Tense and Aspect Problems of English - Indonesian Grammatical Categories in Translation

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2.8.4 Tense and Aspect

English has two tenses past and present and two aspects perfect and progressive. Meanwhile Bahasa Indonesia doesn’t have tense and aspect. Adverbs of time and temporal determiners used to indicate past and present, such as kemarin and dulu in past and sekarang, saat ini in present. The words of sudah and telah indicate perfect, meanwhile progressive indicated by word of sedang. There is no agreement of verbs related the tense and aspect in Bahasa Indonesia. It makes easier in translation. There are some variations of tenses and aspects of English, such as past future, past perfect future, and so on. From http:majalahtempointeraktif.com, “when the writer of the book translates them into Bahasa Indonesia, it makes the reader feels confused then he writer should explain the function and when it is used”. Perfect progressive tense, for instance is to indicate that one event is in progress immediately before, up to, until another time or event. In Bahasa Indonesia, it means that the determiners of time sudahtelah, akan, masihsedang used altogether at once. Here are the examples: 68 She has been sitting here for two hours waiting for her boyfriend - Dia sudah sedang duduk di sini selama dua jam menunggu kekasihnya, 69 I will study at ten and you will come at twelve. I will have been studying for two hours by the time you arrive - Saya akan belajar jam sepuluh dan kamu akan datang jam dua belas so Saya akan sudah masih belajar selama dua jam saat kamu tiba. The Indonesian forms cannot be accepted in Indonesian system because the words ‘telahsudah’, ‘akan’, ‘masihsedang’ 41 cannot be put altogether in one sentence. The forms should be: 70 Dia sudah duduk di sini selama dua jam menunggu kekasihnya, dan sekarang dia masih duduk di sini; 71 Saya akan belajar waktu kamu datang, Saat itu saya sudah belajar selama dua jam, Dan saat itu juga saya masih belajar. From the examples above, the translator will get difficulties in choosing the right form without changing or adding the meaning.

2.8.5 Voice