Background of Research Oblique translation of label collections at museum Nasional Indonesia (National Museum of Indonesia)

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Research

Translation is a process of changing a text from source language SL into target language TL. When translating a text, it means the translator not only translating both of the languages, but also transferring the cultures and messages in the SL text in order to produce a good translation for the readers. Nida and Taber similarly maintain that translation is delivering the content of messages of SL text without changing its meaning and language style to TL text. 1 In translation, there are some certain methods which can be used by the translator to translate a text. Different from Peter Newmark who mentioned that a translation text can be translated in three ways; they are methods, techniques and procedures, Vinay and Darbelnet divided the translation methods into two types covering the seven translation procedures, direct translation and indirect translation. Each method consists of three and four procedures. Furthermore, they named the indirect translation as the oblique translation. 1 Eugene A. Nida and Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982, p.12 Direct translation has the same meaning with the word for word translation and oblique translation is a method which allows the translator using the other procedures whenever the direct translation is impossible to use. 2 In some cases, there are texts which cannot be translated literally because it will produce different meaning in TL and it causes the translator to find the equivalent meaning of both languages. Therefore, the oblique translation is needed. Translation can be applied in many kinds of texts and one of the examples is translation on label collections in museum. Label means a text which is put near an object or group of objects in a museum and its function is to explain or describe about the ancient object itself. Basically, in Indonesia, it only uses Indonesian, but the labels nowadays are made in dual language, Indonesian- English, due to the number of tourists who come to Indonesia and often visit museums. The oblique translation is used as the translation method to render the labels in Indonesian into English descriptions because sometimes the description cannot be translated directly due to the selected words or sentences in SL text have no equivalent meaning in TL text. In this case, the translator needs to change the structure of the TL text and find the equivalence of both 2 Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet, Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation translated by Juan C. Sager and M.-J. Hamel, Netherland: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1995, p.31 texts. So, the same interpretation can be transferred appropriately by the translator of the text. In this research, the writer tries to analyze the types of oblique translation and how those types are applied in Indonesian-English translation which is used by the translators or the museum practitioners to translate the label collections at Museum Nasional Indonesia National Museum of Indonesia. Consequently, a research using the translation theory is needed to analyze the process.

B. Focus of Research