CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION. meaning or message in the field of translation from Indonesian into English in

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1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study This study essentially examines the shifts in cohesion and any changes in meaning or message in the field of translation from Indonesian into English in Tempo magazines. It especially examines the shifts of cohesion which occur in these magazines since shifts of cohesion can influence the meaning found in a text. Changes in meaning which are observed, particularly those related to cohesion in any translation, especially of texts which involve political and social issues in the product of translation, influence readers perception on the issues. Moreover, the issu es are related to political or social will make people s wrong understanding of the larger implications since the Indonesian people s perception on the national politics and issues may lead to progress or unrest. Translator as a professional is inhered to his profession as a translator. He should not give his own opinion in the course of translating, either by adding and reducing the meaning in part or as a whole as what has been intended by the writer of the source text (henceforth ST) which may result in a change of the interpretation or the opinion of the target text (henceforth TT) readers. Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text; for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by referring to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. It is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear. Therefore, it can be considered as an 1

2 overt relationship holding between part of the text. Coherence on the other hand can be viewed as a covert potential meaning relationship among part of a text, made overt by the reader or listener through process of interpretation (Kulka in Venuti, 2000: 299). This, however, is not the focus of this particular study. There are many sources of information in the mass media such as the newspapers, agencies brochures, magazines, tabloids, and so on. A magazine in particular, is one of the types of media which carries an important mission from the institution that manages it, particularly in conveying not only information but messages to its readers. A popular magazine that has a wide readership, especially one that is generally related to political, social, and economic issues, therefore has the potential to influence and sway public opinion. A magazine constitutes one of the media of communication and has to have texts whose meaning is clear and unambiguous. For this to happen, clauses in the text must have cohesion and coherence, the cohesive components must be able to connect the clauses. The data in this study is TEMPO magazine which was firstly published in March, The magazine has an English version translated from the Indonesian one which appears in It is a magazine which has frequently been banned due to its controversies and the fact that it prioritizes independence. It is widely read by urban readers and most of them are from the middle class. They generally come from the white collar group who are graduates of at least high schools to post graduate schools. It is quite obvious that the group of people who read this magazine is themselves influential and can further influence the perception of the Indonesian people in politics and other national issues. It is for this reason, the 2

3 researcher is interested to study if the translations performed by the translators have added or make changes in the form of cohesive shifts that may alter meaning and message. Realizing the rapid advancement of the magazine circulation, the management of the magazine then published the English version of the TEMPO magazine, on September 20, The English version adopted 80 percent of the content of the Indonesian version and 20 percent from other countries. However, the content of the Cover Story was adopted 100% from the Indonesian version: Berita Utama ( 1.2 Translation Shifts Translation is a form of communication, and communication must not change the messages in the SL in the course of being transferred from the source language to the target language. Bell (1991: 6) points out that Translation is the replacement of the representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language. Therefore the task of the translator is to transfer what is intended by the writer in SL to TL. Shifts occurred when the translator made changes in terms of expression and sentence structure from ST to TT. These are all mandatory actions of the translator, the actions which are dictated by the structural discrepancies between the language systems involved in this process and the optional actions which are dictated by his personal and stylistic preferences to which he resorts consciously for the purpose of natural and communicative translation of the SL texts into another language. Shifts can be defined as problem solving strategies adopted consciously 3

4 to minimize the inevitable loss of meaning when rendering a text from one language into another (Al Zoubi and Ali All Hasnawi: 2001). In a text, we can find words, phrases, and clauses which have to be united and bound to one another. By using cohesive components, texts can have a unity in connecting words, phrases, and clauses. The result is that if a text has a good unity, readers will understand the content more easily and if the readers are the translators, will be able to translate it well. The print media, including the magazines, of different countries and different cultures differ in a variety of ways. In fact they are a kind of cultural artifacts. The Indonesia press, for example, has magazines that are very different in format, and in many ways in context, from, for instance, magazines in some of the Middle Eastern countries. This is not to say that the Indonesian press is necessarily worse or better than the press of other countries; but whatever it is, it is a product of the culture where it comes from. This is an important point to bear in mind when dealing with the content of magazines since everything that is written in a magazine has to be transmitted through the medium of its culture and language. In addition, a linguistic unit, especially a text which consists of clauses, can be called a text if the linguistic unit has a cohesion which means that one clause is connected with or related to other clauses. Cohesion is formed by cohesive meaning among the clauses. This cohesive meaning is realized by cohesive devices reference, ellipses, substitution, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (Saragih 2001:130). The cohesive meanings among the clauses form a unity which is called a text. The cohesiveness in a text will be closely related if more cohesive devices are used in a text. In other words, the more cohesive devices exist in a text, the 4

