STUDENTS’ ERROR IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH SENTENCE AT THE FIFTH SEMESTER OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDY PROGRAM OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

STUDENTS’ ERROR IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH SENTENCE AT THE

FIFTH SEMESTER OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDY PROGRAM OF

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

Aditya Prayudyi1, Jamiluddin2, Darmawan3

AbstractThe objective of this research was to find out thepercentage of students’ error in translating simplesentences at the fifth semester English LanguageEducation students of Tadulako University. The generalproblem of translation is to find target languageequivalence of the source language (SL) and to translatethe SL into the target language by paying closelyattention to the quality of the translation. Thetechnique used in this research was error analysistechnique. The collected data were validated by analyzingthe translation result. The selected sentences consistedof figurative sentences and literal sentences. This studywas conducted based on the theory proposed by Banwell(accuracy, clarity, and naturalness). In finding theaccuracy of the target language, the researcher usedthree parameters proposed by Baker; word-levelequivalence, above word-level equivalence, and textualequivalence. As the result, the students’ errors werestill abundant especially in finding the target languageequivalence. The highest probability is 85%. It was stilldifficult for the students to translate figurativesentences. However, there were still some students, who

1Email: [email protected] 2Email: j amiluddin i [email protected] 3Email: [email protected] 3

e-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)Vol. No

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were moderate in translating English Sentence with thelowest percentage error 50%.

Keywords : Students’ Error; Translation; Simple Sentence.

INTRODUCTION

Translation is one of compulsory subjects for the

students at the English Language Study Program.

Translation is the process of transferring information

and message from the Source Language (SL) to the Target

Language (TL), and it has developed in many parts of the

world. The main purpose of translating is to enable the

readers to understand the message of the SL without any

significant obstacles. The role of translation is

certainly important for individuals, group of people, or

even a country to access lots of beneficial information

from the other parts of world. Furthermore, a translation

activity has always been interesting to do. This activity

is clearly seen from the existence of translated books of

various fields such as technology, economics, and

literary works (novel, poetry, and short story). Thus, in

other words translation is one of tool to bridge

communication in written form.

In translation-practice, the central problem is

that of finding target language translation equivalents.


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For example, the equivalent of the Indonesian source

language text, “Siapa namamu?”, the English target

language equivalent is “What is your name”? not “Who is

your name?”. The message in translation can be understood

by the readers if the translators pay close attention to

criteria of translation. According to Barnwell as cited

in Perkasa (2006), there are three most essential of a

good translation; they are accuracy, clarity, and

naturalness. Accuracy refers to the precise understanding

of the source message and the transfer of the message

meaning as accurate as possible into the TL. In addition,

clarity means that the translation is easy to understand.

The translation should be clear and understandable. The

translator aims to communicate the message in a way that

people can readily understand. Meanwhile, naturalness

means that the translation should natural.

The problem lies in the students’ translation

itself. Mostly, they make error in translating a

figurative sentence, a proverb sentence, and sometimes

they translate words that do not even need to be

translated. This means that the students are completely

blind when it comes to translating texts which use a

special kind of structure or grammar, context, and even

ambiguity. Normally, after the flaws are detected, theye-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

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will be immediately repaired, but it cannot easily be

done. Despite its flaws, sometimes they manage to

translate the text correctly into the desirable target

language.

In translating, the translator may face problems in

transferring the meaning from SL text to the TL text. It

occurs whether in term of grammatical structure, cultural

aspect, lexicon, communication situation, style of

language both SL text and TL text. Therefore, to solve

these problems, some experts propose some methods

translation.

