I. Introduction
1.1 Background
of Study
In this modern era many people have
become bilingualism or even multilingualism. This is because unlike in the past
whose people rely heavily on books, people of modern era use other than books
to be bilingualism. Modern technology has become very useful tools to for them
to acquire second language. There are many products on language learning sold
through internet such as Rosetta Stone
and Tell Me More which use computer
technology. Beside the language learning product, many blogs provide language
learning starting from beginner level until advanced level, and this has been
proved very useful for those who learn second language. Another one is
television program like Dora the Explorer
which use English and Indonesian language, this is very effective for children.
However,
no matter what language people want to learn, for those who really don’t have
any knowledge of the language they want to learn, they still need the language
to be written in their native language so that they can understand the language
system. Therefore, in order to do so a translator is absolutely needed.
Translation
always deals with two languages. But being able to speak in two languages is
not a guarantee to be good translator. Translation is not only about changing
the language a text into another language, there is more to it. However the
basic requirement in translation is indeed to acquire the two languages and
know the similarity and differences between the languages. if this requirement
is not met, the translation is out of the hand.
When
talking about similarity and differences between languages, the term
contrastive analysis always comes to surface. Contrastive Analysis is a branch
in linguistics whose aim is to compare two languages and make a contrast
between them.
As
these fields have a similarity which is dealing with two languages, the writer
is interested to study this. Thus, the aim of this paper is to know the
relation between translation and contrastive analysis and how contrastive
analysis can be applied in translation
II. Discussion
2.1 Contrastive Analysis
In
this section, it will be explained a few things about contrastive analysis.
Literally, the meaning of contrastive analysis is to analyze the contrast
element between two things. Yet, to find the contrast elements means to find
the similar elements. Therefore, contrastive analysis is mostly used in
language teaching. However, as the aim of this paper is not to explain how
contrastive can be applied in language teaching, rather how contrastive
analysis can be implemented in translation. Therefore, only things related with
translation will be explained in here.
Contrastive
analysis in linguistics aims to find the differences between languages. Contrastive
analysis in general term is an inductive investigative approach based on the
distinctive elements in a language (Kardaleska, 2006). It is because languages
have different rule such in grammar, phonology, and morphology. By knowing such
differences ones will be able to understand the language better as well as
improve the translation ability.
Another
reason why contrastive analysis is important in translation is because
translation needs the competence in two languages, and also to know in which
element the language is similar or different. For example in noun, languages
around the world have different noun system, some of them have different form
in singular and plural by adding morpheme like English, while others do not and
repeat the noun instead as plural marker as in Indonesian language case.
2.2 Translation
In
this section, the writer will explain translation. What the writer means by
translation is not to explain the technique of translation, translation theory,
and approaches in translation, rather the writer will explain the process in
translation and where the boundary of contrastive analysis and translation lies.
To
begin with, what is translation? It has been explained above that translation
is not simply to change the language of a text into another one. Translation is rendering the meaning of a
text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. (Newmark,
1988: 5). Another definition is by Catford (1965) Translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (SL)
by equivalent textual material in another language (TL). On the other hand,
Larson defines translation in a much more complex way. Translation consists of
studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and
cultural context of the source language text, analyzing it in order to
determine its meaning, and then reconstructing this same meaning using lexicon
and grammatical structure which are appropriate in the receptor language and
its cultural context. (Larson, 1984: 3).
Reading the definition above, translation
is a complex activity. It needs equality in term of meaning, structure,
grammar. However, when languages have differences in those elements, shift is
needed. Shift is one of translation techniques, however the writer will not
explain in detail about shift in translation as stated above.
To start with, in order to make a
good translation, one has to make a deep analysis in the source text; the
meaning, the grammar, the writer’s intention of the text and so on. The more
one spends the time to analyze the text, the better the translation will be. Therefore,
we can conclude that analyzing the text is the most important stage in
translation activity.
