NON-EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL IN
TRANSLATING “DISCOVERY OF NORTH SUMATERA
GUIDEBOOK” FROM BAHASA INDONESIA INTO
ENGLISH
A Thesis
Submitted to English Applied Linguistics Study Program in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Magister Humaniora
By:
ERNA OLOFIANA
Registration Number: 809112027
ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM
POST GRADUATE SCHOOL
i ABSTRACT
Olofiana, Erna. Non Equivalence at word level in translating the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook from Bahasa Indonesia into English .English Applied Linguistics Study Program.Postgraduate School.State University of Medan. 2015
This research dealt with equivalence at word level which covered eleven types of common problems of non equivalence at word level. The research was based on library research. The data source were taken from the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook. The purpose of this research was to find out the types of common problems of non equivalence at word level in the result of translation from Bahasa as the source language into English as the target language. There were three research problems to be found in this research namely what types of common problems of non equivalence at word level, what was the dominant type and in what contexts were the dominant type found.
Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook, to find out the dominant type of common problems of non equivalence at word level was used in the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook and and to explain in what context the dominant type occurs in the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook. There are eleven types of common problems of non equivalence at word level based on Baker’s theory. Whereas, the findings of this research indicate that there were five types of common problems of non equivalence namely source language concept is not lexicalized in target language, source language and target language make different distinction in meaning, differences in expressive meaning, source language is semantically complex and differences in physical or interpersonal perspective . As theconclusions, there are five types of the common problems of non equivalence found in the guidebook and the dominant type is differences in expressive meaning.
ABSTRACT
Olofiana, Erna. Ketidaksepadanan pada tingkat kata dalam menerjemahkan buku Panduan Penemuan Sumatera Utara dari Bahasa Indonesia ke Bahasa Inggris. Program Studi Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris. Sekolah Pascasarjana. Universitas Medan. 2015
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, the writer would like to express the most gratitude to Lord Jesus for His
amazing and endurance Love and Grace in her life all the time.
The completion of this thesis could not have been possible without the participation
and assistance of so many people whose names may not all be enumerated. Prof. Dr.
Busmin Gurning, M.Pd and Dr.Eddy Setia, M.Ed., TESP as her advisers, Dr. Rahmad
Husein, M.Ed as the Head of English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Prof. Dr. Sri
Minda Murni, M.S as the secretary, Prof.Amrin Saragih,M.A.,Ph.D, Prof.T.Silvana
Sinar,M.A.,Ph.D and Dr.Anni Holila Pulungan,M.Hum as her examiners. Their
contributions are sincerely appreciated and gratefully acknowledged.
The immeasurable appreciation and deepest gratitude are extended to her late
parents who always gave her unending love, precious advices and brilliant ideas for her
future and also it is genuine pleasure to express her deep sense of thanks and gratitude to
her beloved sisters Sorta Evelina, Silvana Maretha, Roma Anastasia and Bennyto Gotlieb
and Rasputin Narses Girsang for their understanding, advices, constant encouragement
which were the sustaining factors in carrying out this thesis successfully. May God bless
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
ABSTRACT……….. i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……….. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS……… iv
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ……… ... 1
1.1 The Background of the Study………... 1
1.2 The Problem of the Study……….. 6
1.3 The Objective of the Study……… 7
1.4 The Scope of the Study………. 7
1.5 The Significance of the Study………...…….….….. 8
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURES……… 9
2.1 Translation……….……….… 9
2.2 Translation Process………..………...….…………... 12
2.3 Translation Equivalence……… 17
2.3.1 The Concept of Equivalence…...…………...……… 19
2.3.2 Equivalence at word level………..…. 23
2.3.3 Non Equivalence at word level……… 27
2.4 Previous Related Studies………...………. 33
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS………..……….. 71
5.1 Conclusions………...………...…. 71
5.3 Suggestions………..… 72
REFERENCES……….….. 74
LIST OF TABLES ………..………. vi
LIST OF FIGURES... vii
LIST OF APPENDICES ………... viii
vii
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
ix
LIST OF APPENDICES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Background of the Study
Nowadays, in a world characterized by global communication,
translation plays a key role in exchanging information between languages. As a
kind of communication, translation establishes an equivalence between the
source language and target language. Translation is a complicated task, during
which the meaning of the source language text should be conveyed to the target
language readers. In other words, translation can be defined as encoding the
meaning and form in the target language by means of the decoded meaning and
form of the source language. Different theorists state various definitions for
translation.
The history of translation developed during the twentieth century,
focusing particularly on the past thirty years. In the second half of the twentieth
century, a new generation of scholars such as Fedorov (1953), Vinay and
Darbelnet (1958), Mounin (1959) and Jakobson (1959) worked on the same
target namely they established a more systematic analysis of translation. The
theory of translation or translation studies is an academic interdiscipline
dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of
translation, interpreting and localization. The term translation studies was
2
nature of translation studies”. In this book, he provides a theoretical system that
both recognizes and unifies many aspects of translation studies.
