CLARA atawa Wanita yang Diperkosa CLARA

Oleh Seno Gumira Ajidarma A short story by Seno Gumira Ajidarma

Translated by Michael H. Bodden
Barangkali aku seorang anjing. Barangkali aku
Maybe I'm a dog. Maybe I’m a pig—but I
seorang babi*) – tapi aku memakai seragam. Kau
wear a uniform. You'll never know my true
tidak akan pernah tahu siapa diriku sebenarnya.
identity.
Di hadapanku duduk wanita itu. Rambutnya dicat The woman sat before me. Her hair was dyed
merah. Coklat sebetulnya. Tapi orang-orang red. Actually brown. But people call it red.
menyebutnya merah. Padahal merah punya arti lain And the fact is, red has a different meaning for
bagiku. Sudah bertahun-tahun aku dicekoki pikiran me. For years I’ve been indoctrinated with the
bahwa orang-orang merah adalah orang-orang yang idea that people who are red are dangerous.
berbahaya.
Jadi, aku tidak perlu percaya kepada wanita ini, So, I had no reason to trust this woman who
yang rambutnya sengaja dicat merah. Barangkali isi intentionally dyed her hair red. Maybe what
kepalanya juga merah. Barangkali hatinya juga was in her head was red as well. Maybe her
merah. Siapa tahu? Aku tidak perlu percaya kepada heart was red too. Who knows? I had no
kata- kata wanita ini, meski ceritanya sendiri reason to believe the words this woman spoke,
dengan jujur kuakui lumayan mengharukan. even though in all honesty I'll admit her story
was pretty harrowing.

Dia bercerita dengan bahasa yang tidak mungkin He told stories in a language that was
dimengerti. Bukan karena bahasa Indonesianya impossible to understand. Not because his
kurang bagus, karena bahasa itu sangat dikuasainya, Bahasa is not good enough, because the
tapi karena apa yang dialami dan dirasakannya language is so mastered by him, but because
seolah- olah tidak terkalimatkan. Wajahnya yang what he experiences and feels doesn't seem to
cantik sarat dengan luka batin yang tak be described by words. His pretty face was
terbayangkan. Aku hampir-hampir terharu bahkan filled with unimaginable inner wounds. I was
sebelum dia bercerita. Tidak pernah bisa almost moved before he even told me. I could
kubayangkan bahwa manusia bisa mengalami never have imagined that a human could
beban penderitaan seberat itu justru karena dia lahir experience such a heavy burden of suffering
sebagai manusia. Ceritanya terpatah-patah. precisely because he was born as a human.
Kalimatnya tidak nyambung. The story was broken. The sentence does not
connect.
 1. Has the translation of the source text into the target text met the semantic and pragmatic
equivalence?
2. In what way the meanings in the SL differ from the meaning of the TL?
3. Can you find any ideological differences between the two texts (ST and TT)? Mention
them and explain.
4. Write your own translation of the remaining paragraph.
Answer:
1. The pragmatic equivalence in this translation is good. For example, in “Barangkali aku seorang
anjing. Barangkali aku seorang babi*) – tapi aku memakai seragam. Kau tidak akan pernah tahu
siapa diriku sebenarnya.” This ST has the same effect on the TT “Maybe I'm a dog. Maybe I’m a
pig—but I wear a uniform. You'll never know my true identity.” This give me the same feeling
when I read two of them.
Semantic equivalence is the deep equivalence in translation based on surface equivalence of
translation, such as equivalences of format, rhythm, part of speech, grammar. In this case lets put
for example “Barangkali aku seorang anjing. Barangkali aku seorang babi*) – tapi aku memakai
seragam. Kau tidak akan pernah tahu siapa diriku sebenarnya.” With the TT “Maybe I'm a dog.
Maybe I’m a pig—but I wear a uniform. You'll never know my true identity.” This have the same
format and the grammar.
2. In my opinion in this sentence “Barangkali isi kepalanya juga merah. Barangkali hatinya juga
merah. Siapa tahu?” translated to “Maybe what was in her head was red as well. Maybe her heart
was red too. Who knows?” we don’t really know what the “red” or “merah” means. In SL the
“merah” can be angry or bad
3. Ideology plays an important role in the translation practice, and it can be traced in different levels
and in different ways like text selection, translation strategy, topic of the text, etc. There are various
ways of determining ideologies in translation. Andre Lefevere (1992: Preface) says, ''Translation
is, of course, a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain
ideology and poetics, and as such manipulate literature to function in a given way in a given
society,''. In other words, translation is determined by two basic factors: the translator's ideology
and the poetics dominant in the receiving culture. Therefore, ideology dictates translation choices
and translation studies.
The ideological difference is in TT “So, I had no reason to trust this woman who intentionally
dyed her hair red. Maybe what was in her head was red as well. Maybe her heart was red too. Who
knows?” The translator still make himself as a normal people who doesn’t care about all the
feminism and anything. And the TT still lacks of something that I don’t know what