Cultural Borrowings Essay

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4.3 What are the impacts of culture on the borrowings used in the movies?
Dorjee (:132) stated that “language is basis of a culture” and it is always embedded with “one’s personal history and social and cultural history.” Therefore, based on the statement, it can be concluded that the multilingualism which is mainly Chinese, Malay and others such as Thais has created an impact of the borrowings. As far as the function of English subtitles are concerned, it is important for non Mandarin native speakers to understand the story which is conversed in Mandarin with some code switching in Bahasa Melayu. It is because in the movie subtitles, the author chose to transliterate which directly borrowed from source language for maintaining originality and authenticity of the language in target language. In addition, Osman et al. (2010) stated Chinese community is very concerned Confucianism. One of the aspects that mainly highlighted in Confucianism is respect, whereas the youth is expected to show their …show more content…

Besides, Char Kuey Teow is one of the Malaysian signature dishes and it is not common to foreigners. In Malaysia, we may come across of Kopi O and Kopi Beng in normal Kopitiam. However, in western café or restaurant, people would prefer to have coffee which can be served as hot or cold. In this situation, the material culture can be embedded with prestige. As mentioned by Newmark (1988:97), “whilst commercial and prestige interests remain strong, the western words such as French words is still prevalent for prestige reasons.” As an alternative, “one can recommend translation for words with recognised one-to-one equivalents and transference, plus a neutral term, as such coffee for Kopi O for general readership.”

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