The word of translation itself derives from a Latin term meaning ‘to
bring or carry across”. The Ancient Greek term is “metaphrasis” (to speak
across) and this gives us the term “metaphrase” (a literal or word for word
translation) as contrasted with “paraphrase” (saying in other words).
Some scholars give their opinions for the definition of translation such
as Nida (1969:12) defines that the translating consists in reproducing in the
receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language
message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. But this
relatively simple statement requires careful evaluation of several seemingly
contradictory elements.
Newmark (1988) highlights the fact that there was not much written
about ‘the theory of translation’. He points out that to be able to translate a text,
one has to understand and analyze it first. His view of the evolution of
translation from the 19th century and onwards, such process has as a result, the
product, the translated text.
Hornby (1988:81) defines that translation is a complex act of
communication in which the SL-author, the reader as translator and translator
as TL-author and the TL-reader interact.
Munday (2008:5) states that the process of translation between two
3
text (the ST) in the original language (the SL) into a written text (the TT) in a
different language (the TL).
Translation is used to transfer meaning from one language to another. A
written or spoken source language text will be exchanged by its equivalent
written or spoken target language to find the equivalent meaning between the
source and target language. However, in translating text, the translator will find
some problems to achieve the equivalent meaning and in this case, the non
equivalence words between source language and target language will be found
in the translation.
In line with the non equivalence problems, the researcher is interested
in conducting a research to analyze the result of the translation between two
languages, from Indonesian into English language in the Discovery of North
Sumatera Guidebook based on the theory of Baker (1992). This kind of
guidebook contains of the province of North Sumatera and it is published to
introduce the province to the investors in line with the time of AFTA. AFTA
which begins in 2015 is an opportunity for the Indonesian people to be more
advanced in the international company. In this case, Indonesia must prepare
itself to improve the quality not only of its goods and services but also of its
human skills, so that it would not serve as a mere market for other countries in
the region. It should also become a big exporter of skilled workers. After all,
Indonesia has a population of about 240 million.
North Sumatera has got many well-known tourism places which will
4
(AFTA) and Asean Economic Commnunity (AEC) which is held in December
2015. The primary goals of AFTA are (1) to increase ASEAN’s competitive
edge as a production base in the world market through the elimination within
ASEAN and (2) to attract more foreign direct investment to ASEAN with the
members, namely Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand, whereas the purpose of AEC is to transform ASEAN into a region
with the free movement of goods, services and skilled labour as well capital
and investment. Therefore, the government needs to prepare everything to
attract the investors’ attention. In this case, Indonesia must prepare itself to
improve the quality not only of its goods and services but also of its human
skills, so that it would not serve as a mere market for other countries in the
region but it should also become a big exporter of skilled workers. In
promoting our countries, the media tools of tourism are really necessary to let
the tourists or investors know more about the places they want to visit.
Regarding to the explanation above, the researcher is interested in
analyzing the result of translation in some guidebooks which are provided in
the tourism office. She has chosen one of the media tools of tourism in North
Sumatera namely the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook. This
guidebook contains of much information about North Sumatera. It is written
in three languages, Indonesian, English and Mandarin but the researcher has
limited the scope of analyzing the translation in two languages namely,
5
The guidebook will be analyzed based on the theory of Baker (1992).
She has proposed that there are five levels of equivalence namely equivalence
at word level, equivalence above word level, grammatical equivalence, textual
and pragmatic equivalence. Whereas, the research will only focus on non
equivalence at word level which means that the target language has no direct
equivalent for a word which occurs in the source text. In this case, the errors
in translation mostly are resulted from non equivalence between the source
language (SL) and the target language (TL). She acknowledges the importance
of individual words during the translation process, since the translator looks
firstly at the words as single units in order to find their equivalent in the target
language.
The data of this research will be analyzed in line with Baker’s theory. It
deals with the common problems of non equivalence at word leve in the
result of translation from Indonesian into English language found in the
Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook. The non equivalence problems will
6
Data 68
Source Language :
diperkirakan tahun 2011 sebesar US$ 8,71 milyar
Target Language :
is expected to become US$ 8.71 % in 2011
From data 20 and 68, the type of non equivalence problem is the source
language and target language make different distinction in meaning. There
were syntactic and semantic problems here. T he target language make more
distinction in meaning than the source language. The word “diperkirakan” is
not the same meaning with “expected”. If we consult to the Oxford dictionary,
the word “diperkirakan” is estimated. “Estimate” means “to guess the cost
,size, value, etc”. Whereas “expect” means “to think or believe something will
happen”.
