The Analysis of Translation Strategies on Thai Country Songs with Critical Thinking in the 21st Century

The purpose of this research aimed 1) to study the translation strategies of Thai country songs (Lukthung) from Thai to English; and 2) to analyze the problems found in the process of translating Thai country songs into English with critical thinking. In this study, there were 15 selected song lyrics which have been released between 2018–2020. Both the quantitative and qualitative methods were used in this study. The analysis was based on Baker for poetry translation strategies and Duron et al. for critical thinking in the 21 st century. For the translation strategies, there were totally 8 strategies namely translation by a more general word, by a more neutral or less expressive word, by a cultural substitution, by a borrowing word, by a paraphrase using related words, by a paraphrase using unrelated words, by omission, and by illustration. The poetic form of Thai country songs represented the difference between Thai and English as well as the socio-culture between source language and target language. For the analysis of problems, there were main 5 categories namely 1) a deficit in Thai language skill, 2) a deficit in English skill, 3) the linguistic problems on sentence structure (syntax), 4) the problem on social and cultural context, and 5) the lexical problem for selecting words. The findings could develop the suitable translation methods and contribute to the teaching of the translation of Thai country songs into English.