CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Indonesia, the rich country, has many varieties of cultures, customs and languages. That is why many tourists come to Indonesia. Many tourists are interested in studying cultures in Indonesia like the customs and languages. The tourists know that every area or region in Indonesia has its own customs, cultures and languages which is different from others. However, from the all of the varieties, the most important thing of the varieties is the language.
Language as a means of communications has been used by human beings for thousands of years. Language is used by humans to communicate to each other, to express their thought, feeling, or ideas either in spoken or written language. It conveys one message in human mind into utterances. Saussure (1915:16) states that language is a system of sign that express ideas.
As human being, people always feel curious about everything that happen in this world like news, gossip, and entertainment. People can do it by reading magazines, newspapers, and by browsing internet. And nowadays, many scientific and non – scientific books are translated into Bahasa Indonesia, such as text – book, novels, articles, etc. So without the ability to master foreign language, the people still difficult get the information. Finnally, it can be a problem for the people to read and to understand it. Therefore, the way to solve this problem is to translate foreign language into local language that called translation.
Translation work is a complex task. It requres competency in both languages; the source language (SL) that is the language to be translated and the target language (TL), the language into which it is to be changed and also the cultural background of both languages.
Translation means transferring the meaning of SL into TL (Larson 1984:3) whereas Catfortd (1965:1) defines translation as the replacement of textual material in SL by equivalent textual material in TL. And the last, according to Larson (1984:2) cites “Translation, then consists of studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural context of the SL text, analyzing it in order to determine its meaning, and then reconstructing this same meaning using the lexicon and gramatical structure which are appropiate in the TL and its cultural context.” Every language has different style or ways in conveying ideas or messages. Adapting Sapir, Blount (1974:120) cites, “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the samesocial reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct world”. In Indonesia language, the word beras,
padi, nasi, gabah , only have one equivalent word in English, that is rice. How about
the word sarung in Indonesia language should be translated in English? The society in Britain or the other countries might be do not recognize the object. In this case, the translator should know the appropriate words for the cultural adjustment to the cultural words.
The most important thing to take into account by a good translator, the meaning which is being transferred must be held constant. And it will not be succesfully transfered if the translator neglets the cultural adjustment from the SL into the TL.
As Hartley (1982:191) says, “Communication between members of different cultures is possible because of an underlying sameness of human experience the world over and human’s ability to adjust to new modes of behaviour.”
From the statement above, it is obvious that language is a large and significant role in the totality of culture. The differences between cultures bring about difficulties in the process of translating from one language into another that is divergent and unrelated.
In translating, there is the terms “context of culture” must fully clear to the hearer or reader to understand a language (Bronislaw 1999:72) and Bassnet (1999:126) believes that translation must take place within a framework of culture. There is a tight relationship between translation and culture. If the translation is related to culture, the translation is not simply matter of seeking other words with similar meaning. Simply, when the translator wants to translate a text, the translator can not translate it directly. The translator has to analyze it first before reconstructing it into TL. So, translation and culture are linked.
The word ‘culture’ has some meanings. For some people, it refers to an appreciation of good art, song, food, and literature. Tylor (1871) says that culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, moral, custom, and any other capabilities and habit acquired by man as member of society”.
Newmark (2000:1) defines culture as “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression”. Whereas Gohring (1995) says that culture is one need to know to judge where's people behavior conform or deviates and in order to make one's own behavior conform to the society.
Based on those definiton of culture above, it can be conclude that every society has own culture, which is different from each other. The scope of the culture is very complex. The culture covers all the human need. The speech, behavior, thought are influenced by culture and it is clear that understanding of culture enable individuals relate to other people from different place. The expression of culture can be seen from the behavior, norms, values, and belief of people. Therefore, the people can learn the culture of certain society.
In understanding culture, the cultural terms should be understand. According to Kotter (1992), which formally defines culture as a whole pattern of behavior that is reflected in social life, religion, art, and institutional as well as all the result of the human mind and work on an entity certain people. Meanwhile, Koentjaningrat (2000) provides systemic understanding of a whole culture of ideas, actions, and works of the context of a society that is used as a human being by means of learning.