5 more cohesive the text is. The solid text is characterized by the extensiveness and intensiveness of the variation of cohesive devices in the text (Saragih, 2001: ). On the level of cohesion, Kulka in Venuti divides shifts in cohesion into two: 1) Shifts in the level of explicitness; namely, the general levels of the target text s textual explicitness are higher or lower than those of the source text; 2) Shifts in the text meaning(s); namely, the explicit and implicit meaning potential of the source text changes through translation (Kulka in Venuti, 2010). Every language has a set of cohesive devices and preferred meaning for creating cohesive harmony (Hasan, 1985) and bonding pattern (Hoey, 1991). As a result, shifts in cohesion inevitably occur in translation. Shifts in cohesion presumably occurred in the magazines which will be analyzed in this dissertation. Tempo magazine was deliberately chosen as the object of the analysis, due to reasons given below. The researcher assumed that there are many shifts of cohesion in the translation of TEMPO into the English version. These shifts could be seen clearly in the translation of the titles of the headlines of the articles. For examples: 1) ST: Aktivis Partai Amanat Nasional menjajakan izin pinjam pakai kawasan hutan di Kementerian Kehutanan. Sumber dana taktis Menteri Kehutanan dan Partai. (Tempo, 3 Juli, 2011). TT : Activists are looking into reports that the land-use licensing process at the Ministry of Forestry is brokered by National Mandate Party 5

6 functionaries as a source of tactical funds for the Ministry and his party. (Tempo, July 5, 2011) LIT: Activists of the National Mandate Party peddled the useborrow license of forest area at the Ministry of Forestry. Tactical fund source of the Minister of Forestry and Party. Here, we can see obviously the shifts of cohesion. The ST consists of two sentences while the TT consists of one sentence. In this case, it can be said that the general level of target text s textual explicitness is lower than that of the source text. The word, Activists in the literal translation refers to the activists of the National Mandate Party who actively (in an active sentence) play their role in committing the graft, whereas the word, Activists in the actual translation refers to the activists of non-government agencies who are investigating the graft committed by the party s functionaries. ST : Izin pinjam pakai kawasan hutan (at the Ministry of Forestry) TT : The land-use licensing process (at the Ministry of Forestry) Again, the general level of target text s textual explicitness is lower than that of the source text. The phrase, sumber dana taktis Menteri Kehutanan is literally translated into tactical fund source of the Minister of Forestry. In the TEMPO magazine of the English version, we find the translation of the phrase above as a source of tactical funds for the Minister. Here, we see the shift in cohesion: in the ST, there is no preposition since the ST (Indonesian) reader understands that sumber dana taktis Menteri Kehutanan means the source of tactical funds is intended to be given to the Minister of Forestry as a bribe. It seems that it is necessary for the translator 6

7 to put the preposition for in the translation in order to clarify the intended meaning. Again, we find another shift in cohesion in the English translation: his party. There is no preposition in the ST since the phrase dan Partai (and Party) has cohesive tie with the previous phrase a source of tactical funds (2) for the Minister of Forestry. It is also necessary for the translator to put the pronoun his as it is related to the Minister s party. The TT has added more information/thus more explicit, and gave the impression that a graft has indeed been committed by using the phrase looking into reports which actually mean accusations and using the word brokered 2) ST: Ada dugaan perda syariah hanya dibuat (Tempo, Sept.6, 2011) TT : Some suspect that these regulations are only (Tempo, Sept 8, 2011). LIT: There is an assumption that syariah regional regulation. We do not find conjugation in this clause. It is started with expletive subject. The clause begins with There is, followed by a noun (an assumption) while in the Tempo magazine of the English version, we find the translation as follows: Some suspect that these regulations are only Here, we see that the noun suspicion in the SL is changed to the verb suspect in the TL. ST :.peraturan-peraturan daerah berbasis syariah (Tempo, 6 Sept, 2011) TT : regional regulations based on the Islamic law or syaria. (Tempo, Sept 8, 2011). 7

