'I’ll find it... or I’ll look it up...?': Decoding Thai EFL Students' Translation Errors in the Thai-English Language Pair in Multi-Linguacultural Higher Education

Amid the abundance of studies on translation errors in Thailand, a scarcity remains especially within the multi-linguacultural context of Thailand's Deep South. To address this gap, this study aims to examine Thai-English and English-Thai translation errors encountered by 232 Thai EFL university students studying English in three universities located in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat, primarily Pattani-Malay speakers with Thai and English as second and third languages, and some proficient in Arabic. The study employed two sets of 20-sentence translation tests and analyzed via qualitative content analysis. The findings reveal that semantic errors (65.02%), miscellaneous errors (20.73%), and syntactic errors (14.25%) were found in English-Thai translations, whereas syntactic errors (46.88%), semantic errors (40.76%), and miscellaneous errors (12.36%) were found in Thai-English translations respectively. The results suggest that linguistic proficiency, cultural familiarity in both the source and target languages and cultures, and L1 interference were considered as possible core factors influencing students' translation abilities. The study suggests integrating cultural experiences into translation teaching to better prepare learners for real-world challenges in multilingual educational settings.