THE THIRD ASSIGNMENT (MY ESSAY)

MY ESSAY OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES

After reading what translation procedure is as stated by Nida 1964, I begin to know what actually it is about. Nida 1964 stated that translation procedure has 2 types, the first one is “technical procedures”, and the second one is “organizational procedures”. Now I’ll begin to explain what I know about both of them as follows.

            The technical procedure 

The technical procedure has three steps as follow:

1. Analysis of the source and target languages;
2. A through study of the source language text before making attempts translate it;
3.   Making judgments of the semantic and syntactic approximations.

A.    Analysis of the source and the target language

In this step, we have to analysis the both languages, for example, we would like to translate English text into Indonesian one. What we have to do at the first time that we have to learn the both languages. What are they like? Of course this section needs our linguistic knowledge of the source and also the target languages. As the freshman in the translation class, usually before translating my English text into Indonesian one, I open again my books, about vocabulary, phonetics, grammar, and writing or kinds of text books. Because Indonesia is my native language, I never open book about Indonesia language, but actually it is necessary for me to learn.

B.      A through study of the source language text before making attempts translate it

Here, we as the translator have to understand well bout the source text. What is it about? What is the message going to share? How the writer uses his language in that text? To know all of them, we have to learn the source text, so we will get the point of the source text. Based on my own experience, before going to translate the source text, I will try to learn and understand the text well.

C.    Making judgments of the semantic and syntactic approximations.

In the last step of technical procedures, we have to make sure about the meaning of words in the source text, and what the structure of the source text is used. As what I do in my translation project, when I get difficult to find the meaning of a word, I try to find the equivalent one or the closest meaning of it. For the structure, I also try to transpose the structural from the source to the target structure without change the content of the sentence. In this step sometimes I also will find any cultural context from the target language, to make it clear in my translation product, I find the equivalent cultural context in my native language, so the reader will understand the meaning of the text overall.

The second type of translation procedure is organizational procedure

It is named as organizational procedure because here we concern about the text organization from the target language and our translation text product. And the organizational procedure also has steps to do:

A.    Constant reevaluation of the attempt made

We at first time have to understand the whole source text, so we have to read many times to get what the text is about. As in my own experience, before start to translate the source text into the target language, I will read the source text at least three times to understand it well.

B.     Contrasting it with the existing available translations of the same text done by other translators

The next step, it will be better if we learn the other translator product when he or she had ever translated the same text as we do. From here we can compare our product and the others’ product. The purpose is to give us other reference about the diction and the structure that we are translating. Sometime we find that others’ product is better than us, so it is good for us to learn others’ product. In my translation class, when we are given such kind of translation assignment, I usually compare my own translation product to my friends’. Sometimes I feel that theirs is better than me, so I can correct my assignment before I publish it.

C.    Checking the text's communicative effectiveness by asking the target language readers to evaluate its accuracy and effectiveness and studying their reactions.

In the last step of organizational procedure, we should ask the target language readers to read and analyze our translation product. They will give note if they don’t understand about our language in the translated text, then we can repair it to be better. The target reader in my translation class is my lecturer. He always evaluates my product, and when he find that my words that I use is not suitable he will give comments, and then I will repair my product.

That is all what I know about the translation procedure. It is important for the translator to know and understand about the translation procedure, so they will do their translation product as well as possible. I hope my writing will give many advantages to the readers, and thank you.