Word Level Equivalence Strategies of the Translation Culture-Specific Items in "Central Java Visitor Guide" and Quality of the Translation

Abstract

This study mainly describes the equivalence strategies at word level and the translation quality of culture-specific items in Central java visitor guide. This study is a descriptive-qualitative focusing on translation product analysis. The data are taken from bilingual guide book, raters, and respondents’ interview. Both English and Indonesian versions of the bilingual guide book are then compared to analyze the translation quality. The data are collected through questionnaire and measured into three categories: Accuracy, Acceptability, and Readability. There are 196 data of both Indonesian and English texts. The finding reveals that (80.1%) of the translations use a loan word or loan word plus explanation followed by translation using a more general word (10.2%), translation by paraphrase using a related word (4.08%), translation by omission (2.55%), translation by a more specific word (2.55%), and translation by paraphrase using unrelated word (0.51%). Moreover, it is also found that the translation accuracy reaches (13.7%), less accurate (73.9%), while inaccurate (12.2%). The acceptable translation is (20.9%), less acceptable (59.1%), and inacceptable (19.8%). Readability translation is (45.9), sufficient readability (40.8%), and low readability is (13.26%). It is suggested that in order to transfer the source text meaning into the target text accurately, the translator needs to be more aware of words/phrases. Besides, the choice of translation strategies plays an important role to overcome the problems which occur in word level equivalence.