The Cultural-Emotional Concept in Indigenous Languages and Its Implications for Intercultural Translation: A Theoretical Review

Abstract

Indigenous languages function not only as a means of communication but also as a medium that represents the cultural values and emotional experiences of their speech communities. Various concepts embedded in regional languages often reflect a close interconnection between cultural and emotional dimensions, making them difficult to understand and translate equivalently into other languages. Although the relationship among language, culture, and emotion has been widely discussed in previous studies, there has been no conceptual formulation specifically explaining the integration of these three aspects within the context of regional languages. This article aims to formulate the concept of cultural-emotional concepts in regional languages through a synthesis of theories from cultural semantics, the anthropology of emotions, and social psychology, and to explain its implications for intercultural translation. The study draws upon Wierzbicka’s work on emotion and cultural semantics, Lutz’s perspective on emotion as a cultural construct, and Haidt and Keltner’s views on the social and moral functions of emotion. The synthesis indicates that cultural-emotional concepts in regional languages can be understood as units of meaning that represent emotional experiences shaped by cultural values, social norms, and the life practices of a speech community, and that are manifested through distinctive linguistic forms. These concepts not only reflect individuals’ affective states but also embody important social and moral functions within the collective life of their communities. This article further demonstrates that cultural-emotional concepts constitute a category of cultural-specific concepts, creating challenges for translation because their meanings do not always have equivalent counterparts in the target language. Therefore, cultural-emotional concepts in regional languages may be regarded as a relevant analytical category for cultural translation studies and translation research in the era of artificial intelligence.