Author(s)

Song Lu ¹, Zhenwei Hu ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Changchun Normal University, Changchun, Jilin, China

Corresponding Author

Zhenwei Hu

ABSTRACT

Tea Ancestor belief is central to the cultural landscape of Jingmai Mountain, yet its local meanings are distributed among named trees, ritual structures, ancestral figures, and festivals. This article examines how those meanings may be carried into English through selected passages in Fan Jianhua, Deng Zixuan, and Zhou Li's Jingmai Shan: Gu Cha Mang Lin (2024). It situates the study in thick translation theory and the Jingmai Mountain heritage context, then uses close textual analysis to develop three connected strategies: retaining culturally distinctive names with concise classification, embedding ritual context in the surrounding narrative, and clarifying relationships among people, places, and changes in ceremonial location. Attention to the Blang and Dai names for a protected tea tree, to the spatial symbolism of an altar, and to the distinct roles of a temple, pagoda, and festival shows why an isolated glossary equivalent is insufficient. Thick translation, understood as selective contextualization, can preserve the specificity of local belief without turning a readable heritage narrative into a sequence of explanatory notes. The study offers a source-grounded account of translation decisions; reception effects remain to be tested.

KEYWORDS

Thick Translation; Tea Ancestor Belief; Jingmai Mountain; Heritage Translation; Culture-Specific Terms; English Translation

CITE THIS PAPER

Song Lu, Zhenwei Hu. English Translation Strategies for Tea Ancestor Culture in Jingmai Shan: Gu Cha Mang Lin from the Perspective of Thick Translation. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2026). Vol. 9, No. 2, 62-66. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2026.090208.

REFERENCES

[1] Appiah, K. A. (1993). Thick translation. Callaloo, 16(4), 808–819. https://doi.org/10.2307/2932211.
[2] Fan, J., Deng, Z., & Zhou, L. (2024). Jingmai Shan: Gu Cha Mang Lin. Yunnan People's Publishing House.
[3] UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1665/.

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