In analyzing the text, first we need
to know what the text is about. Then we start to analyze the text; its
structure, meaning, and context. After finishing doing this, next we have to
transfer what we have analyzed and reconstruct it by using target language. In
this process, we are bound to meet differences between source language and
target language. Therefore, we have to construct the result of our analysis of
source text using the rule of target language.
In the process of reconstructing, we have to pay attention to the
differences of source language and target language such as in their noun, verb,
and grammar. And here lies the boundary between contrastive analysis and translation.
The function of contrastive analysis is to make a distinction between two
languages while in translation knowing such distinction is crucial. Thus,
contrastive analysis is surely applicable to translation especially in the reconstruction
stage.
2.3 CA Implementation in Translation Activity
As
what has been explained above, the intersection between contrastive analysis
and translation is in analyzing the distinctive elements between two languages.
In the following section the writer will provide further explanation about this
as well as example in implementing contrastive analysis to translation. However
the writer will only takes two fields which are inflection and grammar as these
two are the most common ones to be different in languages.
2.3.1 Nominal Inflection
English
only knows two forms of noun; singular and plural. On the other hand, languages
such Arabic has three forms; singular, dual and plural. In contrast with Arabic
and english, Indonesian only has singular form, the only clue for plurality is
either word repetition or or adding another lexicon. English expresses plural
implicitly by creating patterns how to use –s and –es. Indonesian on the other
hand expresses plural explicitly. No definite rules how to create a plural form
of a word except by reduplicating it, e.g rumah-rumah, mobil-mobil.(azhar). In
English, the class NOUN is associated with an inflectional category NUMBER. The
plural suffix /-s/ may be added to the base form which is singular to convert
it to plural. (Al-Jurf, 1990).
Examples
contrastive analysis of nominal in English and Indonesia
|
Singular
|
|
English
|
Indonesia
|
|
Book
|
Buku
|
|
Cat
|
Kucing
|
|
Car
|
Mobil
|
|
tree
|
Pohon
|
|
table
|
Meja
|
|
Plural
|
|
English
|
Indonesia
|
|
Books
|
Buku-buku
|
|
Cats
|
Kucing-kucing
|
|
Cars
|
Mobil-mobil
|
|
Trees
|
Pohon-pohon/pepohonan
|
|
Tables
|
Meja-meja
|
Knowing this, now we can apply this into
translation. Below are the examples
English –
Indonesia
Yesterday
I bought a book Kemarin
aku membeli sebuah buku
My
brother planted a tree kakakku
menanam sebuah pohon
In the examples above, the noun book and tree are
translated into buku and pohon, in other words, singular into singular form.
Look at the followings examples
Indonesia
– English
Kucing-kucing itu mau kemana? Where
are those cats going to?
Di hutan
ada banyak pohon-pohon unik there
are unique trees in forest.
Unlike the first examples, these two examples take
plural forms, thus translated into plural form of target language. To sum up,
knowing the contrastive elements in nominal system of languages really helps
when translating a text
As a remembrance, English language has other ways to
express plurality besides adding suffix –s. yet, it will not be explained here.
The main aim of this section is to show how knowing distinctive elements of
nominal system can be of help in translation.
2.3.2 Verbal Inflection
In
this section, we will discuss about contrastive analysis in verbal inflection
and we will use Indonesia and English as the example. As we already know,
English has number agreement system in its verb. In English, verbs are not fully inflected for number. Only
the present third person singular is marked for number. The present third
person singular is the form used with singular nouns, with he, she, it and
words for which these pronouns will substitute and with word groups, e.g.: He
goes, She writes, It eats, The boy runs, One thinks.(al-jurf, 1990). On the other hand, Indonesian
language has no agreement system in its verb. Therefore, when translating text
from English into Indonesia and vice versa, we have to be careful with this.
