NATIONAL MENTALITY IN PROVERBS TRANSLATION: A LINGUOCULTURAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH AND UZBEK HOSPITALITY AND FAMILY PROVERBS

Proverbs serve as succinct expressions of a culture’s worldview, embedding national mentality through culturally specific imagery and moral perspectives. This study undertakes a linguocultural analysis of English and Uzbek proverbs related to hospitality and family, exploring how national mentality shapes their meaning and the implications for translation. English proverbs often reflect individualistic and pragmatic values, emphasizing self-reliance and family priority. In contrast, Uzbek proverbs highlight communal harmony, respect for elders, and spiritual or ethical principles, with hospitality extending beyond familial bounds to honor guests as quasi-family members. The research involves a comparative examination of proverb pairs collected from authoritative phraseological dictionaries and scholarly compilations in both languages. The study applies Eugene Nida’s dynamic equivalence framework to evaluate formal (literal) versus dynamic (sense-for-sense) translations, complemented by an analysis of cultural translation strategies such as domestication, foreignization, paraphrase, and explicitation.