English Language Learners’ Translation Practices: Qualities and Hindrances in Translating Indonesian-English Texts

Abstract

In English language education program, translation is one of the subjects provided to the students in three credits or two and half hour lengths for sixteen meetings, aimed to simply facilitate them in mastering basic concepts, principles, methods of translation, and preparing them to be skillful in translation practices and producing translation studies from Indonesia-English and English-Indonesia. In relation to the students' performances in taking and following all processes during the translation class, the researcher is encouraged to present the students' translation qualities and hindrances in their translation tasks. It is expected to provide meaningful information, particularly for the students who joining the class and also presents a reference for the readers in relation to translation study. This research worked on both qualitative and quantitative data, called embedded research design by involving thirty five students at the sixth semester of English Education Program at Universitas Islam Riau. To collect the data, the students were assigned to translate from Bahasa Indonesia to English. Afterwards, open-ended interview was administered to explore the students' hindrances in their translation tasks. The study found that overall of the students' translations just stayed in level two for their accurateness, acceptability, and readability. The level two means that the students need to keep improving their mastery of the target language by concerning on the language components, such vocabulary mastery, better understanding about the grammar of the language, natural expressions to produce the best quality of translation

İngilizce bölüm öğrencilerinin çeviride yaşadıkları problemler ile baş etme becerilerinin senaryolar yoluyla analizi

“…As a matter of fact, long sentences are related to the syntax of the language, which is more likely to reflect the syntactic/grammatical problems in translation. Grammar can be an important reason for translation problems (Al Shehab, 2013), and mastering both source and target languages is among the many aspects that translators should remember (Andini, 2014;Hadijah & Shalawati, 2019). As Zhang and Teng (2016) suggest, analysing the structure of the language can be a part of successful translation of long sentences.…”

“…Culture-specific items present themselves in the case of a gap between source language and target language, and they cause complexities in translation (Daghoughi & Hashemian, 2016). Translation process gets tougher when the translator attempts to translate texts which involve cultural and idiomatic expressions (Adiel & Ahmed, 2016), and knowledge of culture could influence accuracy, acceptability and readability of the translation (Hadijah & Shalawati, 2019). Not only linguistic but also cultural competence of translator could render the translated text understandable (Eriş, 2019).…”