According to Larson (1984:17), “When translating a

text, the translator’s goal in an idiomatic translation

which makes every effort to communicate the meaning of

the source language text into naturalness forms of the

target language.” Furthermore, she states that

“Translation is concerned with a study of lexicon,

grammatical structure, communication situation, and

cultural context of source language text, which is

analyzed in order to determine its meaning.” The

discovered meaning is then re-expressed or reconstructed

using the lexicon and grammatical structure which are

appropriate in the Target Language (TL). Larson (1984:4)


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simply presents the diagram of translation process as

follows:

Considering the importance of finding out the

percentage of students’ error in translating English

Sentence, the researcher conducted the research about

students’ error in translating English sentence at the

fifth semester of English Language Study Program of

Teacher Training and Education Faculty. The researcher

focused the research on the target language equivalence

and the quality of the students’ translations, and

formulated the research question as follow: can the students

at the fifth semester of English Language Study Program translate based on

the target language equivalence and qualified?

METHODOLOGY

The design of this research was descriptive method.

Descriptive research has been defined by Isaac (1971) as

the kind of research that is used to describe

systematically the facts and characteristics of a given


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population of the area of interest, factually, and

accurately.

The participants of this research were the students

at the fifth semester of English Language Study Program

in Tadulako Universiy. The fifth semester students are

divided into five parallel classes: A, B, C, D, and E.

For that reason, with cluster technique, the researcher

took students in one class to be the participants of this

research.

In collecting the data, the researcher used a kind

of data collections, namely test. The researcher selected

the sentences, and then gave them to the students to be

translated. The given sentences consisted of figurative

sentence and literal sentences. After doing data

collection process, the researcher analyzed the result of

students’ translation. Three most essential qualities of

a good translation are accuracy, clarity, and

naturalness, and they become the aspects that are used by

the researcher in scoring rubric to analyze the students’

translation. In finding target language equivalence, in

this case the accuracy of the source language, the

researcher used the theory proposed by Baker (1992). The

researcher identified students’ errors from the result of

the participants’ translated sentences, especiallye-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No6

whether target language equivalence has been correct and

qualified or not. The percentage was obtained by using

the following formula as stated by Purwanto (1991: 102):

Np= RSM

x100%

Where:NP = percentage of errorsR = students’ scoreSM = score maximum

As in the curriculum 1994, the frequency of errors

is classified into three levels:

a. 65 – 100% is classified as high, which means the

ability of the participants to translate English into

Bahasa Indonesia is failure.

b. 35 – 64% is classified as moderate, which means the

ability of the participants to Translate English into

Bahasa Indonesia is moderate.

c. 0 – 34% is classified as low, which means the ability

of the participant to translate into Bahasa Indonesia

is good.

FINDINGS

In this section there were twenty sentences

translated by twenty students. The sentences consisted of


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ten figurative sentences and ten literal sentences. The

accuracy of these sentences is analyzed by using three

parameters; they are word-level equivalence, above word-

level equivalence, and textual equivalence which are

proposed by Baker (1992). Here are the students’

translations analyzed by the researcher:

1. She shook me by the hand hard.

This sentence is translated dia menyalamiku dengan erat.

Differing from the students’ translations, most of them

have errors in translating this sentence. There were

two students only who translated this sentence

accurately. One student translated this sentence by

considering the clarity and the naturalness of a good

translation. Another student got the target language

equivalence of this sentence; unfortunately he was lack

of naturalness. Generally the students’ translations

have not fulfilled the criteria of a good translation

proposed by Banwel, namely: accuracy, clarity, and

naturalness because they have not successfully

transferred the meaning of source language.

2. I don’t think he will come.

It is translated into saya pikir dia tidak akan datang.

Unfortunately, only several students can translated this

sentence correctly. Other students are almost correct,e-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No8

but they got error in naturalness. And then some others

translated this sentence error “saya tidak yakin dia akan

datang” and “saya yakin dia akan datang”. In actual fact,

Baker (1992) cites that arrangement plays an important

role in helping readers to understand the text.

Therefore, the researcher used textual equivalence

parameter to translate the sentence, so that the

information of the SL can be delivered correctly.

3.There is a whole school of poetry in the rhyme you read.

The phrase a whole school of poetry must be translated into

aliran puisi tersendiri. Nevertheless, most of the students

translated it into sekolah puisi and pelajaran yang terkandung

dari puisi that they got error in this sentence. These

errors were due to the word per word translation. They

did not pay attention to the “phrase” that they

translated this sentence incorrectly. In this sentence,

the students were lack of accuracy, clarity, and

naturalness..