Besides this problem, there is another problem not including in the
theory. The problem is that some words in source language are not translated in
target language properly or those words are lost in translation. It means that the
reality of Baker’s theory is contradiction because the expectation is not same
with the theory. Through this phenomena, the researcher will try to conduct an
analysis in line to the problems of non equivalence at word level.
1.2 The Problems of the Study
This study aimed at stressing the significance of equivalence in translation
7
1. What types of common problems of non equivalence at word level were
found in the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook?
2. What type of common problem of non equivalence at word level was
dominantly used in the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook?
3. In what context did the dominant type of common problem of non-
equivalence at word level occur in the Discovery of North Sumatera
Guidebook.
1.3 The Objectives of the Study
Related to the study problems above, the objectives of the study are
1. To find out the types of common problems of non equivalence at word
level in the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook.
2. To find out the dominant type of common problem of non equivalence at
word level in the Discovery of North Sumatera Guidebook.
3. To explain in what context the dominant type of common problem of non
equivalence at word level occurs in the Discovery of North Sumatera
Guidebook.
1.4 The Scope of the Study
The main topic of this research is related to non equivalence at word
level as proposed by Baker (1992). She explores the notion of equivalence at
different levels namely equivalence at word level, equivalence above word
level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence and pragmatic
equivalence. These levels of equivalence are closely related to the translation
8
together the linguistic and the communicative approach. In equivalence at
word level, she finds eleven common problems of non equivalence such as
culture specific concepts, the source language concept is not lexicalized in the
target language, the source language word is semantically complex, the source
and the target languages make different distinctions in meaning, differences in
expressive meaning, the target language lacks a superordinate and so on.
1.5 The Significance of the Study
The findings of this study are expected to be useful and relevant for
common problems which often occur in a translation, besides this can also be
helpful as a reference for those who are interested in conducting a further
study especially for those who want to be professional translators.
It is finally expected that the findings of this study are beneficial for
the tourism department to pay attention in providing the right information
through the mediation tools such as brochures, leaflets, guidebooks, etc.
especially for tourists so that the misunderstanding or misinterpretation will
71
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1 Conclusions
1. Based on the data analysis, research findings and discussion, there were five
kinds of non equivalence problems found in the Discovery of North
Sumatera Guidebook. They were (1) Source language concept is not
lexicalized in Target Language, (2) Source Language and Target Language
make different distinction in meaning, (3) Differences in expressive
meaning, (4) Source Language in semantically complex, and (5)
Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective. There were two kinds
not in line with the theory of Baker (1992) namely redundancy and lost in
translation. The numbers of each kinds could be concluded namely (1)
Source language concept is not lexicalized in Target Language : 12
problems (2) Source Language and Target Language make different
distinction in meaning : 21 problems , (3) Differences in expressive
meaning : 28 problems, (4) Source Language in semantically complex: 2
problems and (5) Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective : 1
problem. Another problems which were out of the theory found redundancy
and lost in translation : 21 problems.
2. To answer the second question of the research problem, the researcher
found the dominant common problem of non equivalence at word level
72
different distinction in meaning. It meant that the words and sentences from
the Source and Target Language were mostly in the classification of Source
Language and Target Language make different distinction in meaning.
3. As the last question of the research problems, the dominant type of common
problem of non equivalence occurred in the context of health and
manpower contexts.
5.2 Suggestions
Translation is a complicated process which has to consider many
factors such as the genre and the style of the original text, the translator’s
competence, the timeline allocates to the project and many more. There is a
great number of useful translation, yet every translator has their own reliable
methods and techniques, built on expertise and time. At the end of this chapter,
the researcher gives some suggestions as in the following :
1. It is suggested that the translators of the mediation tools should be more
careful in transferring the message from the SL into the TL to avoid the
misinterpretation of the message as this book is intended to attract the
investors’ attention, especially for facing Asean Economic Community
(AEC) 2015. The translation should not be translated literally but it should
be done naturally based on the linguistic of the TL.
2. It is suggested that the tourism department should pay more attention in
73
3. It is suggested that the further researcher to explore the common problems
of non equivalence at word level in another tools media because the
researcher is really necessary to remind the tourism department in
providing the information properly and in this case, the translators should
be more accuracy and careful in conveying the message from source
language into target language because they have an important role to
produce a good translation. In other words, they are not enough to have
merely semantic, syntactic and pragmatic knowledge as Bell (1991:36)
states that the translator must know how propositions are structured
(semantic knowledge), how clauses can be synthesized to carry
propositional content and analyzed to retrieve the content embedded in
them (syntactic knowledge) and how the clause can be realized as
information-bearing text and the text decomposed into the clause
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