A Translation Analysis of Indonesian Proverbs and English Novel Titles

Abstract

Translation is a complex process done by translators. They applied various styles in producing a good work of translation either from Indonesian to English or vice versa. Applying certain strategy on translation work is full of motives. This study tried to investigate the translation strategies used by translators in translating Indonesian proverbs and English novel titles. This study was categorized as qualitative study with content analysis approach. The samples were randomly selected from an online source and a textbook. It was found out that that most of the proverb translations used oblique translation strategy especially with adaptation and equivalence processes. It is not common to translate proverbs by using literal translation because the TT will sound weird to the target readers. That is why the better strategy used to translate proverbs is by trying to find out the equivalence proverb in the TT if there is (equivalence procedure), or taking the idea or the essence of the ST although it has different stylistic form and structure (adaptation process) rather than directly translating them literally. The translation of novel tittles also has the same condition as the translation of proverbs. The common process used are modulation, equivalence, and adaptation. However, based on finding, the first two were rarely used in this kind of data, while the most frequently used was the last one. The reasons for choosing these kind of processes are for stylistic purposes and equivalence in the target text.