c. Cultural Meaning of Words
As what Mildred L Larson said in his book, Meaning Based Translation 1984:431,
culture is a complex of believe, attitudes, values, and rules which a group of people share. It can be concluded that people have their own culture.
Language is also one of the cultures had by a group of people. A word in one group of people may have same or different meaning.
It is not only the language that is different. It is not also different in every country, but even in every region, language and culture could be different.
Indonesia has many cultures. We can see one of the differences from the using of color of the flag for a sign of the death. Color red will be used in Solo, white in
Yogyakarta, yellow in Lampung, and so on. This is a proof that language can be seen from anything including color.
It is no need argument about the differences of culture. Due to the fact that translation is transferring the idea of one language to another language, every
translator cannot easily forget about the culture brought by its language. If we take a look at the word “pig”, the use of this word in Papua Guinea and in Jewish is
different, even though the object is the same. For people in Jewish, they understand “pig” has a connotation meaning of unclean, however people in Papua
Guinea signify “pig” as a wealth. The people of a given culture look at things from their own perspectives Larson, 1984:137. The perspective in translating the
onomatopoeia lies in the hearing of the speaker. For people in Indonesia, they cannot say “bark”, because what they usually hear is “guk”.
3. Characteristics of Language Theory
In translating the language, knowing the characteristic of language which affect translation is needed. According to Mildred L. Larson, in his book entitled
Meaning-Based Translation: A Guide to Cross-Language Equivalence 1984,
there are three characteristics which have a very direct bearing on principles of translation:
a. Meaning Components
Meaning components are “packaged” into lexical items, but they are “packaged‟ differently in one language than in another. Meaning components is
sometimes called as plurality, for example the English –s.
b. Same Meaning Components
The same meaning component will occur in several surface structure lexical items forms. In English, the word „sheep‟ occurs. However, the words
„lamb‟, „ram‟, and „ewe‟ also include the meaning „sheep‟.
c. Alternative Meaning
One form will be used to represent several alternative meanings. Most words have more than one meaning. There will be a primary meaning-the one
which usually comes to mind when the word is said in isolation-and secondary meanings-the additional meanings which a word has in context with other words.
4. Theory of Translation Strategy
It is not easy in translating the onomatopoeic expression. It is because of the different cultural background underlying the translator. There may be some
onomatopoeic expressions which are not translated in Indonesian lexically. This
Kategori