This study investigates how emotional meaning is constructed and reconfigured in translation by comparing the English and Indonesian versions of Unit Six of Aurelie Moeremans’ bilingual memoir Broken Strings (2025). It aims to identify the distribution of emotions in both texts, examine how these emotions are linguistically realized through Appraisal resources, and explain how shifts in Appraisal reshape emotional intensity across the two versions. The study employs a qualitative comparative design by integrating Plutchik’s (1980) Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion and Appraisal Theory within a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework. The data consist of 56 parallel clause pairs analyzed across three dimensions: emotion categorization, appraisal realization through Attitude, and intensity scaling through Graduation. The findings show that fear is the dominant emotion, primarily realized through Affect, especially insecurity, reflecting a sustained sense of vulnerability. Anger appears through both Affect and Judgement, indicating emotional response as well as moral evaluation. The study also reveals that the Indonesian version tends to intensify emotional meaning through greater explicitness and force-based graduation, although this intensification is selective rather than uniform. These findings suggest that translation does not simply preserve emotional meaning but actively reconstructs it through evaluative resources, shaping the representation of trauma and emotional subjectivity in bilingual narratives.
Sukaesih et al. (Wed,) studied this question.