4. I was pleased most to death.

This sentence should be translated saya senang setengah

mati/saya senang sekali. It illustrates that it does not

make sense that I was happy and almost die because of

something. This is only a style in expressing

something. Yet, almost all students got error ine-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No9

translating this sentence: “saya senang untuk mati”, “saya

sungguh tak berdaya”, “saya rela mati”, etc. Only one

student was correct.

5. The worn gown belonged to my mother.

The sentence should be translated into gaun tua itu adalah

kepunyaan ibuku. There were some students who were

correct in translating this sentence, but some others

were incorrect. Those students who translated

incorrectly did not pay attention to the phrase “The

worn gown”. Omission error occurred in their translated

sentence because they did not translate what they had

to translate “Gaun itu milik ibuku”.

6. His car was at the far end of the station lot.

To get the target language equivalence of this

sentence, the researcher used above word-level

equivalence in translating the SL. The TL of the

sentence above must be mobilnya berada di ujung tempat parkir

stasiun. The phrase ‘station lot’ here means ‘the

parking space in the station’. Nevertheless, the

students translated the SL into mobilnya berada diujung

stasiun yang banyak, mobilnya banyak diparkir di stasiun, and banyak

mobil diparkir di akhir stasiun. By looking at their

incorrectly translated sentence, it was difficult by


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the researcher to understand it because they were lack

of accuracy, clarity, and naturalness.

7. It is what Umbrella Pays him for.

This sentence contains word-level equivalence that it

is translated itulah mengapa Umbrella membayarnya, so that,

the translation has clarity and naturalness based on

Banwell’s Theory. Some students translated it into

itulah Payung membayarnya untuk and itulah mengapa Payung

membayarnya. In fact, the word ‘Umbrella’ function as a

name of something, which is why it should not be

changed after the translation process. On the other

hand, most of the students translated it accurately,

but they were lack of clarity and naturalness.

8. He’ll be drenched before he gets halfway across.

Looking at this sentence, it can be known that the

parameter of this sentence is above word – level

equivalence. because this is not translated into ia akan

basah kuyup sebelum ia sampai setengah di as the students did.

The phrase ‘halfway across’ became strange after the

translation process. The result seems to be

unfinished, this is because the phrase is translated

word per word, and the word order was also wrong.

Therefore, it is translated into ia akan basah kuyup

sebelum ia tiba setengah perjalanan.


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9. I was tongue-tied after knowing his death.

Some students were good in translating or finding the

target language equivalence of this sentence, but some

others were incorrect. This sentence contains a word-

level equivalence that it is translated into saya terdiam

setelah mengetahui kematiannya. It can be imagined when

one’s tongue is tied, then s/he cannot say anything.

Therefore, the word tongue-tied is translated terdiam in

this sentence.

10. They are quick of hearing and sharp-eye.

The target language equivalence of this sentence is

mereka memiliki penglihatan dan pendengaran yang tajam. The

researcher used the literal translation to translate

this sentence where the SL grammar constructions are

converted to their nearest TL, but the lexical words

are again singly translated, out of context. There was

only one student who translated it correctly. Most of

them were incorrect.

11. A ten-year-old girl named Teresa Hardy had been involved in a clinical

trial for a new pediatric heart medication, Valifin.

Above word-level happens in this sentence. This

sentence is translated into seorang gadis berusia sepuluh

tahun bernama Teresa Hardy telah terlibat dalam percobaan klinis untuk

pengobatan pediatrik hati yang baru, Valifin. The phrase ‘newe-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

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pediatric heart medication’ was translated into

pengobatan hati yang baru pediatrik, whereas the students had

to translate it into pengobatan pediatrik hati yang baru. The

rests did not translated the word ‘pediatric’.

12. She works hard at whatever she does.

All translated this sentence correctly, but they did

not pay attention to the clarity of their translation.

