking guests. Based on Quirk et al.’s (1985) classification of intensifiers (amplifiers, downtoners, and emphasizers), all instances where intensifying forms directly modified a gradable adjective were counted and analyzed. Within the corpus (totaling 8 hours 9 minutes), there were 69 instances of adjective intensifiers. Adjective intensifier tokens appeared in six forms, with jiddan ‘very’ and marrah ‘so, very’ the most frequently used; the least frequent adjective intensifiers were tamāman ‘completely’ and wallah ‘truly’. Amplifiers dominated the data, especially boosters, with jiddan the most frequent, followed by marrah. Considering the social factor of gender, female Najdi speakers produced more intensifiers than males, a finding consistent with cross-linguistic gender patterns. Intensifiers were most commonly used with positive adjectives, followed by negative adjectives, while neutral adjectives occurred the least frequently. Regarding intensifier position, a contrast emerged: jiddan occurred predominantly in the post-adjectival position, whereas marrah was used predominantly in the pre-adjectival position, which is consistent with findings from previous studies on Najdi Arabic. Limitations of the study include the sample size and its focus on the semi-formal broadcast register. Future research using a larger sample could examine other popular Saudi television and radio programs. Studies could investigate the use of adjective intensifiers in Saudi television drama, which reflects Saudi culture through including Najdi and other Saudi dialects.
Adjective intensifiers; Najdi Arabic; female; male; semantic polarity; syntactic position
Copyright (c) 2026 Majedah Alaiyed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Syllable Lightening in the Perfective of Moroccan Arabic Hollow Verbs
The paper provides a prosodic analysis of syllable lightening in the perfective of Moroccan Arabic (MA) hollow verbs. Previous works on MA verb inflectional morphology are limited in the sense that they failed to integrate the issue of syllable lightening in the perfective aspect. Drawing on secondary data from MA grammar works, we demonstrate that heavy syllables are lightened due to the prosodic constraints RHYTHMIC CONTOUR (RH-CONT) and *ΣH which militate against Heavy Light (HL) and Heavy (H) feet. This finding lends support to the role of foot patterns in the analysis of syllable de-weighting and enhances our understanding of the phonology of MA hollow verbs.
Perfective, Lightening, Hollow Verbs, OT, Moroccan Arabic
Critical Discourse Analysis of Animal Farm Characters: A Comparative Study of Two Arabic Translations
This research paper is a descriptive and comparative study. It is descriptive as it presents the ideology of the three main characters in George Orwell's novel "Animal Farm": Old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon, as depicted through their statements. The study is comparative as it compares two translations of the novel into Arabic. The first translation, titled "The Rebellious Animals," was translated by Abbas Hafiz (1952). It is the first Arabic translation of "Animal Farm". The second translation, by Mahmoud Abdul-Ghani (2014), is widely regarded as one of the best. The novel Animal Farm by George Orwell is a political satire that symbolizes the Russian Revolution. The ideologies of the three leading figures, Old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon, represent revolutionary thought and the stages of its transformation. Old Major, the founder of revolutionary philosophy, was a dreamer and the first theoretician, inspired by the doctrine of Animalism. He symbolizes the combination of the characters of Karl Marx, the founder of communism, and Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution. Snowball, the ideal revolutionary reformer, is a brilliant planner and a true believer in Major's principles, dedicated to educating the animals and improving their living conditions. He symbolizes Leon Trotsky, a revolutionary thinker who was exiled for his ideological beliefs. Napoleon, the pragmatic dictator, represents the opportunist who uses coercion and intimidation to advance his interests, justifying his rise to power by manipulating the laws and altering the Seven Commandments. He symbolizes Joseph Stalin. Discourse includes both structural and conceptual patterns. Most of these patterns vary across languages. Moreover, the characters' positive and negative sides were discussed. The findings indicated that the translators’ ideological beliefs affect their lexical choices in translation, which in turn influences their success in recognizing and transmitting the ST's implicit ideologies into the TT. Two Arabic translations are compared in terms of the three characters' ideologies as represented by excerpts of their statements.
