Abstract:
A skilled translator must have a combination of language proficiency, cultural knowledge, and creative insight in order to produce a successful translation of an Indonesian literary work. The translator must also have a deep understanding of the cultural context of the Indonesian literary work and work closely with the author or publisher of the original work. These reasons make translation becomes a rather complicated process. Therefore, the researcher is interested in conducting a study about the translation techniques that translators use in translating a literary work. To fill this void, this study aimed to analyze and compare the translation techniques used in translating Indonesian cultural symbols into English in Andrea Hirata’s literary work entitled Laskar Pelangi along with its movie adaptation with the same title, using the translation theory proposed by Molina and Albir (2002).
This research is a descriptive qualitative study. The object of the research is the Laskar Pelangi novel and movie, and the translated version of the novel and the movie. The original Indonesian script and the English translation of the literary work is then classified using a table, compared, and analyzed using the theory of translation proposed by Molina and Albir (2002) to find out about the translation techniques used by the translators in translating Laskar Pelangi novel and movie.
It was found that only some of the translation techniques is employed in translating the cultural symbols in the Laskar Pelangi novel and movie. Those techniques are adaptation, amplification, borrowing, calque, description, generalization, and reduction. In the novel translation, the translator tends to keep the cultural elements that the source text consists. On the other hand, the translation of the movie takes a different approach and aims to look for an equivalence between the source language and the target language.
