CHAPTER 15

THE TRANSLATION OF SERIOUS

LITERATURE AND AUTHORITATIVE
STATEMENTS

By Ahmad Darmawan

INDONESIA UNIVERISTY OF EDUCATION

BANDUNG
2008
 LITERATURE

Poetry Drama

Short Novel
story
 POETRY
 The most personal and concentrated of the
four forms, no redundancy, no phatic
language, where, as a unit, the word has
greater importance than any other type of text.
 It presents the things in order to convey the
feeling.
• Translator of poetry can not make any
concession to the reader such as
transferring the foreign culture to a naïve
equivalent.
• It is communicating, trying to create the
same effect on TL readers as was created
by the poet on his own readers, his main
endeavor is to translate the effect poem
made on himself.
• Hardly achieve even a parallel effect in
poetry
 Transl ati n
g:
1. Choose a TL poetic form as close as to
SL
2. Reproduce the figurative meaning, the
concrete image of the poem.
3. Setting, the thought words, often the
various techniques of sound effect
which produce the individual impact.
4. Different sounds create different
meaning.
“However good as translation,
its meaning will be differ in
many ways from original and it
will have its own independent
strength.
A successfully translated poem
is always another poem”
 THE SHORT STORY/
NOVEL
2nd most difficult.
Careful to preserve certain cohesive
effects.
 Leitmotifs= peculiar to a short story,
characterizing a character or a
situation.
 Description leitmotifs ; romantic
 Assess the text critically.
DRAMA
• Translator bears the potential spectator in
mind.
• He can’t gloss, explain puns or ambiguities
or cultural references, transcript words for
the sake of the local colour: his text is
dramatic, with emphasis on verbs, rather
than descriptive and explanatory.
• Translate into the modern target language
to make it life
• No difference between an acting and a
reading version
• No longer translation but an an adaption
 CHAPTER 16
REFERENCE BOOKS AND THEIR
USES; TRACING AND UNFINDABLE
WORD

By Ahmad Darmawan

INDONESIA UNIVERISTY OF EDUCATION

BANDUNG
2008
RESOURCES
1. Good English dictionary Collins
English dictionary
2. Roget=Penguin;thesaurus.
3. Large webster (3 vol)
 UNFINDABLE WORD
 Neologism
 Dialect
 Colloquialisms
 3rd language waywardly
 New or 0ut-of date
 Names of small village, districts,
streams, hillocks, streets.
 Names of obscure person
 Brand names, names of patented
inventions, trademarks
 Names of new or unimportant institutions
10. misprints, miscopying, misspelling,
proper names & bizarre transliteration.
11. SL, TL, 3rd language archaisms
12. Unfamiliar connotation and symbolic
meaning.
13. Familiar alternative terms or words
14. Code words
15. Specific SL/ 3rd language cultural sense
16. Private language/manifestations of
under life
17. exophoric/ external reference
18. Dictionary words.
SEARCH PROCEDURE

Bilingual general and specialized dictionary

Consider the possibility of misprint,
misspelling/variant spelling
 TRANSLATION
PROCEDURE
• Misprint, misspelling, misuse.
Deviation is ignored & corrected
• Little known proper-name
addition some generic information
• Neologism choice (transference,
new coinage, literal translation,
general or cultural equivalent
• Names or new/unimportant
institutions :transferred with a
statement of its function and status
or replace by generic names
EXPECTATION…?
The end. Thank you.