Analysis of the Techniques Used to Translate Ecological Cultural-Specific Items in a Thai Drama: The Royal Doctor

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to 1) collect ecological cultural-specific items found in the drama series "The Royal Doctor" based on Nida's (1964) conceptual framework and 2) study translation techniques related to ecological cultural-specific items from the same series based on Baker's (2005) strategy. The data consists of ecological cultural-specific items found in the subtitle that appeared in The Royal Doctor series. The results found 132 ecological cultural-specific items. These terms were categorized according to Nida's (1964) classification of cultural-specific items into three types: 87 specific plant names, 21 specific medicine names, and 24 specific disease names. The study identified eight translation strategies, ranked from most to least frequently used: 1) Translation by a more general word, 2) using a loan word or loan word plus an explanation, 3) using cultural substitution, 4) using illustration, 5) omission, 6) paraphrasing using related words, 7) paraphrasing using unrelated words, and 8) using a more neutral/less expressive word.