For example, a student who translated it into dia bekerja

keras pada apapun yang ia lakukan, this translation is

accurate but it is not easy to understand. Moreover,

it is not translated naturally. It can be compared

with apapun yang ia lakukan selalu dengan sungguh-sungguh. Most

of the students translated this sentence without

paying attention to clarity and naturalness based on

Baker’s theory.

13. I couldn’t get my breath for almost a minute.

This sentence again belongs to textual equivalence.

There were several students who translated this aku

tidak bisa bernapas selama beberapa menit, and this translation

is considered as a good translation because the

sentence should be translated into aku tidak bisa bernapas

selama satu menit. It is different from other students

who translated it into saya tidak mendapatkan napas selama


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satu menit, this translated sentence is lack of

naturalness that the researcher cannot accept it.

14. He looks green at the gills.

There were several students who translated it

correctly. They could find the right TL of the SL

above. This sentence should be translated dia terlihat

sangat pucat. Word per word translation occurred in the

students’ translation that the translation results

were very strange; dia tampak hijau di insang, dia kelihatan pucat

di gills, kulitnya terlihat kehijau-hijauan, etc.

15. There was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferry

boat.

The sentence above is translated into ada sebuah lentera

tergantung pada sebuah dongkrak kapal feri yang berlambung dua. The

word jackstaff is categorized as idiom since, if this

sentence is separated, the meaning may be different.

Therefore, in order to get the true meaning, the

sentence must be united. The researcher translated

this word into dongkrak. Naturalization procedure is

applied in this translation process in word lantern

into lentera in target language. Nevertheless, all

students got error when translating this sentence.

16. The quarrel will just cloud the issue.


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Based on Baker’s theory (1992), the word ‘cloud’

(word-level equivalence) should be translated into

memperkeruh, so to translate this sentence based on

Banwell’s theory (clarity and naturalness), it is

translated into perselisihan hanya akan memperkeruh pokok

permasalahan. Most of the students translated it

correctly and had fulfilled those two theories.

17. Mr. James is a green worker in this company.

The target language equivalence of the sentence above

is Tn. James adalah karyawan baru di perusahaan ini. The above

word-level equivalence a green worker should not be

translated into karyawan pembersih or karyawan berpengalaman

like some students did. The word ‘green’ in the

example above is in fact a kind of colour. The word

has different meaning when it occurs before certain

words that the receivers might react differently.

18. Life must run its course.

This sentence should be translated into hidup harus

menempuh jalannya sendiri. The researcher used semantic

translation process in translating this sentence. Most

of students translated it correctly; in this case they

could find the target language equivalence or the good

accuracy of the sentence. Nevertheless, some of them

were lack of naturalness. Even there were few studentse-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

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who translated this sentence incorrectly due to the

word per word translation and difference meaning after

translation process which indicated that they were

totally failure.

19. He runs his eyes over the crowded.

The researcher translated this sentence into ia

melayangkan pandangannya pada kerumunan itu. The word “run”

has a primary meaning that is the meaning which at the

first time is got by the receiver or reader. The second

or alternative or connotative meaning is one which is

affected by the context. Thereby, the word “run” is not

translated into “berlari”, but it is translated into

“melayangkan”. Unfortunately, the students could not get

the meaning of this sentence. There were only four of

twenty who were almost correct in accuracy of this

sentence meaning.

20. Mr. Clark has a darkish-paly complexion.

This last sentence has textual equivalence parameter,

and it is translated into Tn. Clark memiliki kulit gelap pucat.

Some students succeeded translating this sentence

accurately; however the clarity and the naturalness

were not be figured out by them.

After conducting this study, the researcher found

moderate percentage up to high percentage of students’e-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No16

translation error. The sentences are even translated

ineffectively and the error percentage is close to a

hundred percent. The percentage of students’ result can

be seen in table 1. In the table 1, we can also see that

the high probability in finding TL equivalence of the

given sentences is 85%. However, there were still some

students who were moderate in translating the given

sentences with the lowest percentage error 50%. Most of

them translated the figurative sentences incorrectly.