Animal Farm, ideology, self-presentation, critical discourse analysis, Arabic translation
Copyright (c) 2026 Elrashid Abdel Gadir https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Comparative Study of Thematic Progression in Human-written and ChatGPT-generated Texts
The wide use of ChatGPT has rose concerns about accuracy of the essays it produced. This paper compared the thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in human-written and ChatGPT-generated texts based on the systemic functional grammar and analyzed their coherence and discourse structure. The founding revealed that ChatGPT uses more repeated marker Themes in topical Theme making complement as Theme, but less interpersonal Themes than human which indicates its lack of interaction with readers and subjectivity of expressing its opinions. It also uses less various types of textual Themes than human who employs richer ways to extend, combine and conclude the clauses. Thematic progressions are much more frequent in human-written essays and linear pattern accounts for the largest percent while constant pattern is more frequent in ChatGPT. Human can adopt different thematic progressions and other thematic structures to make a coherent text but ChatGPT mostly repeat the same type of clause and even produce redundant information or uses inaccurate thematic progression making the text a list of information.
Thematic progression; ChatGPT-generated texts; Human-written texts;
Copyright (c) 2026 Xiulin Gao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
English Translation Strategies for ICH Terms from the Perspective of Transknowletology
Traditional Chinese textile terms carry profound ancient weaving civilization and rich textile knowledge, the translation of which constitutes a crucial link in the dissemination of China's textile cultural heritage, where the choice of translation strategies for these terms directly impacts the communication effects of Chinese textile culture and knowledge. Therefore, this paper, from the perspective of Transknowletology, explores the English translation strategies for such terms and their effectiveness in knowledge dissemination. Taking the textile terms from Traditional Chinese Sericulture and Silk Craftsmanship: Kesi, Nanjing Yunjin Brocade, and Traditional Chinese Sericulture and Silk Craftsmanship: Song Brocade as examples, this study analyzes translation strategies of these terms based on whether Chinese and Western textile knowledge in the Area of Knowledge Identity, Discrepancy or Conflict.
Transknowletology; Textile terms; Translation strategies
Copyright (c) 2026 Lusha Yang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
When Words Fail: A PRISMA-Guided Systematic Review of the Effects of Speaking Anxiety on Language Performance and Communicative Confidence
Speaking anxiety is the fear and worry surrounding the act of speaking. Despite its widespread prevalence, there has been very little research into its effects across different populations, needs, and contexts. This paper presents a systematic literature review of studies on the effects of speaking anxiety among learners and educators, conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. To structure the literature review, the authors introduced parameters that the selected studies had to meet. A total of twenty-two studies were screened for inclusion and respected the parameters set out in the current study. The twelve studies, 11 of which were conducted in the Philippines, serve to confirm a large-scale relation between speaking anxiety and poor oral performance, memory retrieval, and physiological calmness, while in one instance the influence of speaking anxiety on written performance differs from debilitating to facilitative. The usual fears include apprehension about negative evaluation and lack of preparation. Numerous strategies serve as means of mitigating speaking anxiety, including familiarization with the audience, self-calming techniques, structured practice, and exposure therapy with the help of virtual reality technology.
speaking anxiety, public speaking anxiety, foreign language anxiety, communicative confidence, systematic literature review, PRISMA
The Unwitnessable: External and Embodied Foreclosures of Testimony in Anna Burns' Milkman and Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing
This study examines Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018) and Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (2014), through a combined reading of the primary philosophical frameworks of Emmanuel Levinas’ (1969,1985) ethics of the face, and Giorgio Agamben’s (1998, 1999, 2005) concept of bare life, with Dominick LaCapra’s (2001) theory of trauma to distinction between the signs of foreclosed witnessing and their critical expression. It argues that both novels depict what can be theorized as the unwitnessable: a condition that emerges when political and gender-based violence becomes extreme enough to disrupt the possibility of ethical witnessing. Each novel presents the unwitnessable differently. In Burns’ it is created by social regulations and ideological adherence reinforced through community surveillance, and in McBride’s it results from psychological fragmentation. This comparison shows that the unwitnessable is not only a narrative strategy but also a condition where some individuals’ experiences cannot be expressed, understood, or witnessed. Through close analysis of the narrative strategies, this paper demonstrates that both authors not only present the impossibility of testimony but reproduce it, forcing the reader to be part of the ethical failure. Hence, this study proposes the unwitnessable as a critical category for the analysis of literary works involving political and gender-based violence in which testimony is rendered impossible, offered here as a working hypothesis to be tested against a wider corpus rather than as a fully generalized claim.
