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understands more. It is not wise to use beautiful and flowery language but not understood by the audience
With respect to the use of Purwakanti, it was exemplified as ‘Kanthi asta
tumadhah, nyenyandang lumunturing barokah, saking Gusti Ingkang Maha Mirah, mugi tansah rumentah sarta marambah, dumateng sagung titah, satemah sami bingah,
jalaran katarimah sedyaning manah Sudiyono 2007: interview. The bold syllables
represent the rhyme. Actually, the meaning intended is simply ‘requesting the blessing of God the Almighty in order for all of us to be granted ‘safety and happiness’.
2. 9 On Translating and Transliterating the Javanese Texts
The study makes use of English as a medium of research proposing and reporting despite the fact that it deals with the Javanese language of pranatacara. The use of
English in the study is aimed at introducing the subject matter at international level or world-wide readerships. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight how the Javanese texts are
translated into English so that those with little knowledge of Javanese can grasp the
meanings. In this respect, it is possible to adopt both formal and dynamic equivalence.
By formal equivalence, I mean, is to try to have the closest possible match of form and content between ST source text and TT target text, meanwhile dynamic equivalence is
the principle of equivalence of effect on reader of TT Hatim and Mason 1990:7. When it is impossible to perform translation, I will perform transliteration to help comprehend
the texts
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It should be noted that the Javanese language of pranatacara has a lot of metaphorical use of words. Accordingly ‘the same metaphor may exist in both the source
language or the original language and the target language or the language into which the text is being translated. Another problem is that some metaphors do not translate
exactly into other languages, and there is no institutionalized metaphorical equivalent at all Knowles and Moon 2006:89-91. However, it is argued that
the selection of a translation is not just lexical or semantic, but evaluative and ideological too: switching one metaphor for
another may change the reading of the original in significant ways. This means that translators need to be aware of the
discourse function of the original metaphors… Knowles and Moon 2006:94.
From the above quotation, it is clear that 1 discourse, 2 contexts, and 3 metaphoric use of words are all determining factors in translating a special text. For
example, the conventionalized form: ‘Nuwun para tamu kakung saha putri ingkang minulya,
Excuse me - guests male and female distinguished Such a form of translation will not be acceptable, since English has also a
conventionalized form of addressing the audience. A better form of translation shall go: Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
As a researcher, I try my best to provide the English equivalence for the Javanese counterparts—that is performing translation and transliteration literal translation. The
later is actually aimed at describing the basic Javanese lexical concepts to those non- Javanese readers. Therefore not all Javanese texts are transliterated.
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2.10 Outline of Systemic Functional Linguistics SFL
