TRANSLATION

AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-INDONESIAN Translation Quality on

Twitter Web Pages (A Case Study)

BY

METHA ARMITHA
216 501 059

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL FACULTY

ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT
LAKIDENDE UNIVERSITY
KONAWE
 2018
AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-INDONESIAN
Translation Quality on Twitter Web Pages (A
Case Study)

Introduction
The globalization era affects every aspect in people’s life especially in
communication aspect. As a result, communication has become an essential element in
globalization and language plays a vital role in communication. In order to communicate
with others effectively, people have to master particular languages since different
countries have different languages. However, this rich variation of language creates language
barriers among countries which do not speak the same languages. Therefore, most
countries take English as a global language to bridge people to communicate with others.
Unfortunately, there are still countries or communities which cannot use and understand
English well, thus, to overcome the language and cultural barriers, translation has
become an important activity to fill the barriers towards language differences.
Translation makes people easily get any information without confusion. To create a
good translation, translators have to use appropriate procedures (see Newmark, 1988;
Newmark (1988; Larson, 1984; Vinay and Darbelnet, 1973) in translating the source texts to
target texts to create suitable and meaningful messages. It is also supported by Gibova (2012,
p. 27) who states that “when analyzing translations of any sort, be it literary or non-literary
texts, there are certain categories that allow us to examine how the target text (TT)
functions in relation to the source text (ST).” In addition, different genre of text has different
treatment or procedures depending on the functions such as referential or informative,
expressive, and operative (Reiss, 1976; Nord, 1977, cited in Colina, 2003, p. 14).