Anna Burns, bare life, Eimear McBride, Emmanuel Levinas, Giorgio Agamben, witnessing
Tense in Standard Arabic: A Minimalist Account of Morphological Realization and Feature Checking
This paper investigates the morphological realization of tense and the syntactic checking of the tense feature in Standard Arabic (SA). The empirical point of departure is a distribution puzzle: SA possesses only two verbal forms, the perfective and the imperfective, yet expresses three temporal distinctions. A substantial body of scholarship treats tense in Arabic as either entirely abstract, inferrable from agreement morphology or blocked from surface realization by morphological constraints (Benmamoun 2000; Watson 2002; Ryding 2005; El Fenne 2023), or as morphologically realized via the vocalic template (Bahloul 2008; Tucker 2011; McCarthy 1993; Embick 2010). Both positions are shown to make false predictions for the distribution of verbal forms in negative sentences. Working within Chomsky's (1993, 1995, 2000, 2001) Minimalist Program, this paper proposes a positional account: the past tense morpheme is identified with the voice morpheme realized root-internally (between C1 and C2 of the triconsonantal root), while the present tense morpheme is abstract. The two verbal forms differ at the template level in their CV structure (perfective: CVCVC; imperfective: CCVC) and in the distribution of agreement morphology (suffixal in the perfective; discontinuous in the imperfective), a structural difference that underlies the positional diagnostic proposed here. The perfective form is lexically marked [+Past]; the imperfective exists in two lexical entries, one bearing [+Present] and one tense-neutral. The [Tense] feature is uniformly strong, triggering overt V-to-T movement, with tense-bearing particles checking tense in negative and future contexts via movement to T°, while the verb checks its mood feature in Mood° (Ouhalla 1993, 1994). Implications for the typology of strong tense features and for the organization of the SA verbal system are discussed.
Standard Arabic, Tense, Mood, Negation, Minimalist Program, Feature checking, V-to-T movement, Perfective, Imperfective
Copyright (c) 2026 Adil Mrhar, Ahmed Smirkou, Nabil Guejouti, Nassim Sabrou, Said Rafi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The role of emojis in emotional language communication: emotional valence and cognitive-affective processing in digital discourse
This paper examines the role of emojis in contemporary emotional language communication, placing them within digital discourse as meaningful semiotic resources that shape both emotional expression and interpretation. Building on current research in emoji studies, the paper synthesizes existing findings on their semantic and affective functions in computer-mediated communication. It further introduces the theoretical construct of emotional valence, outlining its relevance for understanding how affect is encoded, perceived and interpreted in linguistic contexts. Finally, the paper engages with frameworks of emotional language comprehension, highlighting how multimodal emotional cues, particularly emojis interact with textual information to influence cognitive and affective processing during language understanding. By integrating perspectives from pragmatics, psycholinguistics and digital communication studies, the paper argues that emojis function not merely as paralinguistic elaboration but as integral components of emotional meaning construction in online interaction.
Emojis, emotional valence, digital communication, language comprehension, cognitive-affective processing
Madness as Crisis in Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear
This article examines Shakespeare's depiction of madness as a complex phenomenon through a comparative study of Hamlet and King Lear. While madness has been historically identified as a strategy of performance in Hamlet and psychological undoing in King Lear, this analysis insists on the duality of madness in exposing underlying anxiety in the early modern period regarding the truthfulness of self-identity, the vulnerability of patriarchal power, and the interrelation between personal failure and political degradation. Through close textual analysis and engagement with new historicist, feminist, and performativity theories, the study demonstrates that the distinction between enacted and genuine madness is not merely a psychological fascination but a necessary spectacle through which Shakespeare questions the nature of authority, masculinity, and selfhood in a period of crisis. The findings reveal that in Hamlet, feigned madness functions as a strategy for navigating political corruption, while in King Lear, genuine madness represents the tragic deconstruction of male identity. This comparative approach contributes to Shakespeare studies by demonstrating how different forms of madness work specifically to challenge male identity and political ideology in early modern drama.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fahad Alazmi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Translating Theme Choices in Tourism Promotion Texts
This study investigates how the Theme–Rheme system is translated from Indonesian into English with Halliday’s Perspective and the shifting of Theme in the Target Text (TT) in tourism information. The theme of the information should be delivered adequately to persuade and convince readers about the tourism destination being promoted. This study used descriptive qualitative methods to determine the categories of the Theme and its translation. The finding shows that the types of Theme are mostly Topical Theme, either Unmarked or Marked. Theme shifting also occurs from Theme structure into Rheme structure. Besides, the shift affects different readers' perceptions of the destination being promoted in the texts, which is indicated by different fronted Theme. This is due to the change of starting point of information in the Source Text (ST) and in the Target Text (TT). Therefore, translating Theme in tourism promotion could result in a shift of main information.
