Background of the Research

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Research

Literary works have been part of people’s life. It means that literature runs well in their routines. It might be supported by the content of the literature that follows the phenomena happening in society, and vice versa. For instance, a novel written by Pramoedya Ananta Toer entitled “Bumi Manusia”, describes that colonizers, Netherlanders, are better than indigenous people. That is why literature can be regarded as a mirror of life. Without limiting the existence of literature, literary works can be read by everyone. As, by reading literary work, it helps people get new understanding and enhance their insight about themselves and others. By giving additional knowledge, literature can be a medium to convey messages and ideas or to criticize the phenomena in real life. Besides, the readers can get some advantages from literature. They are 1 literature gives pleasure; 2 literature can build experiences through the story that are told in different settings such as past, present and future; 3 literature can enrich the readers’ comprehension and view toward different cultures and values through literature. Specifically, literature has a mission to g et people’s attention by giving different point of view. In general, literature has a goal to give an understanding and knowledge through the values and culture available in literary works. Related to the phenomena and advantages of literary works, there are certain reasons why literary works are interesting to talk. First, the use of dictions to create literary works is an important point. Mostly, dictions that are applied by authors have connotative expressions. It means that the meaning delivered by authors might contain implicit meaning so that the messages can be interpreted differently by every reader. Besides, in expressing in literary works, authors are not confined by certain rules. Since, in creating a literary work, they depend on their imagination by adding characters, conflicts and settings to deliver the messages and values. The other reason is the use of figurative language. In literary works, adding figurative language is vital because it aims to create certain effects in the expressions that make the readers feel and imagine the feeling the characters possess and how the story happens. By giving different sense, readers can keep their attention to the literary works. Figurative language is the prominent characteristic of literature. It has different style in expressing the messages and ideas, such as metaphor, personification, hyperbole, simile, etc. The dictions mostly use connotative expressions rather than denotative expressions. Connotative expressions give special nuance to the situation of the literary works. They compel the readers to dig their understanding in relating one phenomenon with the others. Even, reading between the lines is the main key to understand the meaning. By doing this, sometimes, some people regard literary works as the complex works because they need more interpretation to figure out what the real meaning is. However, this difficulty does not make the devotee of literary works decrease. One of the literary works that has good response is novel. Nowadays, many novels have been published in various genres and scopes such as social and politics in many countries, including Indonesia. Now, the quality of Indonesian novels can be considered good. It can be seen from the achievement they have received, such as reaching the bestseller lists and winning some nominations in several festivals, one of them is Iwan Setyawan’s 9 Summers 10 Autumns. To get wider readers in international scale, translating the novel into another language, especially in English, can be a means to introduce and show that Indonesian novels have good quality in international level. That is why translation is needed to reproduce Indonesian novel in English version. Translation is a method to deliver a message from one language as the source language or text to another language as the target language or text. It can bridge the readers which have different language and culture to understand. The way of translating depends on the style of the translator. To translate the source text, the translator can use any kind of translation techniques as long as the message can be delivered well and to whom the source text is translated. However, it does not guarantee that translating is an easy way because the difficulties are faced by the translator. Moreover, because of the characteristics of literary works, translating literary works becomes different from translating non literary works. Translating figurative language is not as simple as ordinary language. Figurative language mostly uses connotative expressions rather than denotative expressions which have parable words so the translator needs to understand the meaning and to decide whether figurative language will be perceived or not. Different translation techniques that are used in translating figurative language can be applied as long as the content and the style can be well delivered. One of the examples of Indonesian novels is 9 Summers 10 Autumns written by Iwan Setyawan. This novel is the winner of Best Fiction Jakarta Book Award in 2011. It is also categorized as national best seller. To get more attention from public, this novel was translated into English entitled 9 Summers 10 Autumns byMaggie Tiojakin.

B. Identification of the Problems