Literature Review
In accordance with the present study, it draws an interest in conducting research
dealing with the analysis of English-Indonesian translation procedures on Twitter Web
pages. The reason of choosing Twitter Web pages as the subject of the study was that
Twitter has become a popular social networking nowadays, and it has been translated into
several languages, including Bahasa Indonesia. However, a good translation must be
conducted to guide people to use it appropriately. Since Twitter has various pages, the
research will be limited only in translated sentences and phrases on the Web pages based on
the characteristics of a good translation from several experts such as Newmark (1988),
Berman (1995, cited in Venuti, 2000), Lewis (1985, cited in Venuti, 2000), Tytler (1797,
1978, ; also in Robinson 1997a, cited in Munday, 2009), Nida (1964, cited in Venuti, 2000),
Massoud (1988, cited in Abdellah: 2002).
The Skopos theory is the most basic theory about translation and was introduced
into translation theory by Hans J. Vermeer in the 1970s as a technical term for the purpose of
a translation and the action of translating (Munday, 2001, p. 78). In this theory, the process
of translation is determined by the functions of the product, in short, it depends on the
reader or addressee of the text (Jabir, 2006).
Additionally, Nord (1997a, p. 29) cited in Jensen (2009, p. 15) argues that according
to the Skopos theory, all texts are perceived as serving a specific purpose, therefore,
the translator should translate in a way which enables the text to function in the situation
in which it is to be used and with the people who want to use it and in the way they want it to
function.
In line with this theory, Reiss and Vermeer (1984, p. 119), cited in Munday (2001,
p. 79), formulate six basic underlying rules of Skopos theory. First, a translatum (or
TT) is determined by its Skopos. Second, a target text is an offer of information in a
target culture and TL concerning an offer of information in a source culture and SL. Third, a
target text does not initiate an offer if information is in a clearly reversible way. It indicates
that the function of a translatum in its target culture is not necessarily the same as in
the source culture. Fourth, a target text must be internally coherent. Fifth, a target text
must be coherent with the ST. The fourth and the fifth rule correspondent with two general
Skopos rules to judge the success of the action and information transfer: the coherent rule
and the fidelity rule. The last but not the least, the five rules above stand in hierarchical
order, with the Skopos predominating.
Meanwhile, equivalence is a key concept in modern translation theory which defines
the translational connection between either an entire ST and a TT or between an ST unit and
a TT unit in terms of the degree of correspondence between the texts or the text units
(Munday, 2009, p. 185). It means that without the equivalence, translation would not be
possible (Nida and Taber, 1969/1974; Kohler, 1989, 1995, cited in Munday, 2009).
Furthermore, equivalence means that the translation will have the same value as some
aspects of the source text, such as the value is on the level of form, reference, and
function (Pym, 2007, p. 273).
Eugine Nida (1964) distinguishes two types of equivalence; formal equivalence and
dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both
form and content. It means the form (e.g. syntax, word order, idiomatic expressions)
and content (e.g. the subject matter) of the SL text are recreated in the TT as closely as
possible and in such a way that they are comprehensible to the TT reader. On the other
hand, dynamic equivalence based on the principle of equivalent effect that the relationship
between receiver and message should be aimed at being the same as that between the
original receivers and the SL message. The dynamic equivalence model focuses on the
receptor of the TT, i.e. the audience. This focus requires translators to adjust their texts to
the target culture, to harmonize them linguistically in terms of grammar and lexis, and
to make them sound ‘natural’ (Basnett, 2002, p 34; Munday, 2009, p. 184, 191 & 193).
The translator should know the characteristics of good translation in order to
deliver meaningful and correct meanings. A good translation fulfills its intention and
conveys the facts acceptably (Newmark, 1988; Tytler, 1797, 1797, 1978; also in
Robinson 1997a, cited in Munday, 2009; Nida, 1964, cited in Venuti, 2000). In line
with that theory, Berman (1995) cited in Venuti, (2000) states that good translation shows
respect for linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text by developing a
“correspondences” that “enlarges, amplifies and enriches the translating language”.
Moreover, Lewis (1985) in Venuti (2000, p. 268) describes a good translation should be a
double interpretation, faithful both to the language or message of the original and to the
message-orienting cast of its own language. conveying the spirit and manner of the original,
(3) having a natural and easy form of expression, and (4) producing a similar response.
Thus, based on the several points mentioned in the previous paragraph, the
characteristics of a good translation must be a main intention for translation in order to
produce excellent translation text. Furthermore, it can be concluded that in transferring the
message SL text into the TL text, a translator must convey the meaning of original text, and
also a good translation should be clear and understandable.
Methodology
The focus of this study is to investigate the translation quality of the Indonesian
translated version of Twitter Web pages. Therefore, this research employed qualitative case
study (Baxter and Jack, 2008; McMillan and Schumacher, 2003, cited in Syamsudin and
Damayanti, 2007). The data used in this research were some words or phrases on the Twitter
Web pages. In this research, The data were gained through the analysis of translation
procedures of the sample texts, phrases, or clauses from Twitter Web pages as well as through an
interview towards selected English students majoring Translating to explore what pages which are
often visited by the students and their responses towards the quality of the translation.
In selecting the participants of the interview, two considerations were taken into
account. First, the final score of translation practice course of each participant is “A” indicating
that the participants possessed sufficient knowledge specifically in relation to translation, its
practice, and the characteristics of good translation which are significant in this research. The
second consideration was that each participant had reached more than 1000 tweets showing that
they are frequent and active users of Twitter.
The in-depth interviews were conducted in the form of informal conversational
