EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND.

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Siti Khodijah, 2015

EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu

EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND

A Research Paper

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Sarjana Sastra Degree

Siti Khodijah

1009178

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE EDUCATION

INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

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Oleh

Siti Khodijah

Sebuah skripsi yang diajukan untuk memenuhi salah satu syarat memperoleh gelar Sarjana pada Fakultas Pendidikan Bahasa dan Sastra UPI

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia

Januari 2015

Hak Cipta dilindungi undang-undang.

Skripsi ini tidak boleh diperbanyak seluruhya atau sebagian,

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu PAGE OF APPROVAL

A Research Paper

Siti Khodijah 1009178

Approved by:

Main Supervisor

Drs. Ahsin Mohamad, M.Ag. NIP: 195408171989031002

Co-Supervisor

Susi Septaviana R., M.Pd. NIP:197609042009122002

Head of English Education Department, Faculty of Language and Literature Education, Indonesia University of Education

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EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA

TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND

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EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ……….. 7

2.1 Equivalence in Translation ……….. 7

2.2 Types of Equivalence ……….. 9

2.3 Culture-specific Items Definition and Classification ………….. 14

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EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND

9. Forms of Entertainment ……….. 17

10. Transposition ……….. 17

11. Fictional Characters ……….. 17

12. Measuring Systems ……….. 17

2.4 Omission in Translation ……….. 18

2.5 Previous Studies ………... 18

2.6 Concluding Remark ………... 20

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ………... 22

3.1Research Design ………... 22

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ……… 27

4.1 Cultural Words Found in the Novel Bumi Manusia ……… 27

4.1.1 Cultural Words Categories ……… 27

4.1.2 Equivalence of the Cultural Words Translations ……… 31

1. Natural Equivalence ……… 33

2. Directional Equivalence ……… 40

4.1.3 Omitted Translation of the Cultural Word ……… 58

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EQUIVALENCE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL TERMS IN PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S THIS EARTH OF MANKIND

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the methodology used in the study including the explanation of how the data were obtained and were analyzed, the description of the source of data, and the sample of how the data were presented. In addition, this chapter also provides definitions of some key terms in this study. As stated earlier, this study is intended to answer the following questions: what are the types of cultural terms found in the novel? and what type of equivalence is applied in the cultural term translation?

3.1Research Design

This study mainly used qualitative data analysis. According to Cohen, Manion, & Morrison (2007), qualitative data analysis is always related to the description of data based on certain categories and regularities. This means that the data in qualitative research are analyzed by categorizing the data.

In line with the definition of qualitative data analysis above, Creswell (2007) argues that qualitative research is an interpretative naturalistic research since the primacy of qualitative research is to interpret data in their natural setting. This emphasizes that the data should be original. It is not recommended to manipulate the data in order to keep the flavor of the original data (Cohen, et al., 2007).

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu 3.2Research Questions

As stated in the previous section, the purpose of this study was to answer the following questions:

1. What are the types of cultural terms found in the novel?

2. What type of equivalence is applied in the cultural term translation?

3.3Object of The Research

The object of this research is a historical novel written by Pramoedya Ananta Toer entitled Bumi Manusia. This novel is the first book of Buru Quartet which was originally written in 1980 and the first publisher was Hasta Mitra. However, in this study, the novel which was used as the data resource was published in 2005 by another publisher, Lentera Dipantara. As mentioned in the fifth page of the novel, Bumi Manusia has been translated into more than three languages in the world (Nurmala, 2014). This novel was translated into English in 1983 by Max Lane. The title of the English version of Bumi Manusia is This Earth of Mankind.

This Earth of Mankind is a story set in 1898 and tells about colonial life in Indonesia at that time. The story of this novel is told in Minke’s voice, first person point of view. That is why the novel engages the readers with Minke’s life and situation. Besides Minke, Nyai Ontosoroh and Annelies are the other important characters in this novel. The main issue in this story is about education. Education is considered important as the thing that has great influence in technology system development nowadays. It is told that all sophisticated technology we find in the world begins with great knowledge possessed by people from the west. Well educated people in the past are the pioneer of modernity nowadays. In short, education is the key to make decision in any circumstance(s).

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concubine, Nyai had a better life with her wealth she got from her business. Unfortunately, Minke and Annelies start to love each other but their love brings up problems for Minke’s life and his education. Minke regularly comes to Annelies’s house and he even spends so many nights there as invited by Annelies and her mother. This situation does not influence Minke’s achievement in his school but one day when Annelis’ father is murdered, Minke is involved in the murder. This almost makes Minke leave school because his teachers presume that Minke has a forbidding relationship with Annelies.

3.4 Data Collection

In the process of collecting data, the first step was reading the original version of the Toer’s novel, Bumi Manusia. This reading activity was conducted in order to select Indonesian cultural terms in the novel. There are 116 Indonesian cultural terms found in the novel. Those cultural terms were selected by categorizing those terms into cultural categories proposed by Espindola and Newmark.

After reading and selecting the terms which are culturally bound, the

English translation of the novel, This Earth of Mankind was also read in order to look for the translations of each cultural term found in the original novel, Bumi Manusia. The translations of each term are the secondary data for this study.