8 LIT: regional regulations based on syariah Here we find the shift of cohesion: the synonym law or syaria is in the TL translator added information/made more explicit, while there is no synonym in the SL. Adding the word Islamic law made the point stronger in the TT as the majority of Indonesian public are Muslims and this will have more impact. 3) ST : kini terdapat lebih dari 150 peraturan syariah (Tempo, 6 September, 2011). TT : today there are more than 150 such regulation (Tempo, Sept. 8, 2011). LIT: now there are more than 150 syaria regulations. In this case, there is the repetition of the words syaria, since it also means regulation. It can also be said that there is the redundancy in this clause. Therefore, in the TEMPO magazines of the English version, the translation (or the TT) becomes the word syaria which has been mentioned in the previous clauses. The word such here, of course, refers to the word syaria. The shift of cohesion occurred in the text: ST : repetition TT : substitution The researcher believes that there is a great abundance of shifts of cohesion found in the translation of TEMPO magazine from the Indonesian version into the English version. There are also numerous shifts in the level of explicitness in which the general levels of the target text s textual explicitness are higher or lower than those in the source text, and numerous shifts in textual meaning(s) in which the explicit and implicit potential of the source text changes through translation. Such 8

9 shifts may change the meaning of the message and may result in misunderstanding and misperception among the readers of the target text. 1.3 Statement of the Problems Based on the background of the study above, the researcher proposed the following questions which will form the core problems in the research study: 1. How do the explicit and implicit meaning potential change in the translation from Indonesian text to the English one in Tempo magazine? 2. How do shifts of cohesion influence the meaning of the translation from Indonesian text to the English one in Tempo magazine? 3. To what extent does shift of cohesion change in the translation Tempo magazine? 1.4 Objectives of the Study Based on the statement of the problems above, the researcher formulated the objectives of the study as follows: 1. To show how the implicit and explicit meaning potential could change in the meaning in the translation from Indonesian text to the English one in TEMPO magazine. 2. To show how shifts of cohesion affect the meaning of the translation from Indonesian text to the English one in Tempo magazine. 3. To show how culture changes the shifts of cohesion in the translation from Indonesian text to the English one in Tempo magazine. 1.5 Scope of the Study This study only focuses the analysis on texts which occurred from January 2010 to June 2012 chosen randomly. This is due to the nature of analysis; it would 9

10 require a huge amount of elaboration if texts are taken from greater number of editions. The researcher only selected topics that are related to political and social issues and not other topics or stories even thought they might be the current interest at the time. This is because the researcher is of the opinion that political and social issues are more influential in the mind of the public than ordinary stories. Similarly, translation of other texts; for example, on religious issues was not covered. The study did not include any other magazines. The researcher chooses to analyze shifts in cohesion in the translation, as choice of cohesion components can certainly alter meaning and message. She does not include shifts in coherence, although this is included in the discussion. 1.6 Significance of the Study This dissertation may be able to give valuable contribution to: 1) Translation studies, especially in the area of cohesion and coherence. 2) Researchers, as a reference for their researches to understand the shifts of cohesion. 3) Professional translators, who are involved in translating popular magazines and journals from Indonesian into English. In the process of transferring information, there would be numerous influences; one of them was the differences in grammar and cultural forms and elements found in the SL and in the TL. Therefore, a good translator should know the linguistic and cultural systems of both the SL and the TL so that information in both languages could be transferred accurately. 10

11 4) Readers of popular political magazines, in order to understand more about language and how the translation of a text and the role of functional linguistics in these studies. 1.7 Organization of the Dissertation This dissertation has six chapters in total. Chapter I details the crucial issues that the research study is concerned with. Chapter II discusses the important theoretical concepts covered in this study, the relevant research work that have been carried out by others and the relationship these have on the present study. Chapter III explains the theoretical framework chosen which is founded on the work of Kulka in Venuti, how the data is collected and analyzed. Chapter IV presents the most salient selected data, the analysis performed on them and the discussion of the analysis. The researcher has chosen the most appropriate way of presentation: using tables and diagrams to show the results. The final chapter, Chapter V presents the summary of findings, discussion and conclusion. Chapter VI is concerned with the conclusionof the study and some suggestions to the reader of this dissertation. Here, the researcher offers some recommendations on what other researchers can do to contribute to the body of knowledge in translation studies and the role of functional linguistics in these studies. 11