There are ten students who have moderate percentage

of error in translating those twenty sentences. In

addition, there are ten students who have high percentage

of error. The student who did most error is AA, and this

is almost 100 % which means the errors made by her are

serious.

Table.1

Percentage of Students’ Translation Result

Students

∑ Max. ofError

∑ IncorrectlyTranslated

Percentage

AA 60 51 85,00AID 60 43 71,66APU 60 43 71,66AS 60 41 68,33ASY 60 37 61,66AV 60 33 55,00BJ 60 46 76,66


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DL 60 42 70,00ER 60 42 70,00EW 60 30 50,00MA 60 37 61,66NA 60 47 78,33NAL 60 36 60,00NKD 60 32 53,33NWL 60 35 58,33SML 60 46 76,66ZCM 60 38 63,33HZ 60 41 68,33NAF 60 37 61,66RV 60 34 56,66

To know the percentage error of the class, the

researcher still calculated it by using the formula

proposed by Purwanto (1991:102).

Np= RSM

x100

Np= 7911200

x100

NP = 65,91%

DISCUSSION

Since translation is one of compulsory subjects at

the English Language Study Program, the researcher tries

to conduct a research regarding to translations, to find

out the percentage of students’ error in translating

simple sentences. The central problem of translation-


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practice is to find the target language translation

equivalents, and this problem lies in the students’

translation.

The researcher tries to focus on the target language

equivalence of the students’ translation. Besides

focusing on finding the target language equivalence or

accuracy of the SL, the researcher also pays attention to

the quality of their translations based on Banwell’s

theory as cited in Perkasa (2006) in terms of accuracy

which had been measured with the parameters stated by

Baker (1992), clarity, and naturalness. By conducting the

research, the researcher did not only find the error of

their translation, but also judged the quality of their

translations as proposed by Banwell.

According to Banwell’s findings as cited in Larson

(1984), a good translation should meet the three

criteria: the first, accuracy refers to the precise

understanding of the source message and the transfer of

the message meaning as accurate as possible into the TL;

the second, clarity means easy to understand. The

translation should be clear and understandable. The

translator aims to communicate the message in a way that

people can readily understand; and the third, naturalness

means the translation should make sense, read naturally,e-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No19

which is written in ordinary language, common grammar,

idioms, and words that meet the kind of situation. The

use of natural TL in the translation is expected to be

natural and not sounding strange.

Based on the discussions above, generally, the

outcomes of translation are high because the researcher

found some translations that show awkwardness or un-

clarity. The highest error often happened in the

naturalness of students’ translation, with percentage

error 83%. It can be seen when they translated the

sentence (11) ‘A ten-year-old girl named Teresa Hardy had

been involved in a clinical trial for a new pediatric

heart medication’ is translated into “Seorang gadis sepuluh

tahun dinamakan Teresa Hardy telah terlibat dalam percobaan klinis jantung

yang baru pediatrik.” By focusing on the theory of Banwell as

cited in Larson (1984), the target language equivalence

of this translated sentence is acceptable, but it is not

natural that it sounds strange. For the precise

understanding of the source message and the transfer of

the message meaning is accurate, but it is lack of

naturalness because it is not translated in ordinary

language and naturally. By comparing with “Seorang gadis

sepuluh tahun bernama Teresa Hardy telah terlibat dalam percobaan klinis

untuk pengobatan pediatrik jantung yang baru”, this translatione-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

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result is accurate, readable, and does not sound strange.

In addition, the percentage error of the clarity is 61%.

For example, the sentence (18) “life must run its course”

is translated “Hidup harus berjalan sendiri”. This translated

sentence is unclear. It should be translated “hidup harus

menempuh jalannya sendiri”. Furthermore, the lowest error

happened in the accuracy of students’ translation, with

percentage error 55%. It can be seen when they translated

the sentences containing the words “shook” and

“Jackstaff”. The sentence contains equivalence at word

level, where it is the simplest of all of the criteria

stated by Baker (1992). Though it is simplest, it is the

most vital essence in translating.

