Earticle

This keynote addresses the intersection of cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS) with brain-based research, offering a psychobiological perspective on cross-linguistic processes. I will begin by situating psychobiological approaches within the broader landscape of cognitive frameworks, highlighting their unique methodological and conceptual contributions. I will then synthesize recent neuropsychological, neuroscientific, and behavioral findings on the neural organization of translation and interpreting: from the lateralization of networks supporting cross-linguistic activity to their interaction with other linguistic mechanisms. Special attention will be given to the functional architecture and temporal dynamics of circuits recruited across translation directions, processing levels, and source-language units, as well as the system’s demonstrated susceptibility to training-induced plasticity and its measurable behavioral correlates. The final part of the talk will critically assess the field’s achievements, identifying both strengths and limitations, and outlining key priorities for future research. Briefly, by integrating evidence from bilingualism, neurolinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience, I aim to establish a robust platform for advancing the interdisciplinary dialogue between CTIS and brain science.

Recent progress in artificial intelligence has significantly reshaped the field of translation, prompting renewed discussion about the role of human translators. Yet, AI tools continue to struggle with the translation of literary texts, particularly with cultural nuance. This study therefore aims to evaluate how effectively AI tools translate cultural terms in a literary text in comparison with a human translator. To this end, two AI-generated translations by ChatGPT and DeepL of Choi Eunyoung’s short story A Song from Afar are compared with its human translation. The primary focus of the analysis lies on cultural elements, with particular attention given to forms of address, which reflect Korean social hierarchy and shape the characters’ power dynamics. The results show that although both AI translations tend to preserve many cultural terms, giving their translations an apparently foreignizing orientation, this tendency appears to result less from a deliberate strategy than from limited creativity and insufficient contextual and cultural awareness.

The present article is devoted to a comprehensive linguo-translation analysis of the short story “동백꽃” by the classic Korean writer Kim Yu-jeong, written during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1936). The aim of the study is to identify and systematize strategies for rendering national and cultural specificity when translating the text into Russian. The paper examines issues of interlingual asymmetry at the lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic levels. Special attention is paid to the translation of non-equivalent vocabulary (realia), social markers (terms of kinship and hierarchy), as well as the unique system of Korean ideophones (sound-symbolic words), which play a key role in the author’s idiolect. The methodological framework of the study is based on the theory of translation transformations (L. S. Barkhudarov, V. N. Komissarov) and methods of contrastive linguocultural analysis. A comparison of the original text and the official Russian translation by A. Kh. In (2003) demonstrates that, in adapting the text, the translator predominantly employs the strategies of generalization, modulation (semantic development), and stylistic compensation. The findings indicate that preserving the “botanical paradox” of the title and adapting dialectal forms of Gangwon Province represent forced compromises that require active cultural interpretation on the part of the reader.