TRANSLATION METHODS AND NATURALNESS OF THE INDONESIAN

SUBTITLE OF “THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN”

Yuliastika Puspita Sari

English Department of Semarang State University

vitav809@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to find out the translation methods used in the
Indonesia subtitle of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”. The purposes
of this final project were to describe the translation methods used and to see the
naturalness of the Indonesia subtitle of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince
Caspian”.
This study was a descriptive qualitative study as it focused on the
explanation rather than the numbers in analyzing the data. I used the Indonesian
subtitle of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” as the object of the study.
In collecting the data, I classified the data in forms of sentences and clauses which
were gathered based on the method used. After that, I also checked the naturalness
of the Indonesian subtitle of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” by
asking 15 informants. I asked them to watch the movie first then fullfill the
questionnaire by giving score 3 as acceptable translation, score 2 as less
acceptable translation, and score 1 as unacceptable translation.
The result of the study showed that there were 499 data which consist of
744 utterances with 6 translation methods proposed by Newmark (1988). They
were word-for-word translation (47.72%), literal translation (18.95%), faithful
translation (0.54%), free translation (7.39%), idiomatic translation (6.59%), and
communicative translation (18.81%). While the naturalness of the subtitle, the
data showed that 82.84% were catagorized as natural translation, 15.32% data
were less natural and 1.84% data were unnatural. It can be concluded that there
are six translation methods used in the Indonesian subtitle of “The Chronicles of
Narnia: Prince Caspian”. The reviwers perceived that the translation was mostly
natural although the translator still maintained some cutural words and proverbs
and also used unnatural term in the TL. Finally, I suggest other researchers to
examine the effect of the choice of the translation methods on other aspects of
quality of translation such as readability and accuracy espeacially in a movie
because the quality of translation is important to be assessed to produce a good
translation.
Keywords: Translation, Translation Methods, Naturalness.
INTRODUCTION
Language has an important role in someone’s life because it is a tool to
communicate one to another, either spoken or written. Through langauge, people
from different country and language can communicate easily. They can exchange
information as long as they understand the language used. The common way to
interact with people around the world is using English as the language, because
we know that English is an international language.
As one of the international languages in the world, English plays an
important role in global communication. Many information about technologies,
education, even entertainment is served in English. For instance, when we browse
online media, like online magazines and newspapers,or even an ebook, English is
the common language that is used to deliver such information. It can be said that
English is like a bridge that can connect all different langauges. So people around
the world can understand many kind of information easily.
In order to understand such information, we have to able to translate it into
Indoesian. As in Ordudari’s article (2007), it is said that the purpose of translation
is to repreduce various kinds of texts-including religious, literary, scientific, and
philosopical text, in another language and thus making them available to wider
readers. So that translation is the best way to understand the information from
different language including English.
Translation itself has several definition from some experts. One of them is
defined by Larson. According to Larson in Hartono (2009), he says that
“Translation is transferring the meaning of the source language into the receptor
language.” It means that an act which changes in the form of a language into
another language but the message of the source language should be delivered
appropriately. Meanwhile in The Concise Oxford English Dictionary in Hatim
and Munday (2004), translation is “a written or spoken expression of the meaning
of a word, speech, book, etc in another language”. It emphasizes that translation is
a product of translation which produced by a translator.
In the modern era, translation product can be applied in many form. Not
only printed media like magazine, newspaper, book, and novel, but also in
electronic media like movies, television program and movie. Translation in
eletronic media called Audiovisual Translation (AVT). The best-known types of
audiovisual translation are dubbing, subtitling and voice-over. In this research, the
writer will focus on subtitling.
For someone who likes watching movie, subtitle has an important role. That
is why in producing a good translation or subtitle, translators should know the
quality of their translation. According to Larson (1998), there are three criteria of
a good translation, it should be accurate, clear and natural. However, the writer
only focuses on the naturalness of the Indonesian subtitle of “The Chronicles of
Narnia: Prince Caspian”. It is important to translators to see the naturalness of a
translation in order to know whether the translated text has been translated into
common form in the target language. So that the target readers will feel like
reading their own language rather than a translation product. Unfortunately, some
translators still maintain the original form which make the translation is unnatural
for the target readers. It can be affected by the translation method used whether it
is oriented in the target language or source language.

DISCUSSION
In this part, the writer would like to present theoretical studies, methods of the
study, and results of the study.

