Introducing Indonesian Art in the English Target Text through Translation

Abstract

Indonesia is a country of various cultures representing each ethnic group around the archipelago. Each culture creates its own art ranging from its music including its traditional musical instruments, dance, its architecture, to its martial arts. The way people in each ethnic group name their art products is specifically unique. It may not contain any general characteristics as other cultures have. The uniqueness can only be introduced to other cultures within the nation as well as outside of the nation through a language understood by them. It is therefore that the information can be shared with others through translation work as the equivalents given in the target text. This research uses some Indonesian novels and their translation into English as the data source. Using the descriptive qualitative method, this research is aimed at revealing Indonesian art found in Indonesian novels and describing how they are shown in the English target text as their equivalents. How the author in the source text expresses the art is the first research question and what strategies are used in delivering the art through translation becomes the second research question. The results show that not all the authors of the source novels are aware that the art they mention in the novel need to be added with more information, and it is identified that the dominant strategy of translation used in translating the name regarding the art is translation using a loan word or loan words plus explanation. Keywords: Indonesian art, source text, strategies of translation, target text, translation