Studies in Linguistics and Language Education
Appetite For Globalisation: A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of Menu Translation Strategies And Errors In The Linguistic Landscape Of The Kurdistan Region Of Iraq
Auteurs : Shukri Suzan . Ali Agar .
Résumé
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) has undergone rapid integration with global markets over the past two decades, and restaurant menus have become a visible node of this transformation. This study examines the linguistic landscape of KRI restaurant menus through an original corpus of 1,931 menu items from 109 restaurants in Duhok, Erbil, Zakho, Sulaymaniyah, Akre and Shaqlawa, coded along seven categorical dimensions (translation type, strategy, error type, adaptation type, cultural marker, source of borrowing, hybridisation) and two ordinal scales (literalness, creativity). Descriptive statistics show that borrowed translation and literal translation dominate, with foreignisation the prevailing strategy and English the prevailing borrowing source. The large majority of items are coded as globalised, with smaller shares localised or hybrid. Spelling errors are considerably more frequent than semantic errors. Chi-square tests confirm a significant association between error occurrence and adaptation type (χ²(3)=27.65, p<.001), translation strategy (χ²(4)=47.28, p<.001), and translation type (χ²(4)=56.99, p<.001), with error rates highest among globalised, domesticated and literally translated items. Qualitative examples ("Orango Juice", "Margherito Pizzn", "Kobab Chickon") show how attempts to globalise adopted meals through phonological transfer or machine-translation calques produce a recognisable error pattern. These patterns are best read as a sociolinguistic symptom of accelerated integration into global consumer culture, in which English carries powerful prestige but a professional translation infrastructure has not yet matured.
Mots clés
domestication ; foreignisation ; globalisation ; Kurdistan Region of Iraq ; Linguistic landscape ; Menu translation ; Sociolinguistics