Culture has three categories or forms, namely: Firstly, culture as a complexity of ideas, values, norms, and rules. Culture form in this context is a form of cultural ideal rights are abstract. Example of this culture form is a system of cultural values, norms, laws, and regulations such manner. Secondly, culture as a complex activity pattern of human behavior in society. Culture form in this context is reffered to as a social system consisting of human activities that interact, hang out, and the basis of certain behavioral pattern of governance. The second form of this culture more concrete because it can be observed and documented. Thirdly, culture as objects of human handiwork. The third manifestation of this culture is a culture of physical and culture is the most concrete, such as buildings, temples, artifacts, houses and others.
This thesis works on cultural terms in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie. The writer chooses this movie because in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie is found some words that is not translated by the translator. Subtitling is a secondary or explanatory title, as of a book or play, a book title repeated at the top of the first page of text and one or more lines of text, as a translation of dialogue in a foreign language, appearing usually at the bottom of a film or video image.
The problems that is found in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie is when the writer sees the subtitling of the movie, the writer sees there are some words that is not translated by the translator. The translator does not get the equivalence of those words. Finally, the translator uses the strategies of translation and the cultural categories in the translation studies. The strategies of translation and cultural categories of cultural terms are the main discussion of this thesis.
“Memoirs of a Geisha” is a Japanese movie. “Memoirs of Geisha” is a movie that uses some words from Japanese culture. Japan is a rich country with various of the diversities in forefathers cultures. Eventhought the developing of technology in Japan has up date in every minute, the cultural sides in Japan are still conserved until now. Samurai, Tempura, Matcha, Sukiyaki, Nigiri-zushi, Norimaki, Sashimi, Shabu– shabu are some words based on Japanese culture.
In this thesis, the writer wants to analyze the strategies of translation and the cultural categories based on the words that are found in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie. And in the analysis of this thesis , the writer uses the strategies of translation based on Baker’s Theory and the cultural categories based on Newmark’s
Theory. This study is important to explore the strategies in translating the cultural
terms due to one of the most challenging task in translating texts is found in the differences between cultures (Firoozkoohi 2010).
1.2 Problems of the Study
The problems are formulated as follows:
1. What strategies does the translator use in translating the cultural terms in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie?
2. What categories of cultural terms are found in the translation?
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The purposes of the study can be summarized as follows : 1.
To find out the strategies of translating the cultural terms used in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie.
2. To find out the categories of cultural terms found in the translation and makes the meaning of them into Indonesian.
1.4 Scope of the Study
In this thesis, the writer discussed about the cultural terms in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie is directed by Rob Marshall, and analyzes the strategies are used by the translator based on Baker’s Theory and the categories of the cultural terms based on Newmark’s Theory.
If the people take culture to be set of belief and practices which govern the life of society, then language is the vehicle for the expression of those beliefs and an instrument for finding out about the world. The first step that the people should do is the people should have more knowledge about language and culture firstly. It is caused language can not be saparated from culture; they are linked. So, without the more knowledge about culture, the people can not analyze everything that is related to language and culture.
A certain community with a certain language lives in the world of its own. The people have their own lifestyle, attitudes, behaviour and perceptions and the people express them through their language. A common language is the symbol of a common culture. Although communication between members of different cultures is possible because of human’s ability to adjust to new modes of behaviour, it becomes serious difficulties to translator to find the equivalence of the cultural terms from one society to another.
In this thesis, the writer devide the culture terms in categorization: ecology; material culture, social culture, organisations, and gestures and habits. A scope need to be set to avoid misdirection in this topic.
1.4 Significance of the Study This thesis is intended to be helpful theoretically and practically.
Theoretically, this thesis analyses the strategies and the categories of the cultural terms in the subtitling of “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie. Therefore, the English’s students can understand the strategies and the categories in translation according to translation’s experts, so they can analyze that for their assigment, especially for students that want to analyze the cultural terms. Practically, this thesis can be used as references to study about the strategies and the categories of the cultural terms in the translation.