Study of translation is a part of the New Access book series that published by Routledge,

Taylor and Francis Group Publisher in New York. This book is written by Susan Bassnett who
is a Professor of Comparative Literary Studies in Translation, the Centre for Comparative
Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick, and was firstly published in 1980 by Methuen
& Co. Ltd. The book that used in this critical book assignment is the third edition that published
in 2002.
This book is intended to the undergraduate students of the language learners, because
this book mainly discussed about some basic theories about translation that needed to know by
the language learners.
This book contains of three different chapters, but in this critical book assignment we
will only discuss about the first chapter. The first chapter of this book provides information of
the central issues that exist in the translation studies, and contains of several units. The first
part of the chapter talking about the nature of translation. Translation is a process to transfer a
language (source language) to the other language (target language) including the field of
semiotic.In the process of translation, we have to consider between the language and culture,
because both of this aspect have a strong relation. As been stated by Edward Sapir, “No
language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture, and no culture can exist which
does not have it at its center, and the structure of natural language.” In other words, language
is a unity with culture and can’t be separated.
The second part that built this chapter is about types of translation. According to Roman
Jakobson, there are three types of translation. Those are intralingual translation, interlingual
translation, and intersemiotic translation. He also stated that the main problem of these types
of translation is the difficulties to find out a term with similar meaning to the source language
The next unit is the scope of decoding and recoding. Decoding and recoding related to
the process of translation. In the process of translation itself, there are analysis, transfer and
restructuring. In translating, we have to pay attention to selecting the words based on the
context.
Problems of equivalence explain in the fourth unit of the chapter, explain about the
equivalence both of source language and target language.. The problems of equivalence is
mainly talks about the scope of idioms. Translating idioms from a source language is not only
about lexical and grammatical items, but also the context of culture is influenced.
Then, the explanation about loss and gain. The purpose of loss and gain in translation
is to make the translation make sense and more understandable. Sometimes we need to add
some information and remove some words to create a better translation product.
 Untranslatability unit talks about two aspects that become the main explanation of the
unit. These aspect is about the types of untranslatability. There are two types of
untranslatability, those are linguistic and cultural. The linguistic ones mostly talks about the
language structure. While the cultural ones refer to the context of culture, usually about the
cultural terms.
Finally, the units cover up with the explanation about the science field in translations,
entitled “Science or ‘secondary activity’?”. In this part of translation, the aspect of science is
involved. It means that we have to literally translate the scientific term as it is.
This book also has a few things to evaluate, in both strength and weakness side. This
book consist of a lot of examples about the certain material that discussed. The examples are
served in many language such as Germany, French, and Italian, and it can help the readers
especially the ones that speak those language to be easily understand the context discussed.
The choice of vocabulary that used by the writer is quite difficult, which is the low
frequency word. Some phrase and sentences are too long and make the discussed material
became even harder to understand. For some learners, this kind of aspect could affected to their
understanding of the material. It is actually a good book to be one of our reference in study of
translation, but as the reviewer, we’re thought that the diction to explain the material refers to
high level of comprehend. Sometimes, we have to read a sentence two times or more, to gain
and get the meaning even just of one sentence. Besides, another lack of the book is the realation
between one and another units. There are some parts of the book, for instance, in the first
paragraph, the unit talks about the general of untranslatability, but then, when scrolled down,
in the bottom of the unit, we will find another branch of linguistics has involved, such as
pragmatic. That is why, still it is quite difficult to understand, perhaps for the new learners.
Finally, at the end of this paper, as the reviewer we would like to convey our conclusion.
Actually, this book has a good side and vice versa. We think, to choose reference for our study,
we have to be careful, because perhaps among of them include the higher level in language
than our ability itself. About the lack of this book, it is perhaps our ability in comprehend are
still low, that’s why it was happened or because the author’s error itself.
The suggestion about this book, we would like to say that for the introduction or the
basic theory of translation, the author should using properly language that suitable with the
content itself. For the basic, they should use high frequency word, to make it easy in
understanding.