METHODS IN TRANSLATING AGATHA CHRISTY’S NOVEL
‘APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH’
A THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra
By:
HARMIT KAUR
Registration Number : 2101220002
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS
i ABSTRACT
Kaur, Harmit. 2101220002. Methods in Translating Agatha Christy’s
Novel ‘Appointment With Death’. A Thesis English Department. Faculty of
Language and Arts. State University of Medan. 2014.
This study deals with eights translations procedures in Agatha Christy’s
Novel ‘Appointment With Death’. This study attempts to describe the eight
strategies namely, Word for Word Translation, Literal Translation, Faithful
Translation, Semantic Translation, Adaptation Translation, Free Translation,
Idiomatic Translation, and Communicative Translation. The methods and the
analysis data are based on documentary technique. The analysis of data shows that
the eight strategies in terms of percentage namely: Word for Word Translation
4,34%, Literal Translation43,3%, Faithful Translation 2,48%, Semantic
Translation 0.62%, Adaptation Translation 2,48%, Free Translation 20,49%,
Idiomatic Translation 0%, and Communicative Translation26,08%. The dominant
strategy of translating Appointment with Death novel into Bahasa is Literal
Translation because the translator wants to make grammatical constructions are
converted to the nearest TL equivalents and makes an effort to produce an
intelligible translation, which gives the readers the same impact as the original
does.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all, the writer would like to thankGod for the blessing, guarding,
guidance, and everything that have been given to the writer accomplish this thesis.
This thesis is aimed at fulfilling one of the requirements to obtain the S1
degree of Sarjana Sastra at English Department in Faculty of Languages and Arts,
State University of Medan.
In completing this thesis, the writer has received a lot of assistance and
academic support from some people. Therefore, the writer would like to express
her sincere gratitude, love and special thanks to:
Prof. Dr. Syawal Gultom, M.Pd., as the Rector of State Universityof
Medan.
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean of Faculty of Languages and
Arts State University of Medan.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., as the Head of English Department,Dra.
Meisuri, M.A., as Secretary of English Department and the Head of
English Literature Department, and Dra. Masitowarni, M.Ed., as the
Head of English Education Department.
Drs. Lidiman Sahat Martua Sinaga, M.Hum., as Thesis Advisor.
Drs. Bactiar, M.Pd, Drs. Meisuri, M.A, and Dra. Rahmah, M.Hum, as
Reviewers.
All the Lecturers throughout her academic years at State University of
iii
Her beloved parents; her mother, Gurmit Kaur and her father, Harwel
Singh for the pray, love, moral and support. And also thanks for the love
and support from her lovely sister Sarjit Kaur, and her brother
Salwinder Singh, and Jas Binder Singh.
Her best teacher Ismoyo Sandi,SS who always support and give the
information.
Her friend Satria Nuh for the support, help, and the day spent together. All her beloved classmates of Applied Linguistics Regular 2010
especially Lestari Batubara, Pinta Panjaitan, Nelly Verayanti
Hutabarat and the others that cannot be mentioned all. Thank you for the
support, information, encouragement, and beautiful day spent together.
English Speaking Club especially for Eli Syafitri and Nurul Maharatu
Rodia and the others member that cannot be mentioned all.
Maam Euis, for helping the writer in preparing the files for the purposes
of this thesis.
Without their deep and sympathetic understanding, this thesis could not
complete. Over all, the writer hopes this thesis can give a bit contribution to the
Applied Linguistics. Therefore, comments, critics, suggestions, and advices are
expected from the readers.
