Overview of Translation REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Overview of Translation

Generally, translation is a matter of transferring something from one language to another language. Terminologically, translation is derived from the word “translate” and suffix “–ion”. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English 2000 defines translate or to translate as to give the meaning of something said or written into another language while –ion is a suffix which means forming nouns denoting the action of a verb Martinus 2008:102. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 1993 defines translation as a rendering from one language into another; a change to a different substance, form, or appearance. However, the definition or the concept of translation is not just limited to what we can find in dictionary. Further elaboration is needed to make it clearer. Many experts and linguists give their own definitions about translation that can give a better explanation to the reader; for example, Brislin 1976:1 states, “translation is a general term referring to the transfer of thoughts and ideas from one language to another, whether the language is in written or oral form, whether the languages have established orthographies or not; or whether one or both languages are based on signs, as with signs of the deaf.” Brislin, 1976:1 According to Jiří Levý in Venuti 2000:148, translation is a process of communication: the objective of translating is to impart the knowledge of the original to the foreign reader. He also states, 9 “from the point of view of the working situation of the translator at any moment of his work that is from the pragmatic point of view, translating is a decision process: a series of a certain number of consecutive situations – moves, as in a game – situations imposing on the translator the necessity of choosing among certain and very often exactly definable number of alternatives.” Jiří Levý in Venuti, 2000:148 Larson 1984:51 declares that translation is a text form in the SL is replaced by the text form in the TL. Another expert, Wilss, gives a long explanation about the definition of translation where he introduces three kinds of understanding in doing translation. He declares “Translation is a transfer process which aims at the transformation of a written source language text SLT into an optimally equivalent target language text TLT and which require the syntactic, the semantic, and the pragmatic understanding and analytical processing of the source text. Syntactic understanding is related to style and meaning. Semantic understanding is meaning related activity. Finally, pragmatic understanding is related to the message or implication of a sentence.” Wilss, 1982: 3 This definition does not state what is transferred. Rather, it states the requirement of the process. Nida and Taber 1982:12 see translating as a process of reproducing in the receptor language to the closest natural equivalent of the SL message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. In other words, translation is a transfer of meaning, message, and style from one SLT to the TLT. In the order of priority, style is put the last. Here the things to reproduce transfer are message. According to Nida and Taber, when translators translate or transfer some words from the SL into the TL; the closest meaning, equivalence, and natural form of SL is the necessity. Therefore, they suggest that the translators should concern about meaning first. 10 The definition of translation conveyed by Nida and Taber gives a new idea about translation that it deals with the meaning of what SL tries to imply and delivered it as clear as possible into the TL. It shows that translation with correct structure is useless without meaning. Larson 1984:3 states that translation means transferring the meaning of the source language into receptor language. Moreover, Newmark presents further view towards the transferring of meaning in a translation. He says 1988:5, “Translation is rendering the meaning of one text into another language in the way that the author meant the text”. Supporting Newmark’s idea about the definition of translation, Muchtar 2013:7 also says “Basically translation is transferring messages from SL to TL”. Simatupang in his book Pengantar Teori Terjemahan also conveys the same idea about translation that it is about transferring the meaning in SL into TL. He states “menerjemahkan adalah mengalihkan makna yang terdapat dalam bahasa sumber ke dalam bahasa sasaran dan mewujudkan kembali di dalam bahasa sasaran dengan bentuk-bentuk yang sewajar mungkin menurut aturan-aturan yang berlaku dalam bahasa sasaran. Jadi, yang dialihkan adalah makna bukan bentuk” Translating is to renderthe meaningcontainedin the SLintothe TLandreflect it backinthe TLas natural as possiblein accordance withthe grammatical rulesapplicablein the TL. Therefore, what istransferredisnot a formbut meaning Simatupang, 2000:2 In other words, he clearly states that translation is transferring meaning in SL into TL and restructuring the meaning into TL as natural as possible according to valid grammatical rules of TL. Hence, structure is not the one that is transferred, but meaning is. However, translation is not only limited about transferring matter but it also deals with material replacement as what stated by Catford. He says 1965:20, “Translation is 11 the replacement of textual material in one language SL by equivalent textual material in another language TL”. From this definition, Catford is inclined to emphasize on the equivalence of material replacement than concerns about transferring meaning. Bell 1991:5 conveys the same idea about the equivalence in translation. He says, “Translation is the expression in another language or the TL of what has been expressed in another source, language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalence”. From this definition, he gives clear explanation and meaning about the concept of translation that translator as the subject who does the process of translation, must concern about the aspect of linguistic and style. While those experts above are trying to define translation based on meaning and style, there are other experts that give another idea about translation. Hatim and Mason 1997:1 state that translation also deals with semantic and culture aspects. They assert that translating is as an act of communication which attempts to relay, across cultural and linguistic boundaries, another act of communication which may have been intended for different purposes and different readers or hearers. That idea of translation is also supported by Kridalaksana, an Indonesian expert in translation theory. He 1983:128 declares that translation is transferring message among cultures or among languages in grammatical and lexical point by preserving the message, effect or structure as possible as it can be. In his book, he writes, “Terjemahan ialah pengalihan amanat antarbudaya danatau antarbahasa dalam tataran gramatikal dan leksikal dengan maksud, efek atau wujud yang sedapat mungkin tetap dipertahankan” Translationisthe transfer ofthe mandate ofinterculturalandorinter- 12 language at the level ofgrammaticalandlexicalby retaining its purpose, effectormanifestationas good as possible. In brief, he views translation as transferring message which across culture among languages. As what has been explained above, it can be found there are so many definitions or concept of translation, buttosummarizeallthe definitionoftranslationbriefly and clearly, wecanseefromwhat is proposedby Beekman and Callow. They in Silalahi 2012:11 state that penerjemahan adalah mengkomuni-kasikan satu pesan dari satu bahasa ke bahasa yang berbeda. Translation is to communicate one message from one language to other different language. Of course, the last definition about translation proposed by Beckman and Callow embrace all the definition of translation explained by other experts above. The main purpose of translation is indeed to try to communicate what the SL tries to imply and deliver it in the TL. Hence, based on those definitions above, it can be deduced that translation is about delivering one message from what has been written or spoken in the SL to TL without changing the real meaning; indeed, in the attempt to do that, concerning the equivalence and making the result sounded as natural as possible is prompted because as a good translator, it is expected to make a product of translation which does not look or sound like one. A good translator is the one who is invisible in the point of view of the readers. By means invisible is when a reader reads a product of translation, for example a translated novel, it must be looked as the real novel instead of a product of translation. In other words, the readers must be unaware of the existence of the translator in the product of translation as stated by Finlay 1974:2, “Ideally, the translation should give 13 the sense of the original in such a way that the reader is unaware that he is reading a translation”

2.2 Function of Translation