Theoretical Studies
The writer found several previous study related to this research. The first is
research conducted by Flanagan (2009). This project focuses on translation
reusability in audiovisual contexts. Specifically, the project seeks to establish (1)
whether target language subtitles produced by an EBMT system are considered
intelligible and acceptable by viewers of movies on DVD, and (2) whether a
relationship exists between the ‘profiles’ of corpora used to train an EBMT
system, on the one hand, and viewers’ judgements of the intelligibility and
acceptability of the subtitles produced by the system, on the other.
 Secondly, Maskun’s final project (2014) entitled Translation Methods of
Knowledge Builders Section in Nurseno’s Theory and Application of Sociology
for X Graders of Senior High School. He tried to find the dominant methods used
by using eight methods proposed by Newmark (1988). His finding found that the
dominant method was literal translation with the percentage 56.14%. He
concluded that the translation methods used was oriented in the source language
which made the whole translanstion was unnatural in the target language.
Nowdays people can get many information from many sorces, such as
book, television, and internet. In this modern era, internet plays important role for
many people. Through internet, they can browse many kind of information even
from different country. Since there are so many languages too, we need to change
the language of that information to another language which can be accepted by
people in a certain country. Changing one language to another is known as
translation. Because of that reason, the study of translation has important role to
changing the meaning from one language into another.
Translation has various meanings and definitions. Several definitions have
been stated by many experts. Larson (1998: 3) states that “translation consists of
transferring the meaning of Source Language into the Receptor Language”. It
means that translation is the process of transferring a meaning from the source
language into the target language. Moreover, Larson also said that “it is meaning
the which is being transferred and must be held constant. Only the form changes”.
This statement is also emphasized by Newmark (1988:5), he said that “
Translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way the
author intended the text”. From this definition, it can be concluded that translation
is simply changing the the form of the language but the meaning of the source
language is still maintained.
Molina and Albir (2002:507) state that “Translation method refers to the
way a particular translation process is carried out in terms of the translator’s
objective, i.e., a global option that affects the whole text”. Translation method will
affect the the whole translation because a translation method is choosen depending
on the aim of the translation itself.
 According to Newmark (1988:45) there are eight translation methods. He
has been classified into two classification: four of them are oriented in source
language (SL emphasis) consisting of word-for-word translation, literal
translation, faithful translation, semantic translation and the other four are oriented
in target language (TL emphasis) consisting of adaptation, free translation,
idiomatic translation and communicative translation.
Translation can be said as a good translation if it sounds natural as if the
target readers feel like not reading a translation work. Therefore, naturalness test
should be done to see whether the translation is natural or not. Larson (1998:529)
says that the purpose of naturalness test is to see if the form of the translation
is natural and the style appropriate. Larson in Hartono (2009:84) also
determines that translation can be defined as natural based on these criteria:
The meaning in the SL is conveyed accurately; The meaning in TL uses common
or standard grammatical pattern and vocabulary; and The translated work should
represent an ordinary context in SL.
In this study, the writer uses Acceptability-Rating Instrument proposed by
Nababan et al (2012) in assessing the naturalness of the Indonesian subtitle of
“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”. It is because each level in this
instrument has similar purpose in assessing naturalness proposed by Larson
(1998). As stated by Larson (1998:532)

“....translation must be tested to see if the grammatical forms used are

those normally used. Does the translation “flow” easily? Does it sound
“sound right” to the speakers of the language or does it sound “foreign”?
When we hear foreigners speak our language, we can often understand
them. The message is accurate and clear, but at the same time they sound
strange.”
In the original instruments there are three level of acceptability consisting
of 3 scales. They are (3) acceptable, (2) less acceptable and (1) unacceptable.
However, the writer modifies it into three level of naturalness but still keeps the
original instrument. They are (3) natural, (2) less natural and (1) unnatural. The
level of naturalness can be seen as follows :
 Table 1 Naturalness Scale with modification.

