Alahapperuma, Malithi; Vlachidis, Andreas; (2025) The Semantics of Emotion: Exploring Synonym Rings to Evaluate Emotive Contexts in Translations Across Sinhala and English. In: Sfakakis, Michalis and Garoufallou, Emmanouel and Damigos, Matthew and Salaba, Athena and Papatheodorou, Christos, (eds.) Metadata and Semantic Research (MTSR 2024). (pp. pp. 349-362). Springer: Cham, Switzerland.

Text Mapping_the_semantics_of_emotions_in_translations_using_SRs_Alahapperuma_&_Vlachidis.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 27 February 2026. Download (368kB)

Abstract

Each language has its own body of emotion vocabulary. It is also possible to map emotion terms of one language to similar terms in another language. However, the mere existence of similar terms across languages does not guarantee that emotion concepts being translated are identical. Emotion terms can evoke different feelings in different individuals and often embody the societal and cultural norms of a linguistic community. Hence, conveying emotions across languages poses a unique challenge in translation. This paper explores the role of knowledge organisation systems and synonym rings for enabling better understanding and encoding of emotionally weighted material in translations. The study uses synonym rings to present emotion vocabulary across Sinhala and English and employs contextual evidence and literary text translations to analyse and evaluate the findings. The research identifies and utilises three pillars of inquiry: (1) Cognition, (2) linguistics, and (3) socio-cultural factors to explore the ways in which individuals perceive and express emotions across Sinhala and English.

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