Culture through Keywords in Kenneth Wong's Translation of "Spirit Food" by Nu Nu Yi (Inwa)

Abstract

In observing language used in literature, as Nunan and Choi (2010) claimed,

“each language has its own unique link to the culture with which it co-
exists”. Culture embodies values, dictums, proverbs, symbols, taboos and

even language as it is used as a communicative tool to express culture. This
paper attempts to explore reflection of source language culture in keywords
found in Kenneth Wong’s translated version of “Spirit Food” by Nu Nu Yi
(Inwa). Keywords were generated using Word Smith Tool 8.0 by Scott
(2020). As the theme itself is culture-bound, Wong attempted to reflect
source language culture in keywords. Descriptive qualitative method was
applied in approaching culture using Cultural Category by Nida (1964),
Translation Procedures by Newmark (1988), and Translation Strategies by
Baker (1992) and Cultural Category by Yule (2010). The reliability and
accuracy of results of the research were justified using IBM SPSS Statistics
26.0 by Nie, et al. (2019). Key findings showed that there is significant
correlation between cultural category by Nida, and translation strategy and
part of speech; between translation procedure and translation strategy;
between cultural category by Yule and part of speech; and between part of
speech and frequency.