WP WP Techniques to Translate the Wordplay in The Lego Movie
The wordplay in the example can be found in the expression ‘a little bit...deadly’. ‘deadly’ is an idiomatic expression used by President Business to
represent the situation at the office. He is angry because Bad Cop failed to kill Emmet and other Master Builders. He decides to make a serious meeting with
Bad Cop in the office. Thus, he tells his secretary, Velma, to cancel his other activities after the meeting because he is really angry to Bad Cop and he says he
plans to kill Bad Cop by throwing him to the infinity space, even actually, he does not really want to kill him. Thus, this phrase can be termed as an idiomatic
expression because President Business uses the phrase ‘deadly’ to represent how angry he is that he scares Bad Cop by saying the meeting could run a little bit
‘deadly’, although actually he does not want to kill Bad Cop. The result of the translation in the target text for this phrase may seen
unique. When the phrase is translated into Bahasa Indonesia, the translator gives a literal meaning to the target text, but the wordplay still contains in the target
text. In the target text, the phrase ‘deadly’ turns into ‘mematikan’. This phrase in Bahasa Indonesia still contains wordplay and still have an understoodable
meaning for the audience. The translation of the phrase in the target text also is correct because the meaning of ‘deadly’ itself is ‘mematikan’. It can be said that a
wordplay, even is translated into literal meaning, still can be recreate through the target text. It depends on the level of difficulties of the word or phrase and how
creative the translator in recreating the wordplay in the target text.
Morever, the next example comes from the syntactic wordplay that translated using WP WP technique, the datum below shows how the technique
used to recreate wordplay in the syntactic wordplay.
ST Unikitty: Any idea is a good idea, except the not happy ones. Those we
push down deep inside where you never, ever, ever, ever...find them Your fellow Master Builders are gathered in The Dog.
Emmet Brickowoski: The...what? Is that Superman? TT
Unikitty: Setiap ide adalah ide yang baik, kecuali yang tidak menyenangkan. Mereka akan ditekan jauh di dalam, dimana kau tidak
akan pernah, pernah, pernah, menemukan mereka Para ahli pembangunmu sudah berkumpul di Sang Anjing.
Emmet Brickowoski: Sang apa? Apakah itu Superman?
Datum number 20 It has been explained in the syntactic wordplay above how Unikitty raise
an ambiguity by saying ‘The Dog’ to Emmet, Wyldstyle, Viitruvius and Batman. She does not tell them what ‘The Dog’ is meant before they go to the building.
Instead, after she brings them into a building that look like a dog, they realize that what is meant by ‘The Dog’ is a building that look like a dog.
The syntactic expression is still available in the target text since the translator translates it into ‘Sang Anjing’. The way the translator translates the
word is similar to the first example. Hshe translates it in literal meaning, but the wordplay is still rercreated in the target text. It can be seen in the target text that
the phrase ‘Sang Anjing’ is not related into a place or a location until they arrived to a building that look like a dog. Thus, in this sentence, the translator is
successfully translated the meaning of the sentence into target text but the wordplay contained in the source text is still recreated.
Another example of WP WP translation is showed in the idiomatic expression below. In this phrase, the idiomatic expression can be termed as a
swearing word because the purpose of the speaker is to curse such situation.
ST Emmet Brickowoski: Well...well, technically Im not exactly a Master
Builder yet... Metal Beard: What?
Emmet Brickowoski: Please, everyone. Everyone Please Shakespeare: Rubbish
TT
Emmet Brickowoski: Nah, uh.. yah, secaara teknis aku belum menjadi seorang ahli pembangun.
Metal Beard: Apa? Emmet Brickowoski: Tolong, semuanya, semuanya. Tolong
Shakespeare: Omong kosong
Datum number 25 After Emmet is giving speech to the whole Master Builders in the
building, their reaction is chaos. Everyone in the building is upset with Emmet, so they decide to get angry with him. A man called Shakespeare, for example, he
curses Emmet by saying ‘rubbish’ to represent how dissapointed he was after hearing Emmet’s confession. He is dissapointed with Emmet because he is talking
too much but in the end, he admit that he is not the Piece of Resistence. Hence, Shakespeare may think that it is wasting his time to listen to Emmet’s speech
because Emmet is not the one that he has waited for a long time. The phrase ‘rubbish’ becomes a swearing word by Shakespreare to
represent his anger to Emmet after his confession. When this phrase is translated into Bahasa Indonesia, it became ‘omong kosong’ in the target text. This result of
translation can be aalyzed in two different perspectives in term of the technique
that used by the translator. First, the meaning of the word ‘rubbish’ is not ‘omong kosong’ in literal. Rubbish refers to messy materials that commonly called as
‘trash’. However, ‘rubbish’ in this term can be meant as ‘trashy talks’ by Emmet that wasted Shakespeare. Second, the translator could only translate it into
‘sampah’ which is a literal meaning to ‘rubbish’ instead of ‘omong kosong’ in the target text, and the wordplay in the target text is still recreated. It could be
translated into ‘sampah’ because the purpose of the word is to curse Emmet, not to represent other individual meaning. However, the translator translated it into
other meaning, which is still related, because the purpose of the word is to curse.