17 The colonel promptly replied, Sir, I always count my money, my shirts,
and my horses - but as for my years, I know nobody who wants to steal them, and I shall surely never lose them.
In this example, the anecdote lies in the last line. The colonel does not count his years he has been living, since he thinks that the years cannot be stolen, unlike
his other possessing, like his money, shirts, and horses.
3. Translation
According to Newmark 1988, translation is a process of rendering the meaning of a text in a source language SL into the target language TL. Larson
1984 proposes more complex definition of translation. He writes the definition as follows 1984:3:
Translation consists of studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural context of the source language text,
analyzing it in order to determine its meaning, and then restructuring this same meaning using the lexicon and grammatical structure which are
appropriate in the receptor language to and its cultural context. Based on La
rson’s definition, rendering meaning becomes the priority in translating a text, rather than rendering the form. In other words, a translation
must reproduce the meaning aspect of a text to the target audience. A translator might face difficulties in translating the form aspect, since a source language
might not have the same linguistics elements as the target language. Therefore, modifying the form when is often inevitable when translating.
According to Hatim and Munday 2004, translation has two senses. The
first sense, translation as a process, comes from the first definition suggested by the dictionary, which is the act or an instance of translating. The second sense,
18 translation as a product, derived from the definition of translation which is a
written or spoken expression of the meaning of a word, speech, book, etc, in another language. Hatim and Munday then conclude that the first sense is the
process of translating an original text or source text ST into another language text or target text TT. Then, the second sense focuses on the product of the
translation.
4. Semantics
Based on Leech 1981, semantics, which is a branch of linguistics field, is the study of meaning. He states that semantics is essential to the study of
communication. Leech 1981 also emphasizes that studying semantics is increasingly pressing, as communication becomes more an important factor in
social organization. Since the focus of this study is translation, the writer would like to employ the theory of hermeneutics.
Forster 2008 defines hermeneutics as theory of achieving an understanding of texts, utterances, or other forms. Mainly, hermeneutics concerns
about processing the ability of understanding things from a person’s point of
view. In accordance with translation, Shi 2005 believes that there is no translation without involving understanding and interpreting texts, which is the
first step in translation. Any misinterpretation will lead to inconsistent translation, if not completely incorrect translation. In addition, reproducing the exactness from
an original text is not the ultimate goal of translators, but they need to pay attention that the translated text has to be similar in the effect.
19
5. Verbal Humor Translation