Influence of Translation Strategies Multiplicity on Translation Teaching
This article explores how the variety of terms and concepts in translation strategies influences teaching and learning translation. Using both foundational and modern frameworks, such as those by Vinay and Darbelnet, Nida, Newmark, Catford, Baker, and Venuti, it discusses how inconsistent use of terms—whether in their classification like "method," "procedure," "strategy," and "technique" or in their typologies like "word-for-word vs. sense-for-sense," "literal vs. free," "formal equivalence vs. dynamic equivalence," "semantic vs. communicative," or "foreignization vs. domestication"—affects curriculum design, classroom instruction, student understanding, and assessment methods. While this reflects the richness of Translation Studies, it also presents significant teaching challenges. Through case studies, hypothetical examples, and critical analysis, the article argues that strategic pluralism, when guided by clear pedagogical goals, can be transformed from a liability into an asset. Recommendations include fostering Meta-Strategic awareness, aligning teaching materials, and implementing integrated teaching practices to enhance student skills and theoretical understanding. The article concludes that embracing, rather than eliminating, this multiplicity—through informed and reflective teaching—is essential for advancing translator training in an increasingly global and interdisciplinary academic environment.
Translation strategies, Multiplicity, Translation, Teaching, Learning, Pedagogy
The Instability of Faith: A Deconstructive Reading of Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia
Lucy Pevensie is commonly portrayed as a symbol of innocence, faith, and unwavering belief throughout The Chronicles of Narnia. Previous studies have largely emphasised her positive moral qualities and spiritual steadfastness, often treating her faith as stable and coherent. But a closer examination revealed tensions, contradictions, and moments of uncertainty that complicate such interpretations. This study aimed to examine the instability of faith in Lucy Pevensie’s character through a deconstructive reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This study applied a qualitative literary research design using textual analysis. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive theory, the analysis focused on binary oppositions such as faith and doubt, certainty and uncertainty, as well as obedience and hesitation. Relevant passages, dialogues, and narrative events related to Lucy’s beliefs, emotional conflicts, and spiritual experiences were selected and examined to identify contradictions and shifting meanings within her characterization. The findings showed that although Lucy is predominantly constructed as a figure of faith, her belief is neither fixed nor entirely stable. Throughout the trilogy, her faith was repeatedly challenged by doubt, social pressure, emotional vulnerability, and moments of hesitation. These tensions demonstrated that faith in Lucy’s characterisation was continuously negotiated rather than permanently secured. Moreover, the study showed that faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive opposites but interdependent elements that shape the complexity of her character. This study concluded that Lucy’s faith should be understood as a dynamic, unstable construct rather than an absolute and unchanging quality. Through deconstruction, the dominant interpretation of Lucy as an unwaveringly faithful character was reconsidered, revealing the complexity and multiplicity of meanings embedded within her characterisation.