Based on those collected data, each of the cultural term was paired with its translation. Finally, the pairs of data are the object to be analyzed in terms of the cultural category and the type of equivalence. In the process of collecting data, it is important to say that this study focuses on analyzing Indonesian cultural terms in the novel Bumi Manusia and their English translations in the English translation of the novel, This Earth of Mankind.

3.5 Data Analysis

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fictional character, measuring system, personal life, social life, ecology, public life, customs and pursuits, and private passions.

The second step was finding out the definition of those cultural words to make it easy in determining the type of equivalence. Most of the definitions were found in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) and articles related to some Indonesian cultural words and phrases. The third step was evaluating the translations of each cultural bound word previously found in the original text. Then, using the theory about equivalence in translation proposed by Pym, the writer classified those translations into two types of equivalence namely natural equivalence and directional equivalence.

The fourth step was observing the occurrences of each type of cultural category and type of equivalence. In this step, the percentage of each type of cultural category and type of equivalence was calculated. This step was carried out by using the following measurement formula:

P = F

N

P = Percentage of an item

F = Frequency of an individual item N = The total number of the occurrence

The last step was gathering and discussing the finding to draw conclusions and suggestions for further studies. The following table is the sample of how the data in this study are analyzed. The complete data of this study can be seen in appendices pages provided in the last section of this study.

Indonesian Text English Text Cultural

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In the translation above, the word ‘limun’ refers to a kind of beverage. That is why this term was categorized into personal life category. The term limun

as can be seen in the table above was translated into English ‘lemon’. This translation is included as natural equivalence because the word ‘lemon’ and limun

naturally have the same meaning.

3.6 Concluding Remark

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

This chapter provides the conclusion of this study. This chapter answers the two research questions of this study. The first research question is about the cultural categories of each cultural word found in the original version of This Earth of Mankind. The second research question is about the type of equivalence applied in the English translations of each cultural word. In addition, this chapter also provides some suggestions that can become a useful guidance in having a field research on translation, especially in cultural words translations.

5.1 Conclusions

Based on the data analysis in this study, there are some general conclusions that can be withdrawn. The first conclusion, in relation to the first research question about the cultural categories, there are 12 cultural categories found in the Indonesian version of the novel This Earth of Mankind. 6 of those 12 cultural categories are proposed by

Espindola (2005), they are toponyms, anthroponyms, forms of entertainment, means of transportation, fictional character, and measuring systems. The 6 remaining cultural categories are proposed by Newmark (2010), they are personal life, social life, public life, ecology, customs and pursuits, and private passions.

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people have specific terms in referring to traditional clothes, food, and housing terms. It is line with Newmark’s statement that languages have their typical household appliances, as well as food and clothes (Newmark, 2010).

The second conclusion is related to the second research question in this study. The question is about the type of equivalence which is applied in each English translation of the cultural words in the novel. There are two types of equivalence which are used as the indicators. Those two types of equivalence are proposed by Pym (2007), they are natural equivalence and directional equivalence. The data analysis of this study shows that the most frequent equivalence used in the translations of the cultural words is natural equivalence. This indicates that there are Indonesian cultural terms which have equivalent translation in the target language, English. That is why the translator was able to find natural translations for those terms and he has successfully achieved natural equivalence in his translation. As stated in the previous section of this study, natural equivalence deals with “what languages do prior to translation” to achieve equivalence (Pym, 2007, P.1).

Additionally, there are 23 cultural words which were not translated into

English. Those words belong to toponyms, anthroponyms, and fictional character categories (names of places, people, and fictional characters). In line with the statement of Hervey and Higgins, these words were not translated because in general, in translating names, one of the alternatives to maintain the original meaning is to directly take the form of the SL into the TL (Hervey & Higgins, 1992).

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easy to understand. The most important thing is that the translator has faithfully preserved the original meaning of the cultural words.

5.2 Suggestions

Referring to the entire process of the analysis in this study, there are some suggestions for translators and readers who are interested in conducting research relating to this study. Firstly, for a translator, it would be better for a translator to try harder in finding equivalent words in the target language before deciding to employ translation strategies like borrowing, modulation, etc.

This is very important to be noted because there might be a word in the target language available to be the translation of a particular word in the source language. For example, the word guna-guna, in fact, can be naturally translated into English with the word ‘witchcraft’. Thus, the translator could make the translation sounds as natural as possible without using borrowing strategy. In other words, the anticipation above is correlated to one of the requirements to be a good translator. As stated in the previous chapter, a translator should have profound knowledge of both the source

language and the target language. Furthermore, it is also important that a translator should be able to figure out the cultural background of the two languages.

Secondly, for those who are interested in conducting research especially in the field of cultural words translations, there are some points which are important to be considered. The points are as follows:

1. The researcher should be critical in determining the cultural words. The data which are being identified should be ascertained as cultural words in the source language. The researcher needs to know the boundaries to claim that a particular term is a cultural word.

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validity to the supervisor, it is also recommended to consult the validity with a cultural observer.

3. It is recommended that the next translation studies are conducted more critically, not only in form of textual analysis. A researcher, for example, can try to conduct an interview with the translator of the novel which is being analyzed. This interview can be an effort to find the reasons why some particular strategies are used in translating cultural words.

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