Medan, Maret 2015
The writer,
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... iv
LIST OF TABLES ... vi
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ... 1
A. The Background of the Study ... 1
B. The Problem of the Study ... 4
C. The Objective of the Study ... 5
D. The Scope of the Study ... 5
E. The Significance of the Study ... 5
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE ... 6
A. Theoretical Framework ... 6
1. Definition of Translation ... 6
2. Process of Translation... 9
3. Procedure of Translation... 10
4. Technical of Translation ... 17
5. Translation Methods ... 24
a. Word-for-word Translation ... 25
b. Literal Translation ... 26
c. Faithful Translation ... 27
d. Semantic Translation ... 27
v
f. Free Translation ... 28
g. Idiomatic Translation ... 29
h. Communicative Translation ... 29
6. Novel... 30
B. Relevant Study ... 31
CHAPTER III METHOD OF RESEARCH ... 32
A. Research Design ... 32
B. Technique for Collecting Data ... 33
C. The Sources of Data ... 33
D. The Techniques for Analyzing Data ... 33
CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS ... 34
A.The Data ... 34
B.Data Analysis ... 34
C.Research Findings ... 37
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ... 39
A.Conclusion ... 39
B.Suggestion ... 40
REFERENCES ... 41
APPENDIX I ... 43
APPENDIX II ... 53
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table 2.1. The Examples of Word-for-Word Translation ... 26
Table 2.2. The Examples of Literal Translation ... 26
Table 2.3. The Examples of Faithful Translation ... 27
Table 2.4. The Examples of Semantic Translation ... 28
Table 2.5. The Examples of Adaption ... 28
Table 2.6. The Examples of Free Translation ... 29
Table 2.7. The Examples of Idiomatic Translation ... 29
Table 2.8. The Examples of Communicative Translation ... 30
Table 3.1. The Analysis of Word-for-Word Translation ... 35
Table 3.2. The Analysis of Literal Translation ... 36
Table 3.3. The Analysis of Faithful Translation ... 36
Table 3.4. The Analysis of Semantic Translation ... 36
Table 3.5. The Analysis of Adaption ... 36
Table 3.6. The Analysis of Free Translation ... 37
Table 3.7. The Analysis of Communicative Translation ... 37
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of The Study
As social creatures, humans need communication to interact with one
another. In this condition, language acts as the tool support the human needs of
communication. Language is a social phenomenon which has many sides and the
function is a conspicuous side than another side. Language as the tool refers to the
function of language (Chaer, 2007:32). As the most effective method of
communication, language has been employed to satisfy the very need of
communication in helping people to interact in their social life. It cannot be
denied that language holds an important role in human life. It is supported by
Talbot (2003:01) who states that language is where forms of social organization
are produced and disputed and at the same time where people’s cultural identities
come into existence.
English as an international language is the most important language used by
a great number of people in many parts of the world. The globalization of modern
life nowadays makes people think that they have to master a foreign language in
order that they can communicate with everyone from everywhere. A clear
understanding of the nature of interlingua communication should become general
knowledge because so much of how we think and respond to new developments
in science and politics is influenced by what is happening in the process of
translating and interpreting (Nida, 2001:02).
2
One of the activities of translation is translating a text, a conversation, a
joke, a document, etc. Translation has a long-standing tradition and has been
widely practiced throughout history, but in our rapidly changing world its role has
became paramount importance. Translation is an incredibly broad nation which
can be understood in many different ways. For example one may talk of
translation as a product or a process and identify such sub-types as literary
translation, technical translation, technical translation, subtitling and machine
translation; moreover while typically it just refers to the transfer of written text,
the term sometimes also includes interpreting (Hatim, 2004:3-4).
Translation is accepted by all as a practical necessity, the task and its
results have not been without detractors. Almost all translations are bad, for they
are made by ordinary people who match the unusual foreign expression with the
commonplace in their own tongue. Moreover they add insult to injury by their
desperate concern to be literary (Nida, 1964:01).
There may well reason to complain of translating when one examine
closely what happens to a document in the process of being transferred from one
language to another. Translating does not same with speaking. That is why many
students of foreign department or people who can speak foreign language fluently
cannot do a well translation (Yazid, 2009:9).
Translation is a complicated task, during which the meaning of the
source-language text should be conveyed to the target source-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
3
It was decided that out of a group used language whoever possesses
average command of the source and target languages should be requested to
perform the crucial role of a translator. It has been found that translation is a
useful tool to learn grammar, syntax, and lexis in both SL and TL. A
word-for-word back-translation enables and understands the relationship between the two
languages (Metha, 2010:6).
