Equivalence Theory of Translation

14 yang dia ajukan kemarin ditolak’ because Bahasa Indonesia only employs suffix – kan for command words instead of verbs. A translator may use structure shift when he or she encounters some problems preserving the meaning of source text in that of the target text. In relation to the method, a translator may change the active form of source text into the passive form of the target text.

4. Theory of Translation

a. Equivalence

Equivalence is certainly an important aspect within translation. Equivalence serves as the bridge between the source language and the target language. According to Baker 1992, there are two types of equivalence namely equivalence at word level and equivalence above word level. Equivalence at word level tends to pay attention to the word-per-word translation, while the equivalence above word level tends to pay attention to the context of translation. Even though equivalence serves as the bridge between the source language and the target language, it is rare that there is a formal correspondence between the words in the source language and those of the target language. This is a main case for the translators when they have to deal with equivalence at word level. The reason is that it is rarely possible to define even the basic propositional meaning of a word or utterance with absolute certainty. Elements of meaning which are represented by several words may be represented by one word in another language. For example, the word tennis player in English is written in one word in Turkish: tenisci. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 15 Then, as having been stated above, equivalence above word level pays attention to the context of translation. The situation, thus, becomes more complicated. The case of equivalence above word level often happens to collocation. Collocation is a tendency of certain words to co-occur regularly in a given language Baker, 1992, p. 47. For example, the English verb deliver collocates with a number of nouns while Arabian uses a different verb, namely yussalim. In English, the speakers state to deliver a baby when they would like to describe process of giving birth to a baby; while in Arabian, the speakers will state yuwallidu imra’atan which literary means ‘deliver a woman.’ English focuses on the baby while Arabic focuses on the woman. J.C. Catford supports the explanation above. The source language items and the target language items rarely have ‘the same meaning’ in linguistic sense; but they can function in same situation Catford, 1974, 49. In other words, people, especially translators, can only employ several words in the target language that may replace the function of those in the source language. This is the reason why translation equivalence can nearly always be established at sentence-rank – the sentence is the grammatical unit most directly related to speech-function within a situation. Furthermore, Bell states that language are different from each other; they are different in form having distinct codes and rules regulating the construction of grammatical stretches of language and these forms have different meaning Bell, 1997, p. 6. Bell’s statements imply that to shift from one language to another means to alter the forms. Unfortunately, the forms in the source language and those in the target language convey meaning which cannot coincide totally. In addition, there is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 16 no absolute synonymy between the words from both of the language. As a result, there will always be something lost and something gained during the process of translation and the translators might be accused of reproducing several parts of the text and of betraying an author’s intention.

b. The Common Problems of Non-Equivalence