NICKNAMES OF PAETONGTARN SHINAWATRA GOVERNMENT: NAMING STRATEGIES AND TRANSLATION STRATEGIES FROM THAI INTO ENGLISH

Abstract

The purposes of this research was to study about naming strategies and to analyze translation strategies for the nicknames of Ms. Paetongtarn Shinawatra Government and Cabinet defined by Thai media. This study employed a qualitative research method. A total of ten Thai nicknames were collected from the online newspaper, namely Thairath, and other English nicknames were gathered from news website of The Nation for ten words and Thai PBS World for ten words. To analyze naming strategies for the Thai language, speech play concept
by Sherzer’s (2002) was applied in the research. The research results were reveals that there were eight strategies in the creation of nicknames, including word clipping and addition, referring, wordplay, emphasizing, transcription, using idioms, metonymy, and vowel rhyme. Regarding
the translation strategies of nicknames from Thai into English, the theoretical framework of Malone (1988, cited in สุพรรณี ปิ่นมณี, 2561) was applied. Five translation strategies were found as following, equation, diffusion, reordering, mixed strategies, and free translation—the latter emerging as a distinct approach observed in the data. The research finding was indicated that personal names and political-parry names have been commonly used as a main component in creating nicknames and tended to exist even after being translated into another language. Moreover, using a part of a personal name or political-party name as the main component for defining nicknames indicated the different objectives. Nicknames derived from the political-party name have reflected the party’s overall images, roles, and political standpoints, while those derived from persons’ names have been focused on personal behaviors or individual actions.