Translation Shift in George Orwell’s Animal Farm as Assessing Readability in Indonesian Translation

Abstract

This study aims to identify what types of translation shift that is used in the Indonesian translation novel and how it can assess the readability of the target language text. Recognizing the translation strategies also can affect the use of shifting in the target language. Most of the researchers evaluated readability with a number by calculating a formula. Meanwhile, in this study, assessing readability used qualitative research by describing the contextual knowledge of the reader who is also the researcher. The contextual (background) knowledge of the reader can be an assessment of readability by showing a correlation between the text and context of the target language text. As a result of this study, the researcher found 89 shifting in the form of a particular sentence. The shifting is divided into four types, level shift, structure shift, unit shift, and class shift. In these different shiftings, the translator still does not change the message of the source language text and uses some strategies that are used to imply shifting. There are two types of strategy that is used in the novel, syntactic and semantic strategy. Through translation shifts, readability can be evaluated based on the contextual knowledge of the reader. The context of the reader can be a history of a particular country or a habitual activity that has become a value of life. Therefore, translation is not only assessed by calculating a formula, but it can be evaluated through the prior knowledge of the reader.