interview. The interviewees were asked in the natural course of things. The primary intent of
the informal interview is to find out what the interviewees think and how the views of
one individual compare with those of another (Fraenkel, Wallen& Hyun, 2012, p.
451). The first interview was aimed at discovering user’s most visited pages on Twitter
Web pages when they access Twitter Website and the second interview was aimed at
figuring out their responses towards the translation quality, whether it is an acceptable
translation or not an acceptable translation. Thus, five English students majoring translating
whom also Twitter users were chosen to be the interviewees (1964, cited in Venuti, 2000),
Massoud (1988, cited in Abdellah, 2002). Nevertheless, there are several translation versions
that are inappropriate and unnatural in the receptor language. Hence, the whole samples
were classified into two groups, the qualified translation group and unqualified translation
group. The first group, the qualified translation group, consists of the Indonesian
translated version of Twitter Webpages that fulfil the criteria of a good translation that is
proposed by several experts. The second group, the unqualified translation group, consists of
inappropriate and unnatural translation of Indonesian translated version of Twitter Webpages.
The following table is the data presentation of the classification of the translation quality:
The above table shows the classification of translation quality, the result
indicates that from 170 phrases found in the Indonesian translated version of
Twitter Web pages, the result shows that 162 phrases or 95,3% of the translation are
considered qualified translation. While 8 phrases or 4,7% of the translation are
considered unqualified translation since it has not fulfilled the criteria of a good
translation. It proves that in the Indonesian translated version of Twitter Webpages
are qualified, which means that it has a good quality.
The sample of qualified translation is the sentence ‘Compose new tweet’ which was
transferred into ‘Buat tweet baru’. It can be seen that the translation is literal translation
procedure in rendering the meaning of the SL text into the TL text. The use of literal
translation procedure had delivered the meaning of the source text appropriately,
understandable in the target language, and also gave a complete transcript of the ideas of
the original work. Thus, it fulfils the characteristics of a good translation (Tytler, 1797, p.
14–15, 1978, p. 15– 16; also in Robinson 1997a, p. 209, cited in Munday, 2009, p. 23).
Another translation procedure used in the sentence above was transference. The word
‘tweet’ was transferred into ‘tweet’. It could be noted that the translator do not lexicalize
the word tweet into the target language, whereas the word ‘tweet’ actually has equivalent
meaning in the target language which means ‘kicauan’. However, the word ‘tweet’ can be
understood very well in the target language, since the words ‘kicauan’ and ‘mencicit’ are
rarely used in the target language. The word ‘tweet’ has already represented the meanings
and the ideas of the source language. It also preserves the characteristics of style and manner
of the original (Tytler, 1797, p. 14–15, 1978, p. 15–16; also in Robinson 1997a, p. 209 as
cited in Munday, 2009, p. 23). The application of these forms showed that the translation
were based upon Skopos and equivalence theories (Reiss and Vermeer, 1984, p. 119 as cited
in Munday, 2001, p. 79; Nida, 1964 as cited in Basnett, 2002, p 34; Munday, 2009, p. 184,
191 & 193). Thus, it can be said that it fullfils the characteristics of a good translation.
Inappropriate translations of the word ‘email’ since it lacks of naturalness.
Furthermore, it did not preserve cultural context of the TL language. This is relevant to
theory proposed by Berman (1995) saying that good translation shows respect for linguistic
and cultural differences of the foreign text by developing “correspondence” that
“enlarges, amplifies and enriches the translating language” (Berman, 1995, p.94, cited in
Venuti, 2000, p. 219).
The word‘Email’ actually has the equivalence meaning in Indonesian language that is
‘surat elektronik.’ In this case, however, the translator used the word ‘email’ as a loan
word rather than translating it literally into ‘surat elektronik’. It would be better if the word
‘email’ was translated literally to ‘surat elektronik’.
Then, Duncan, a pseudonym, supported the finding of the translation product of
the word ‘email’. Duncan stated that the word “e-mail” could be translated into “surat
elektronik” which could be more acceptable and was equivalent to the target language.
As can be seen in the word ‘mobile’ which was translated into ‘ponsel’ and it is
acceptable. This word was translated literally because it has equivalent meaning in the
receptor language. Furthermore, the meanings of the words are clear and accurate, and also
understandable in the receptor language. Thus, it can be noticed that this translation fulfilled
the Skopos theory in which it determines the purpose of the translation.
In addition, the use of ‘surat elektronik’ as the translation of ‘email’ has been
widely used in several magazines, news, and daily life in Indonesia nowadays. The Rolling
Stones Indonesia, one of the music magazines in Indonesia, used ‘surat elektronik’ instead
of ‘email’ (See: Nismara, 2013, available athttp://rollingstone.co.id/read/2013/
12/02/132900/2429745/1093/ bruno- mars-konser-dijakarta-untuk-kali- kedua-tahun-depan).
(Lewis, 1985, cited in Venuti, 2000, p. 268).

Conclusions
This case study research has figured out the quality of the translation. This research is
aimed at finding out its translation quality. Therefore, the present study draws several
conclusions related to the research questions and the aims of the study.
The use of translation procedures is aimed at preserving the meaning of SL to the TL.
The good characteristics of the translation products are also achieved since the clarity and
naturalness of the TL are maintained despite several improper translations.
Nevertheless, in relation to the inappropriate translations as in “e- mail” should also
be considered. From the interview, besides gaining what Twitter Web pages that are
frequently visited by the students, it is also found out that the interviewees’ opinions
towards the translation version of Twitter Web pages are positive and it is in line with
what the analysis of procedures and theories proposed by the experts.
In relation to the present study, a suggestion is proposed in relation to the
characteristics of good translation that the translators should create and choose natural and
clear translation to achieve the goals to attain the real message of the text.
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