Digital Boundary Translation Theory: How Cultural Hotwords Navigate Cross-Linguistic Privacy Boundaries in Digital Consumer Behavior

Cross-linguistic digital communication represents a critical frontier for international consumer marketing, yet existing Communication Privacy Management theory cannot explain how consumers coordinate privacy boundaries across languages with fundamentally different cultural constructs. This limitation becomes acute when consumers encounter cultural hotwords—terms like NFT, chill, or FWB—that carry divergent marketing meanings across linguistic contexts. Drawing on translation studies, cultural semiotics, and boundary work theory, we develop Digital Boundary Translation Theory (DBTT), which explains cross-linguistic boundary coordination as active cultural transformation processes affecting consumer-brand relationships, trust formation, and purchase intentions in global digital markets. Through qualitative analysis of 39 multilingual consumers across six countries, complemented by Google Trends data (2019–2024), we identify four translation mechanisms and validate four hypotheses about cross-linguistic boundary management. Our findings reveal that consumers actively transform boundary meanings through sophisticated translation work that creates hybrid cultural identities, with significant implications for international marketing strategy, global brand communication, and digital platform design.