Translation I (March, 19 2011)

Here is my note which I got from the first meeting
(That's what I saw at the whiteboard, don't blame me if there's some mistake)

Translation is divided into :
- Written translation
Written translation produce written text and the person who doing this activity called Translator
- Oral translation
Oral translation produce utterances and the person who doing this activity called Intrepeter

1) Catford 
"Replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by textual material in another language (TL)"

Example:

Source Language (SL) English -> Target Language (TL) Indonesian
She is beautiful girl -> Dia perempuan adalah cantik gadis
In this case, in this definition, we only translate the source language in to the target language. Ignoring the meaning and the style itself. In Indonesian "Dia perempuan adalah cantik gadis" is meaningless but readable.
Simple, we can say that this one is TRANSLATION FOR DUMMIES.

2) Nida and Taber
"Reproducing the receptor language, the closest natural equivalence of source language message, first in term of meaning, second in term of style"

Example:

Source Language (SL) English -> Target Language (TL) Indonesian

Take me in your dream -> Bawalah aku kedalam mimpimu

This definition more concern about the meaning and the style to produce the closest natural equivalence.

The word "take" could be translated in Indonesian as "ambil, jinjing, etc" but here we find the closest equivalence of those word. So, the closest equivalence is "bawa".

Other case, we have "as white as snow". We can't translate it as "seputih salju", because there is no snow in Indonesia. (that was my lecture said)

the closest translation could be "seputih kapas". The reason is because "kapas" is more natural than snow in Indonesia. (that was my lecture said again). This phenomenon called Cultural Adjustment. And what the Cultural Adjustment will be explained next week. (that was my lecture said again and again)

My lecture said that

"every language has their own rules and when we're trying to translate the source language into the target language, we must follow the target language's rule"

3) Larson

"Consist of transfering the meaning of the source language in to the receptor language. It mean, it is being transfered and must be held constant, only the form is allowed to changed."

Example:

Larson emphasize on

- Transfering the meaning

- The meaning itself must be held constant

- Finding equality

Right, we go to the further explanation. Here is the simple example:

She is beautiful girl -> Dia adalah gadis cantik

S + Adj + N         ->    S + N + Adj

We can see that the form of these sentence is changed when it translated into Indonesian. In English, adjective is always placed before the noun but not in Indonesian. That's what "meaning must be held constant, only the form is allowed to changed"

Note :
- SL = Source Language, language which is used in SL text
- TL = Target Language, language which is used in TL text

- Equivalence = Translating word by word
- Meaning = Core of the text or we can called it Main Idea

Ok, that's all for the first meeting of translation 1.

Hope it'll help you up.