Background of the Study

1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

We live in the big and wide world that consists of many countries. Every country has their own language which is different from others. It means that there are many languages in this world. Language as means of communication has been used by human being for thousand years. The human being uses language to communicate to others and convey their ideas, thoughts, and feelings. One thing that can not be denied is the diversity of language. The diversity of the language can be a problem in communication, especially in international communication. As human being feels curious is part of life. Because of this curiosity, we are always eager to know anything happened in the world. One of the ways to fulfill this curiosity is reading magazine, newspaper or browsing internet. But, when the magazine, newspaper, and internet are written in different language from ours, it can be the problem for us to read and understand them. So, the way to solve this problem is translation. Translation means transferring the meaning of the source language into receptor language Larson 1984:3. While Catford 1965: 1 defines translation is the replacement of textual material in one language SL by equivalent textual material in another language TL. From the definition above, it can be concluded that translation is the process of transferring the meaning of the source language into the target language. Universitas Sumatera Utara 2 Process of translation is reproducing the natural equivalent of the source language SL message especially in terms of meaning and style Nida and Taber 1969:12 in Kongres Nasional Penerjemahan 2003:36. There must be correspondence of meaning between source language SL and target language TL. A translator should have a perfect knowledge both of the source language and the target language. Of course, it is not easy for the translator to make natural translation and has the exactly same meaning with the source language. And it can be a difficulty for the translator in doing translation, because every language is different from others as Nida in Venuti 2000:126 states that there are no two identical languages, either in the meaning or in the structures. While Simatupang 1999:88 argues that “Setiap bahasa mempunyai aturan-aturan sendiri, aturan-aturan yang berlaku pada suatu bahasa belum tentu berlaku pada bahasa lain”. Each language has their own rule which occurs in one language but not for others. With regard to the ideas of Nida and Simatupang, it can be concluded that there is no absolutely correspondence between languages; therefore, a translator is expected to be able to adjust the meaning or structure of source language to the appropriate meaning or structure in target language and to produce the natural translation. The possible way to adjust the meaning or the structure of two different languages is by making shifts. Vinay and Darbelnet in Newmark 1988:85 state, “Shifts is a translation procedure involving a change in the grammar from source language into target language”. While Delabatista in Kesuma 2009:1 states, “the term shift is used in translation to refer to changes which may occur in proses of Universitas Sumatera Utara 3 translation”. The term shift firstly introduced by J.C. Catford. Catford 1965:73 states that shift is departs from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL. Catford divided shifts into two major types; they are level shift and category shift. And category shifts is divided into four types, they are structure shifts, class shifts, unit shifts, and intra system shifts. The shift is done by the translator in order to establish equivalent and the exact meaning or structure in target language so that the translation could be natural and communicative. If the translator does not do the shifts, then heshe preserves the form of the source language, the result or the product of the translation might not be good, rigid, and inflexible, and it will make the readers confused and even the translation would lead them to the wrong understanding. In this thesis the writer wants to analyze one of the types of category shifts, that is the unit shifts. Unit shifts is also called rank shifts. Catford in Munday 2001:61 states “Unit shifts or rank shifts are shifts where the translation equivalent in the TL is at different rank to the SL. ‘Rank’ here refers to the hierarchical linguistic units of sentence, clause, group, word and morpheme”. Unit shifts are done because an idea or expression which is usually conveyed in word level in SL must be conveyed in phrase level in TL. In another word unit shifts deals to the change of rank from the source language to the target language. The source of data in this thesis is The Mystery of the Blue Train novel and its translation Misteri Kereta Api Biru. The data are sentences that contain the unit shifts found in the translation of Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train into Misteri Kereta Api Biru by Nyonya Suwarni A.S. Universitas Sumatera Utara 4 The following are some examples of unit shifts the writer finds after reading the novel and it’s translation at a glance: ST: It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde. TT: Menjelang tengah malam seorang laki-laki menyebrangi Place de la Concorde From the example above, the clause it was close in source text is translated into word menjelang in the target text. It means that there is a change of rank from clause to word. ST: “The American is punctual”, said Olga with a glance at the clock. TT: “Orang Amerika itu benar-benar tepat waktu”, kata Olga sambil melihat jam. From the examples above, it can be seen there are two changes of rank. Both of them are from word to phrase. The first one the word American in ST is translated into phrase orang Amerika in TT, and the second one the word punctual is translated into tepat waktu. The fact that the translator faces the condition that forces himher to make shifts especially the unit shifts or hierarchy unit of language to keep the meanings constant so that the messages can be conveyed naturally and communicatively makes me interested in analyzing the unit shifts which usually occurred in the translation from English to Bahasa Indonesia. Universitas Sumatera Utara 5

1.2 Problem of the Study