Mainly the students still had problems in finding

the target language equivalence and naturalizing the

figurative sentences in their translation. There might

be some causes contributed to the errors produced by the

students, such as:

1. Omitted word: the word which supposed to be

translated is omitted from the translation result.

Omission of any word from original sentence mostly

makes different meaning to the translation result.

2. The translation result has different meaning after

translation: this is the most basic form of the errore-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No21

in translation. If the translated word has a different

meaning from the original sentence, the information

which should be delivered will be wrong.

3. Using word per word translation: phrase should be

translated as a phrase, not as a set of word.

Translating phrase by word per word translation would

cause the phrase has a strange meaning in the

translation result.

4. Unmatched translation result with context: aside from

correctly translating a word, phrase, or sentence,

translation should also correctly match to the context

in order to convey the right information. This error

mostly happened to almost all of the translated

sentences.

Having the problem on the target language

translation equivalence faced by students, the researcher

relates the recent study to the previous studies that

have been mentioned obviously by Widyahening and Zewitra.

Widyahening (2012) addressed her study at the problems on

the quality of translations. Furthermore, Zetwitra (2011)

focused her study on the quality of Google Translate.

Based on the previous researches, the researcher believed

that the recent research is very important to conduct

since it will help both the learners and the lecturerse-journal of English Language Teaching Society | (ELT)

Vol. No22

solve the learners’ problems in relation to translation

subject specially for the finding of target language

equivalence to make the translated SL more qualified.

CONCLUSION and SUGGESTIONS

After analyzing and interpreting the data, the

researcher comes to the conclusion that the students at

the fifth semester of English Language Education Study

Program had the probability of 85% error. Based on the

result, it can be concluded that most of the students

cannot translate based on target language equivalence and

qualified especially for figurative sentences and idiom,

but few students can still translate it accurately.

Moreover, the quality of their translation is not totally

good. The errors found in their translation result mostly

are errors at minor detail, so the students’ translations

are not too serious; but the researcher also finds where

the mistake is very serious. Moreover, the researcher

finds that there are some cases where “the students at

fifth semester of the English Language Education Study

Program in Tadulako University” often make error in

translating. Each parameter has at least one case in

which ‘the students’ often make error.


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In connection with the conclusions, the researcher

would like to give some suggestions. For the students,

they should motivate themselves to do some self learning

about translation and try to do more practices in

translating words, phrases, sentences, up to paragraphs.

In addition, they should not wait for the lecturer to ask

whenever they have problems. They should try to find any

other sources that are able to explain about translation

method and procedures. For the lecturers, this result

will improve their arrangement in teaching translation,

so that the students will understand the subject easier.

Further, the lecturers will know the difficulty of the

students in learning translation that they can do

something to reduce the errors. Moreover, the lecturers

should emphasize on the kinds of translation method,

procedures, even equivalences. In addition, s/he should

encourage the students to ask when they have problems.

Corrections of the students’ work are essentials and

explanation on the errors must be provided. For the

institution, when the students at the English Language

Education Study Program of Tadulako University are able

to translate, this will show a good quality of graduate

students. Therefore, it is better to improve the quality


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of translation class, especially at the English Language

Education Study Program.

REFERENCES

Anonymous. (1994). Kurikulum Pendidikan Dasar. Balai Pustaka:Jakarta.

Baker, M. (1992). In Other Words a Coursebook on Translation.London: Rouledge. 10, 46, 82, 180.

Isaac, S., and Michael, W.M. (1971). Handbook in Research andEvaluation. Robert R. Knapp: USA.

Larson, Mildred L. 1984. Meaning-Based Translation. New York:United Press of America.

Perkasa, G. H. 2006. An Analysis of Methods andProcedures of Translation in Toyota Warranty andService Booklet. Unpublished Paper. Bandung: EnglishDepartment. Indonesia University of Education.

Purwanto, M. V. (1991). Prinsi-prinsip dan Teknik EvaluasiPengajaran. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya.


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STUDENTS’ ERROR IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH SENTENCE AT THE FIFTH SEMESTER OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDY PROGRAM OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

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