Example:
Indonesia – English
Dia selalu pergi
ke sekolah setiap pagi vs mereka selalu pergi ke
sekolah setiap pagi
He always goes to school every day they always go
to school every day
In the first sentence,
the subject ‘dia’ is third singular person, it is translated into ‘He’. The
verb is ‘pergi’ which is translated into ‘goes’. While in the second one, the
subject is in plural form. The languages have different feature for their verb
system. Knowing this now we can apply it into translation.
Example:
Mereka mengetahui segalanya
Mereka (subject, plural) = they
menegetahui
(verb, must agree with the subject) = know/knows
segalanya = everything
Thus, the sentence will become ‘they
know everything’, the verb ‘know’ agree with the subject ‘they’ which takes
plural form. To conclude, knowing the difference of how each language takes the
verbal form will help when translate a text.
2.3.3 Grammar
Now
we will discuss the difference between grammars of languages. We will emphasis
on the word order. In this case we will take Japanese and Indonesia, because
both languages are only different in grammatical rules, while in term of
nominal and verbal system, they are pretty much the same.
Japanese
and Indonesian have different word order. While Indonesia follows SVO pattern,
Japanese follows SOV. The basic Japanese sentence structure is called
subject-object-verb or "SOV." In Japanese the verb comes at the very
end of the sentence, and the indication whether a sentence is positive or
negative comes at the end of the verb (Kay, C and David Fine. 2002).
For example: saya makan
jeruk
Saya (subject) =
watashi
Makan (predicate) =
tabemasu
Jeruk (object) =
mikan
As
we see above, saya is S, makan is V, and jeruk is O, this is a SVO pattern. If
it is to be translated into Japanese, we have to change it into SOV pattern.
Therefore, it will be saya jeruk makan. Then saya becomes watashi, jeruk
becomes mikan, and makan becomes tabemasu.
Saya makan jeruk = watashi wa mikan
o tabemasu
Look at the following example
Joni wa gakkou e ikimasu
In the sentence above, Joni is S,
gakkou is O, and ikimasu is V. if it is to be translated into Indonesian, we
have to know first the meaning of each word.
Joni (S)
Gakkou (O) = sekolah
Ikimasu (V) = pergi
After we know this, now we can
translate it into Indonesian. As Indonesian follows SVO, thus we first change
it into Indonesian pattern and will be joni (S) ikimasu (V) gakkou (O), after
that we can translate it and become jon pergi ke sekolah.
How we translate this sentence into
japanese?
Ibu membaca buku
ibu
(S) = okaa-san
membaca (V) = yondeimasu
buku (O) = hon
First, we change the
pattern, SVO becomes SOV. So it will be ibu buku membaca, Next, we translate it
into Japanese, so it will be okaa-san hon yondeimasu, then put the necessary article
in this case, particle ‘wa’ as subject marker, and particle ‘o’ as object
marker. Thus, the sentence will be like this: okaa-san wa hon o yondeimasu.
III. Conclusion
Contrastive
analysis indeed can be applied in translation. Although Contrastive analysis is
mainly for language teaching, their intersection is that both deal with two
languages and both need the knowledge of distinctive elements in each language
such as in their nominal and verbal inflection, and sentence structure.
However, the explanation in this paper is still far from complete. Therefore,
for those who are interested can study this further by using other approaches
such as morphology.
References
Al Jurf, Reima. 1990. A Contrastive Analysis of English and Arabic Morphology for
Translation Students. Saudi Arabia: King Saud University
Catford, J.C. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation. London: Oxford University
Press.
Kardaleska, Ljubica. 2006. Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis in
Combination with Analysis of the Semantic Level. www.sil.org
Kay, C and David Fine. 2002. Japanese
Language: An Introduction for Language Technology Professionals and Researcher.London : www.mt-archive.info Saturday 16 June 2012
Larson, Mildred. 1984. Meaning
Based-Translation. London: University Press of America.
Newmark, P. 1988. A textbook of translation. London:
Prentice Hall