It seems necessary for an acceptable translation to produce the same (or at
least similar) effects on the TL readers as those created by the original work on its
readers. It can be claimed that the best translation method seem to be the one
which allows translator to utilize 'notes.' Furthermore, employing 'notes' in the
translation, both as a translation strategy and a translation procedure, seems to be
indispensable so that the foreign language readership could benefit from the text
as much as the SL readers do. (Ordudari 2007:7).
Novel has been viewed as a process of communication from an author to
the readers. Now we can easily find many English books including novels written
in English have translated into Indonesia. One of the novels which translated into
Indonesia is Appointment with Death written by Agatha Christy. She is the most
popular novelist in the United State and she is known as ‘Queen of Crime’ since
most of her novels are about crime.
Translators sometimes use their own ways in translating novels to give
sense to the readers. But sometimes they are being faced with the problems of
choosing the correct words into target language; applying different translators’
method is one the way that translators use to overcome translation problems.
4
words into the target language (bahasa). This fact can be seen in Agatha Christy’s
novel ‘Appointment with Death’. There are some English words which are not
translated into bahasa, such as: Dropsy, Cardiac, Sophisticated, Breakdown,
Pardon, Shock, etc. These examples use adaption method.
From the examples above, the writer is interested in conducting study
about method of translation found in Appointment with Death that has an impact
on the quality of the translation based on the accuracy in content, acceptability
and readability of the novel. Another reason why the writer decided to conduct the
study about this novel because it is a best seller novel all over the world and has
been translated into 104 languages.
Therefore it is important to know what kinds of methods used in
translating Agatha Christy’s novel titled ‘Appointment with Death’.
B. The Problem of the Study
Based on the background of the study, the problems of this study are
formulated as the following:
1. What are types of methods used in translating Agatha Christy’s novel
‘Appointment with Death’?
2. What is the dominant method used in translating Appointment with Death
novel into Bahasa?
5
C. The Objective of the Study
Related to the problems above, the objectives of the study are:
1. Analyzing the methods which are used in translating the novel.
2. Finding the dominant method used in translating Appointment with Death
novel into Bahasa.
3. Finding the advantages of using the dominant methods.
D. The Scope of the Study
The study focuses on finding the methods of translating the English novel
into target language that is Bahasa. The methods are word-for-word translation,
literal translation, faithful translation, semantic translation, adaptation, free
translation, idiomatic translation, and communicative translation.
The data of this research are collected from Agatha Christy’s novel titled
‘Appointment with Death’ which consists of 26 chapters (192 pages).
E. The Significance of the Study
The findings of the study are expected to be relevant and useful in some
respects as the following:
1. It can be useful for the readers, especially students of English
Department to explore their knowledge about translation in order to get
the best result of translation.
2. It can be an advantage for those who are interested in conducting the
similar study to explore the methods of translation.
40
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION & SUGGESTION
A.Conclusion
After analyzing the methods of translation in Appointment with Death novel
and its translation, some conclusionare drawn as the following:
1. Word for Word : 4, 34 %
2. Literal Translation : 43, 4 %
3. Faithful : 2, 48 %
4. Semantics : 0, 62 %
5. Adaptation : 2, 48 %
6. Free : 20, 49 %
7. Idiomatic : 0%
8. Communicative : 26, 08 %
As the finding above, it can be seen that the dominant one is Literal
translation that is 43, 4 %, it is because the translator wants to make an effort to
produce an intelligible translation, which gives the readers the same impact as the
original does, so that the readers will not be aware that what they are reading is a
41
B.Suggestion
In relation to the conclusions above, the writer would like to offer
suggestion as following:
1. It is suggested that the students of English Department should be able to
understand the translation methods to produce an acceptable translation
as the goal of translation.
2. It is suggested that the translator is able to solve the problems in the
translation process by comprehending and applying the accurate,
acceptable, and readable translation so that the reader is unaware that he
is reading a translation product.
3. It is also suggested to the other writer to make a research of the related
42
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