Faith, Deconstruction, Doubt, Fantasy Literature
Copyright (c) 2026 Ni Made Nila Lohita Anggreni, Diah Supatmiwati, Sutarman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Bengali Pidgin Arabic in Multilingual Contexts: A Linguistic and Translation-Based Analysis
This study considers Bengali pidgin Arabic as a way of communication mainly among Arabic-speaking people and South Asian migrants. Most studies on pidgin languages focus on known types. Not much attention is given to new pidgin forms that develop as people move and interact daily. The study examines 50 samples of people using Bengali Pidgin Arabic. These samples help find similarities in how words are formed, sentences are built, and words are chosen. It also explores how people shorten things and still get their point across. The study finds that Bengali Pidgin Arabic has its way of working. It uses words, shorter sentences, and a limited vocabulary that is still useful. When people use this pidgin, they rely heavily on context, guessing what the other person means. From a translation perspective, this pidgin helps people communicate more easily. Getting the message across is more important than being perfect. Translators do what people do when they use language. They simplify meaning, choose words, and shorten phrases. Bengali Pidgin Arabic is a good example of the use of translation in conversation and of how language changes to connect people from different backgrounds. The study of Bengali Pidgin Arabic shows how it helps people communicate and understand one another in a mixed social environment.
Bengali Pidgin Arabic, contact linguistics, sociolinguistics, translation studies, multilingual communication, migrant discourse
“More Bad News”: Gossip, Scandalization, and Deception in Algerian Online Foreign-Affairs Hard News
This article examines gossip, scandalization, and deception in Algerian online foreign-affairs hard news. Conceptualized within Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), it addresses a gap in existing research: while foreign-policy media discourse has been studied through framing, propaganda, and ideology, far less attention has been paid to how gossip migrates into the hard-news genre of foreign-affairs reporting. Grounded in a three-year longitudinal investigation forming part of a broader doctoral thesis on disinformation discourse in Algerian online news, the study argues that routine hard-news practices in two major Algerian online outlets — Algeria Press Service (APS) and Radio Algérienne — produce systematically biased, gossip-laden accounts of international events, falling short of media-ethics standards of accuracy, balance, and source fidelity. Drawing on an integrated framework of Critical Discourse Studies, Critical Linguistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and the concept of gossip, and applying Richardson’s (2007) model of newspaper discourse analysis at micro-, meso-, and macro-analytical levels, the study analyses three representative articles covering two foreign-affairs dossiers: the Iran–Israel–United States military confrontation (two APS articles) and Morocco–Israel bilateral relations (one Radio Algérienne article). A forensic-linguistic verification procedure compares the outlets’ quotations against independent institutional records — including UN statements, IAEA reports, and U.S. governmental communiqués — to establish where sources are recontextualized or distorted, and to construct the historical archive that enables a Foucauldian genealogical engagement with Algerian foreign-affairs discourse. The analysis demonstrates that evaluative language is systematically mobilized to transform diplomatic events into moralized narratives of betrayal, conspiracy, and aggression. In the APS articles, gossip surfaces through negative naming, the scandal frame, and a forensically documented quotation-integrity violation in which an ideologically loaded expression is interpolated into António Guterres’s UN statement — words absent from the original source text. In the Radio Algérienne article, gossip is realized through transitivity and nominalization: action processes activate the Moroccan state as an agent of “repression” and “betrayal,” while nominalized forms condense political choices into morally marked categories. In the Iran–Israel–United States case, gossip converges with the discourse-historical construction of an enemy image (Feindbild), in which a complex geopolitical configuration is personified into a single, blameworthy actor organized around a Manichean division between the innocent and the guilty. At the macro level, the study argues that these practices are organized by an institutional order of discourse — a Foucauldian dispositif discursif — that governs who may speak, what may be said, and which meanings are privileged as legitimate. This order exhibits deep political parallelism between government and media. The study further identifies an internal contradiction within this order of discourse on the Moroccan Sahara issue, where two presidential statements — one adopting a cautious, UN-deferential register, the other dismissing the Moroccan autonomy plan as a French-born myth (kharafa) — reveal a hegemonic instability that, read through Fairclough’s (1992) theory of discourse change, signals the potential for future discursive realignment under structural diplomatic pressure, including UN Security Council Resolution 2797 (2025). Theoretically, the study makes three contributions. First, it extends gossip as an analytical concept beyond celebrity and tabloid culture into the hard-news genre of foreign-affairs reporting, operationalizing it through three co-occurring criteria: absent-third-party orientation, reputational-moral evaluation, and community-building. Second, it provides forensic-linguistic evidence that deceptive source recontextualization constitutes a structural feature of the Algerian government–media nexus, not an isolated journalistic lapse. Third, it applies Fairclough’s (1992) social theory of discourse change to project the conditions under which an ideologically overdetermined order of discourse may undergo hegemonic realignment. The article concludes that Algerian foreign-affairs coverage functions as “bad news” in a double sense: it reports crisis while simultaneously enacting bad professional practices — gossip, scandalization, and deceptive source recontextualization — that fall short of media-ethics standards and distinguish reporting from propaganda.
