Translation Class

Problem in Translation

Wahyu Indah Mala

Rohmana
• Problems in translation deal with linguistic and cultural
(un)translatability. , Indonesian and English are
linguistically and culturally distant languages.
• They do not share a lot of linguistic and cultural features
in common.
• However, lexically, both English and Indonesian use
affixes.
• Their grammar is expressed through syntactic words,
word order, and suprasegmental units (stress, rhythm,
and intonation).
• However, they are different in terms of lexicon, grammar,
collocation and culture.
 DIFFERENCES

I II III
Lexical Differences Grammatical Differences Culture Differences
 LEXICAL DIFFERENCES
✔ A word, as a lexical unit of a language,
carries many meanings (polysemous). ✔ Meaning also varies across
✔ For example, the word “house” may languages.
mean rumah atau gedung tempat ✔ The word “rice” can be
tinggal. translated into Indonesian padi,
✔ “House” may also be translated into
gabah, beras, and nasi.
dinasti as in the “House of Carringtons”,
or dewan in “the House of Similarly, when translating “go”
Representatives”. into German, it is important to
✔ In addition, the word “house” in “the know whether the equivalent
House of Commons” does not have word would be “gehen (on
anything to do with “house” or rumah.
foot)” or “fahren (by car)”.
✔ On the other hand, the word rumah in
these words should not be translated ✔ The word hutan may be
with “house”, rumah makan translated into “woods”,
(restaurant), rumah sakit (hospital), “forest”, “jungle”, “wilderness”
rumah sakit jiwa (soul asylum), rumah in English.
yatim piatu (orphanage).
✔ Likewise, Eskimo even has
✔ Thus, the lexical meaning of a word is
not one-to one, relationship with around fifty words for “snow”.
another word in another language.
 LEXICAL DIFFERENCES
✔ In linguistics, we have known semantic fields, conceptual concepts which reflect the
divisions and subdivisions imposed by a given linguistic community on the
continuum of experience, e.g. the field of ‘plants’ with subdivisions such as
“flowers”, “shrubs”, and “trees”.
✔ “Plants” are the hypernym (superordinate) and “flowers”, “shrubs”, and “trees” are
hyponyms (subordinate).
✔ Sometimes, the semantic fields in one language are different from those in another
language. For example, the verbs “hear” (mendengar) and “see” (melihat) have their
own lexical meanings, but they belong to the same semantic field, “perception”.
✔ Overlapping semantic fields are problematic in translation. Words that have
multiple meanings (polysemous words) are often untranslatable. In translating,
translators must find equivalents by considering their semantic fields.
 GRAMMATICAL DIFFERENCES
✔ Other than lexical problems,
English differs from Indonesian
in terms of grammatical
categories.

✔ English is marked by tense,

number, aspect, and gender.

✔ Time in English is
grammaticallymarked, while In
Indonesian, it is
lexicallymarked. It means that
the change in time in English is
indicated by a change of verbs.

✔ For example:
• Plural words in Indonesian are indicated by reduplication or the addition of
determiner para, kaum, banyak, etc.
• In English, plurality is indicated by the addition of morpheme –s (chairchairs),
morpheme –n (ox-oxen), change of vowels –a into –e (man-men), a transformation of
–oo- into –ee- (goose – geese), etc. However, English plural forms may not always be
translated into plural in Indonesian. For example: wild plants growing in the forests
– tanaman liar yang tumbuh di hutan, not *tanaman-tanaman liar yang tumbuh di
hutanhutan*. (Widyamartaya, 1989)
• Indonesian and English are neither polysynthetic language in which aspect is
indicated in the word. Aspect is a grammatical category which involves using affixes
and/or changing the form of the verb to indicate the temporal distribution of an
event, for example whether an event is completed (perfective) or whether it is
momentary or continuous (imperfective). Both English and Indonesian mark aspect
through time indicator.
Collocation
Lexical patterning cannot be expressed in
rules, but may be identified as recurrent
patterns in the language; such as the
likelihood of certain words occurring with
other words and the naturalness or
typicality of the resulting combinations.

