Proceedings of the International Seminar of Languages, Arts and Literature Education (ISLALE 2025)

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Cultural Untranslatability in Indonesian Translation of Khaled Hosseini’s Novel a Thousand Splendid Suns

Authors
Ayu Saleha Simamora1, *
1Universitas Negeri Medan, Medan, Indonesia
*Corresponding author. Email: ayusaleha@gmail.com
Corresponding Author
Ayu Saleha Simamora
Available Online 16 December 2025.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-501-0_27How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Cultural untranslatability; Literary translation; A thousand splendid suns
Abstract

In A Thousand Splendid Suns and the resulting instances of cultural untranslatability. It aims to analyze the categories of these culturally bound terms, the strategies used to translate them, and the reasons behind the selection of those strategies. Employing a qualitative descriptive approach, the research is grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Newmark (1988) and Chesterman (1997). The analysis identifies five categories of untranslatable cultural terms in the novel: (1) ecology, (2) material culture, (3) social culture, (4) organizations, customs, activities, procedures, and concepts, and (5) gestures and habits. The study finds that nine translation strategies were used to handle these terms: (1) transference, (2) naturalization, (3) cultural equivalent, (4) functional equivalent, (5) through translation, (6) shift or transposition, (7) modulation, (8) compensation, and (9) paraphrase. Additionally, three primary motivations guided the translator’s strategy choices: (1) the intention to meet the target language expectancy norms for the audience, (2) commitment as the accountability.

Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the International Seminar of Languages, Arts and Literature Education (ISLALE 2025)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
16 December 2025
ISBN
978-2-38476-501-0
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-501-0_27How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Ayu Saleha Simamora
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/16
TI  - Cultural Untranslatability in Indonesian Translation of Khaled Hosseini’s Novel a Thousand Splendid Suns
BT  - Proceedings of the International Seminar of Languages, Arts and Literature Education (ISLALE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 285
EP  - 297
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-501-0_27
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-501-0_27
ID  - Simamora2025
ER  -