Asian Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Studies

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is increasingly circulated through multilingual museum texts, tourism interpretation, short-video scripts, digital exhibitions, and official “international publicity” materials. For Hunan—home to emblematic practices such as Xiang embroidery, local opera traditions, fireworks craftsmanship, and diverse foodways—translation is not a neutral conduit but a cultural act that selects, reframes, and revoices heritage for global publics. This review examines Hunan ICH international publicity translation through the lens of cultural translation theory, treating translation as negotiation across asymmetries of knowledge, value, and representational power. Synthesizing recent work from translation studies, heritage studies, public diplomacy, and digital humanities, the article argues that the central problem is not “how to translate words,” but how to translate cultural legitimacy: how local categories of meaning (ritual efficacy, apprenticeship ethics, place-based identity, embodied know-how) can be rendered intelligible without being flattened into exotic spectacle or generic branding. The review identifies recurrent tensions—authenticity versus accessibility, foreignization versus domestication, narrative cohesion versus encyclopedic explanation, and community voice versus institutional messaging—and maps them onto the communicative ecology of contemporary heritage publicity. It then proposes a culturally oriented strategy set that combines thick contextualization, paratext design, multimodal coordination, and governance mechanisms (terminology management, stakeholder review, quality evaluation, and responsible AI use). By reframing Hunan ICH translation as cultural translation work, the review aims to support more accurate, ethical, and globally resonant heritage discourse.