Exploring food translation in Japanese manga translated into Malay: a social semiotic multimodal perspective

Food is not only a basic human need but also part of material culture – an ambassador of cross-cultural understanding. Although it frequently appears in Japanese manga, even when not central to the narrative, research on its translation remains limited. By adopting a social semiotic multimodal perspective, this paper presents a qualitative content analysis of 22 Japanese manga and 31 Malay translations published in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Findings show that Japanese food-related terms in manga published in the 1990s and 2000s mainly used substitutes pertinent to the target culture and that partial meaning transformation occurred. Food items in manga published in the 2010s were translated with more complete meanings, with image and layout affordances increasingly exploited to accommodate explanatory notes. These findings suggest shifts in translator/publisher agency towards greater use of multimodal resources to overcome language barriers, cultural differences, and layout-related space constraints in food translation.