Forensic Linguistics — Gossip — Scandalization — Deception — Enemy image (Feindbild) — Political parallelism — Order of discourse — Discourse change — Algerian online hard news — Critical Discourse Studies — Critical Linguistics — Systemic Functional Linguistics — Ideolinguistics
On the Illness Writing and Literary Healing in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours
This paper focuses on Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, analyzing the diseases portrayed in the novel to explore their cultural symbolic significance and the healing function of literature. On one hand, the paper first examines Virginia Woolf’s mental illness and Richard’s AIDS, revealing that disease is not merely a physical phenomenon, but also a cultural vehicle for moral judgment and social exclusion, particularly the stigmatization of AIDS within the homosexual community. On the other hand, the paper explores the healing effects of literary reading and creation on individual trauma. By analyzing how Woolf achieves emotional catharsis through her writing, how Laura awakens her self-identity through Mrs. Dalloway, and how Cunningham reconstructs his mother’s fate through writing, this paper demonstrates the unique role of literature in the reconstruction of self-identity, emotional release, and psychological healing.
Copyright (c) 2026 Qijia Xu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The attitudes of Translation experts towards Literary Translation in Postcolonial Contexts: Suggesting the PTP Model
This study seeks to explore translation experts’ attitudes towards the translation of Culture-Specific Items (henceforth CSIs), idioms, metaphors, and translation of the paratexts within Postcolonial contexts. This study opted for a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative study and qualitative study. As for the quantitative study, data are collected through the instrument of questionnaire; whereas the qualitative study utilized interviews as an instrument for data collection. This study is premised upon a theoretical framework that comprises Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, and Even-Zohar Itamar’s Polysystem Theory. Findings of the quantitative study and qualitative study are exploited by the authors to suggest a new model: The Postcolonial Translation for Prose Model (henceforth The PTP Model). It functions as a roadmap for the translation of Postcolonial novels, whose purpose is to preserve the specificities of Postcolonial cultures and promote intercultural dialogue.
Literary translation, experts’ attitudes, culture-specific items, foreignization, domestication
Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third-Language Phonological Acquisition: A Systematic Mapping Review of Empirical Research, 2010-2026
Research on third-language (L3) phonological acquisition has grown considerably, but the evidence remains dispersed across language combinations, phonological domains, methods, and theoretical traditions. This systematic mapping review synthesizes a verified corpus of 47 empirical studies published between 2010 and 2026 and distinguishes them from 16 Arab-world and Moroccan publications retained for regional contextualization. The corpus was assembled through focused bibliographic searching, publisher and DOI verification, and backward and forward citation chaining from major reviews of L3 transfer and phonology. Studies were coded for publication period, geographical context, language constellation, phonological domain, method, theoretical orientation, and proposed source of cross-linguistic influence. The mapping shows that research is strongly concentrated in European contexts and in production-oriented studies of consonants, stops, and voice onset time, whereas vowels, stress, prosody, perception-based designs, and longitudinal work remain comparatively limited. Only two core studies directly represented North-African or Arabic-speaking multilingual contexts, and none focused specifically on Moroccan or Amazigh-speaking L3 learners. The evidence does not support a single universal source of transfer; rather, L1, L2, heritage-language, proficiency-based, and property-specific effects are foregrounded across different studies. No confirmed core study explicitly applied Optimality Theory, although OT appears in regional pronunciation research. The review argues for more geographically diverse, theoretically explicit, perception-production, longitudinal, and vowel-focused L3 phonology research, with Moroccan multilingualism offering a particularly valuable testing ground for future work.
third-language acquisition; phonological transfer; cross-linguistic influence; multilingualism; speech perception; speech production; systematic mapping review