Background of the Study
feel the connection and the special feeling between the two main characters in the novel.
Romantic elements are choosen because romance is something which is very common in our life, especially for the readers whose aged usually around
late-teenage 18 – 22 years old to adult. Romance is indeed an endless topic.
Happiness, trust, faithfulness, promise, jealousy, anger, sadness, waiting, hope, etc., can be found in almost all of works of art whose topic is romance. There are
a lot of source about romance. Besides Nicholas Sparks‟ works, there are Jane Austen‟s, John F. Wright‟s, Kate Thompson‟s, Dewi Lestari‟s for Indonesia
author, etc. Romance can be expressed in various way and style, and in English, it has its own language style in describing the romantic elements. It will be quite
challenging for the translator to transfer the English romantic sentences into Bahasa Indonesia, which both surely have different cultural background.
The thesis also analyzes whether in Bahasa Indonesia version, those romantic sentences in English still can be accepted for the target language
readers. The term accepted here means that the sense of beauty and romance in the story not become over-romantic sense when it is transferred into Bahasa
Indonesia, because usually, when it comes to romance, in English the feeling of romance and love can be very touching, but when it is translated into Bahasa
Indonesia, the value and the sense of romance become faded and the readers will possibly feel that the story is over-romantic, then in the end it results different
perspective or understanding between the source language readers and the target language readers.
The different understanding of the meaning from the source to target language has to be avoided by the translator. For example,
“You are one lovesick puppy” 2006:144 translated into “Kau sudah jadi budak cinta”
2010:206 ; “I was head over heels crazy about Savannah” 2006:144, becomes
“Aku tergila-gila setengah mati pada Savannah” 2010:206. Those two pairs of quotations are translated quite different from the target language. This kind of
case will be the point in discussing the acceptability of the translation, since the results of the translation are different from the real meaning of the source
language. The translations can be different, but they have to be as natural as possible for the target language cultural background which surely influences the
target readers understanding. The romance part in this novel can be found when the plot of the story is
focusing in the part when the main character is with his girlfriend and also when he is away from her. In the romance part, there are a lot of good and beautiful
sentences that refer to the love story of the main character and his girlfriend, such as,
“I was head over heels crazy about Savannah” 2006:144, “You‟re a rare gentleman, John, and I treasure that about you” 2006:138, “The sensation
of her skin against mine was like fire, and we began to make love” 2006:172, “I slipped my hand into hers knowing that I love her not only more than the last
time I‟d seen her, but more than I would ever love anyone” 2006:153. This study of the translation strategies and the acceptability that are in
Sparks‟ Dear John and its IndonesiantranslationDear John by Barokah Ruziati is worth to be done. It is because by seeing the translation from the aspects of the
strategies and acceptability, this thesisresults in the finding whether the target language version is acceptable for the target language readers or not and still
have the same value as the source language version.