Translation of Culture-specific Items in Laskar Pelangi from Indonesian into German

Abstract

Translation activities have been one of the most important methods of cultural exchange for thousands of years. This study aimed to analyze the cultural transpositions that occur in the translation of cultural concepts and terms in the novel Laskar Pelangi from Indonesian to German. The research was conducted with a qualitative descriptive approach by adapting the concept of cultural transposition from Hervey, Loughridge, and Higgins. The results showed that there were 77 attempts at cultural transposition. Based on the order in which they appear, these cultural transposition efforts included communicative translation, cultural borrowing, literal translation, exoticism, and cultural transplantation. The cultural transposition in translating the novel Laskar Pelangi into German did not cause the overall translation loss to occur. The translator's adequate understanding of culture and language will produce accurate translation results..