Scale Indicator Conclusion

3 Translation feels natural: use common Natural
term for the target reader; and use the
word, phrase, clause and sentence
which is appropriate with the rule of
bahasa Indonesia.
2 In general, translation feels natural, but Less Natural
there is little bit problem in some term;
a few grammatical error
1 Translation is unnatural; use unusual Unnatural
term and unappropriate Bahasa Indonesi
rule

Research Methodology

This study is a descriptive qualitative research. Qualitative research is concerned

with qualitative phenomenon involving quality. It is non-numerical and applies
some reasons to get the meaning, feeling and describe the situation. It also
investigates the why and how of decision making (Rajasekar, et al, 2006:4).
The object of this study was one of the movie series of The Chronicles of
Narnia entitled The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The writer used the
English and Indonesian subtitle as the data to be analyzed. The duration of the
movie was about 140 minutes.
The writer was as the data analyst. The writer analyzed the translation
methods of each sentence on the Indonesian subtitle of The Chronicles of Narnia:
Prince Caspian. Then the writer classified the translation methods based on the
Newmark’s theory (1988). After that, the writer tried to see the naturalness of the
subtitle by using Acceptability-Rating Instrument, proposed by Nababan in Silalai
(2009) which the writer modified based on the Larson’s theory about naturalness.
There were two types of data. They were primary data and secondary data.
The primary data were all the sentences of the dialogue and their translation in the
form of subtitle. The datum used in this research was taken from the movie
entitled The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
 The secondary data came from the informants. The writer involved 15
informants from college students who master English-Indonesia language. They
were asked to assess the translation quality in terms of naturalness. The writer
selected the informants based on particular criteria. The informants should those
who like watching movie. The writer also required the informants who had
learned about the English-Indonesian subject, so they knew the plus and minus of
the subtitle of the movie.
The procedure of collecting data in this research was conducted through
data analysis. The data was taken from the datum in the movie The Chronicles of
Naarnia: Prince Caspian both English version and Indonesian version in the form
of subtitle. The observation was done by watching the movie and identifying the
translation method used in each sentence found in the movie. When the sentence
consisted of two clauses which have different translation method, it was chunked
from the sentence into clause. The division of the data was not based on the type
of data (phrase, clause, and sentence), but it was classified based on the translation
method used.
Furthermore, The writer used questionnaire for collecting the data about the
naturalness quality of translation. Related to that, The writer used Acceptability-
Rating instrument proposed by Nababan in Silalahi (2009) to assess naturalness
level of translation. The writer decided to use the acceptability-rating instrument
by Nababan because the criteria of each level had similar concept with Larson’s
theory (1984) about naturalness. The writer also modified the three level of it
became: natural, less natural and unnatural but it still kept the original criteria
proposed by Nababan. The questionnaire was in the form of closed format. The
closed question required the informants to choose one of the answer from some
alternative answers. The writer would also use indepth interview to get more
detail information why they chose that answer in the questionnaire.

Result of the Study

From the data analysis, the writer found 499 data which consist of 744 utterances
with 6 translation methods. Those methods are word-for-word translation, literal
translation, faithful translation, free translation, idiomatic translation and
communicative translation. The percentage of the translation methods used would
be presented as follows:
Table 2 Percentage of the Translation Methods

No. Translation Method Frequency Percentage

1. Word-for-word 355 47.72 %
2. Literal 141 18.95%
3. Faithful 4 0.54%
4. Free 55 7.39%
5. Idiomatic 49 6.59%
6. Communicative 140 18.81%
Total 744 100%

While the naturalness level of the subtitles, the writer decided into three
level of naturalness. Those are natural, less natural and unnatural. Naturalness
refers to the feeling when someone reads the subtitle wheather it is natural or not
in target language. The writer found 82,84% natural, 15,32% less natural and
1,84% unnatural. The percentage of the naturalness level of the subtitle of The
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian would be presented in the chart as follows:

Chart 1 Naturalness of the Subtitle

 Natural
Less Natural
Unatural

After analyzing the whole data, the writer found that the subtitle of “The
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” used six methods. They were word-for-
word translation, literal translation and faithful translation, free translation,
idiomatic translation and communicative translation. Three of them were
orieanted in source language (SL emphasize) and another three were oriented in
target language (TL emphasize).
Furthermore, the naturalness level of the subtitle can be catagorized as
natural translation although there are a few data which catagorized as less natural
and unnatural translation. Most of the reviewers have the same problem and
reason in certain subtitle when they fullfill the questionnaire. However, they have
different opinion in giving the score wheather it was considered as score 2 or
score 1 in that subtitle.

CONCLUSION

It can be conclude that there are six translation methods used in the movie of
“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”. Three of them are oriented in the
source language. They are word-for-word translation, literal translation, and
faithful translation. While the others are oriented in the target language consisting
of free translation, idiomatic translation, and communicative translation.
Generally, the Indonesian subtitle of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince
Caspian” can be categorized as natural translation although there are some
cultural words, proverbs and uncommon term used in the target language which
are still maintained by the translator.

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