Cognitive Processes in Culinary Translation: Implications for Mandarin Indonesian Translator Education

Abstract

This study investigates the cognitive processes involved in translating Mandarin food menu items into Indonesian, with particular attention to pauses, self-corrections, and the use of online reading materials. Grounded in translation process research, the study adopts a qualitative descriptive approach to explore how a translator negotiates meaning, culture, and linguistic equivalence during translation. The data consist of a Mandarin food menu comprising 15 items (85 words), translated by a qualified Mandarin– Indonesian translator. The data were collected using Translog II to record keyboard activities and pauses, and VLC Media Player to capture screen activities related to online resource consultation. The findings reveal that pauses are a crucial indicator of the translator’s cognitive effort, particularly when resolving cultural and semantic ambiguities. Self-corrections emerged as a dominant strategy, including meaning correction, word substitution, addition, deletion, grammar correction, and capitalization. Notably, meaning correction was frequently motivated by cultural sensitivity, such as replacing the term Cina with Tiongkok to avoid discriminatory connotations in Indonesian. The study also shows that while machine translation tools— especially Google Translate—play a supportive role in comprehension, they are insufficient for producing culturally and contextually appropriate translations without human intervention. Overall, this research highlights the complexity of the translation process and underscores the importance of cognitive awareness, cultural knowledge, and critical revision skills in culinary translation. The findings contribute to translation process studies and offer pedagogical implications for translator training, particularly in the use of technology-assisted translation tools.