Collocation means the tendency of certain

words to co-occur regularly in a given
language. First, the co-occurrence
tendency is related to their propositional
meanings.
For example: cheque is more likely to
occur with bank, pay, money, and write
than with moon, butter, playground or
repair.
However, meaning cannot always account
for collocational patterning.
 Problems in translating Collocations
A. The engrossing effect of source text patterning .
For example: strong tea is literally ‘dense tea’ in Japanese.
Keep the dog is unacceptable in Danish because they usually ‘hold the
cat’.
In Indonesian, “beat the egg” (memukul telur) is uncommon

B. Misinterpreting the meaning of a source language collocation due to

interference from his/her native language.
For example, “pay a visit” means berkunjung not membayar kunjungan.

C. The tension between accuracy and naturalness

D. Culture-specific collocation
 CULTURAL
DIFFERENCES

Cultural differences refer to differences of world view which are reflected in the language.
Idioms are frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and often
carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components.
a. change the order of the words in it (*like two pods in a pea)
It should be: “like two peas in a pod.”
b. delete a word from it (*spills beans) should be “spill the beans.”
c. add a word from it (“to face the classical music) become “to face the music”
d. replace a word with another (*bury a hatchet) become bury the hatchet.”
e. change its grammatical structure (*the music was faced)  “to face the music

The main problems in translating idioms and fixed expressions are the ability to recognize and
interpret an idiom correctly.
 CASES OF
MISINTERPRETATION
1. Some idioms are misleading. They seem transparent because they offer a reasonable literal interpretation and
their idiomatic meanings are not necessarily signaled in thesurrounding text.
For example: go out with (have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone), and take someone for a ride
(deceive someone in some way).
2. An idiom in SL may have a close counterpart idiom in the TL which looks similar on the surface but has a totally or
partially different meaning.
For example: Has the cat got your tongue? is used to urge someone to answer a question or to contribute to a
conversation.
Indonesian: Apakah lidahmu kelu?

3. An idiom or fixed expression may have No equivalent in the target language. It is culture-specific, and therefore
untranslatable.
For example: Yours sincerely is translated into Dengan hormat; to carry coals to Newcastle is translated into
menggarami air laut.
4. An idiom or fixed expression may have a similar counterpart in the target language, but its context of use may be
different.
“To sing a different tune” is an English idiom which means “to say or do something that signals a change in opinion
because it contradicts what one has said or done before”.
In Chinese the same ‘to sing different tunes’ (chang-dui-tai-xi) means contradictory points of view but has quite a
different usage”.
A literal word-for-word translation of these idioms
into other languages will not make sense. The
form cannot be kept, but the target language
word or phrase which has the equivalent meaning
will be the correct one to use in the translation.
NATURALNESS OF TRANSLATION

• To ensure naturalness, Newmark (1988: 178) mentions that the translation work can
be in the translator’s own dialect or his conception of the source language.
• Over-translation happens when the translator translates a sentence, a clause, or a phrase
in the source language longer than it should be
• Under-translation happens when the translator reduces the meaning.

• Translators must be aware of three senses which occur within words.

1) primary sense is a sense which come to minds when the word is cited in isolation.
2) secondary sense, a sense which is dependent upon context for an indication of the sense
intended.
3) figurative sense, a sense based on associative relations with the primary sense.
 EXERCISE
In each of the following pairs of sentences, which is more idiomatic English? How
would the meaning be expressed idiomatically in Bahasa Indonesia?

(a) The storekeeper said that we will refund your money.

(b) The storekeeper promised to refund our money.

(a) A certain boy told me this little story at a party.

(b) He is one boy. He told the one little story. This is a game he said.

(c) He then reported his misfortune to the police, who are searching diligently for the
thief.
(d) He then his mishap reported to the police, who are the thief intensively
searching.
 EXERCISE
1. Sir, the problems of before don’t forget.
2. To the honorable Mister Guests, we please you sit down.
3. My motive to write this letter is to give know you something.
4. Correctly, I have saw you and she together at town with my eyes and head myself.
5. I have crying until no more eyes water thinking about you.
6. If there are mistakes, I’m sorry.
7. Please apologize if I make mistakes to you.