Cognitive Processes in Culinary Translation: Implications for Mandarin Indonesian Translator Education

T. Kasa Rullah Adha, Intan Erwani and Julina
Additional contact information
T. Kasa Rullah Adha: Mandarin Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia
Intan Erwani: Mandarin Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia
Julina: Mandarin Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia

European Journal of Social Science Education and Research, 2026, vol. 13, issue 3, 746-764

Abstract: This study investigates the cognitive processes involved in translating Mandarin food menu items into Indonesian, with particular attention to pauses, self-corrections, and the use of online reading materials. Grounded in translation process research, the study adopts a qualitative descriptive approach to explore how a translator negotiates meaning, culture, and linguistic equivalence during translation. The data consist of a Mandarin food menu comprising 15 items (85 words), translated by a qualified Mandarin– Indonesian translator. The data were collected using Translog II to record keyboard activities and pauses, and VLC Media Player to capture screen activities related to online resource consultation. The findings reveal that pauses are a crucial indicator of the translator’s cognitive effort, particularly when resolving cultural and semantic ambiguities. Self-corrections emerged as a dominant strategy, including meaning correction, word substitution, addition, deletion, grammar correction, and capitalization. Notably, meaning correction was frequently motivated by cultural sensitivity, such as replacing the term Cina with Tiongkok to avoid discriminatory connotations in Indonesian. The study also shows that while machine translation tools— especially Google Translate—play a supportive role in comprehension, they are insufficient for producing culturally and contextually appropriate translations without human intervention. Overall, this research highlights the complexity of the translation process and underscores the importance of cognitive awareness, cultural knowledge, and critical revision skills in culinary translation. The findings contribute to translation process studies and offer pedagogical implications for translator training, particularly in the use of technology-assisted translation tools.

Keywords: cognitive effort; cultural mediation; Mandarin food; revision competence; translation pedagogy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://revistia.com/files/articles/ejser_v13_i3_26/Adha.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eur:ejserj:511

DOI: 10.26417/sgtarqv7

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Journal of Social Science Education and Research from Revistia Research and Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Revistia Research and Publishing ().