Identifying Errors in Translating English Discourse of Fifth Semester Students English Education Department at IAIN Bukittinggi

ELSY MARDHATILLAH

(2317087)

PBI 5 C

Ms. Agseora Ediyen, M.Hum

Writing For Academic Purpose

13 Desember 2019

Identifying Errors in Translating English Discourse of Fifth Semester Students English Education Department at IAIN Bukittinggi

Translation is defined in many ways and may be understood differently by people. By the people who are not translators, translation is seen as a text, but by the translators, it is seen as an "activity". Translation is mastery in transferring written message from one language into written message of another language (Newmark 1981: 7).

Basically, translation is a process of replacing or transferring messages, thoughts, ideas, meaning or information from the source language to the target language. The main point in the translation is that a translator may not change the meaning of the message of the original text. However, students difficulties in translating from English to Indonesia even though software application to assist translation are available. Study about translation is one of difficult subject for students EFL. Many of them get difficult in translating discourse in English. They often translate it wrong. The mistake of students in translating English discourse occurs because students translate it only literally.

             Some students said that translation is difficult since the materials of translation are not suitable with the need of language students, the activity of translation is boring, and the learners also lack of background knowledge about linguistic language’s expressions. As it is said by Al-Darawish (1983), general difficulties in doing translation are no two languages are exactly the same in term of phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic features. They are divergent in arrangement of sentences or syntax. That’s why students find it difficult in translating of English into the target language. They may do errors in translating some idioms and some words which are not familiar with their native language because the culture influences. When students are transferring written messages from native language to the target language they should translate it literally and also idiomatically. But many of them are just translating it literally. The translation results from students to translate a English source language English Discourse into Indonesia will be used as data in this study. Students who get the practice of translating a text often find problems or difficulties in transferring the language. The error occurs in the transfer of the message. The process of translation consists of three steps such are analysis of source language text, the transference of message, restructuration (Suryawinata & Hariyanto, 2003). Every translation activity starts by analyzing the source language text, because the translator always meets the source language at the first time. To know the message of the source language, the translator must read it, and then the translator will understand the text content. The analysis of source language covers many aspects like sentences, clauses, phrases, and words. The other purpose is to help the translator to change the complex sentence into the simple sentence. After the translator can understand the meaning and the structure of the source language text, they can catch the content message. The next step is to transfer the content, the meaning, and the message of the source language into the target language. In this step, the translator must find the meaning of the source language words. Restructuration is the process of transforming the source language message into a proper stylist form in the target language, so in this step, the translator must pay attention to the language style in order to fix the language style that is appropriate with the text type, and they also must consider to whom the translation is made.

            Based on the data that I got from interviewed several students in English Education Department, 70% of them didn’t understand the context of the text it cause the errors in translating. As it is stated by Baker (1992) there are two factors which make idiomatic expression translation in English difficult. First, the translators lack of equivalence of the target language. They do not know the acceptable translation of some words into target language since different languages express different linguistic features. When translating discourse, we should understand about the context, background of the text, cultural and social background. The rest 30% of the students make mistakes in translating because only translate it in textual  meaning of literal meaning. 100% of the data got difficult in translating English discourse because lack of vocabulary and grammatically nonsense.

The result of this study indicates that there were a number of errors made by the fifth semester students of the English Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty at  IAIN Bukittinggi in translating English Discourse into Indonesian. After counting of errors, I found 30% errors made by the students out of the possible errors. Another errors made by the students when translating Indonesian recipes into English, it can be concluded that the students make two types of errors, namely lexical errors and grammatical errors. Therefore errors are related to errors in determining the equivalent of the Indonesian words in English words that are appropriate in the context of English language and culture. Grammatical errors include missing in the use of tense, missing in the use of prepositions, and errors due to incomplete sentences. Addition errors made by the students indicate that the students still have flaws in terms of determining diction (word selection) in English correctly and lack of understanding of grammatical rules in English. Based on the result of the study, it can be considered that the ability of the students is just fair and the students still encountered some difficulties in translating English Discourse into Indonesia. The error that needs more  attention is omission error, especially omission of article. The errors which are made by the students will be helpful for the students and the teacher to be more aware of this case. It helps the students to know their weaknesses and difficulties in translating English Discourse into Indonesia, therefore the students will learn more. From the explanation of number of errors made by the students, it can be seen the effectiveness of teacher’s teaching material and teaching technique. By knowing this, teacher can also plan and determine an effort in teaching process, so it will be useful to minimize the same errors. This study also needs further research to find it more useful for the teachers, students, and other researchers. Hence, the further researchers are expected to do further research more deeply on the learners’ errors.

REFERENCES

Al-Darawish, H. (1983). Arabizing university education in Arabic, Jerusalem, Arab studies society. Cited in Hamdallah, R.,Problems and approaches to translation with reference to Arabic. Language and translation.J.King Saud University, 10. 23-38

Newmark, Peter. 1981. A Texbook of Translation. New York: Prentice Hall.

Suryawinata, Z., & Hariyanto, S. (2003). Translation : Bahasan Teori dan Penuntun Praktis Menerjemahkan. Yogyakarta: Kanisius.

Baker,  M.  (1992).  In  other  words;  A  course  book  on  translation.  London: Routledge