This study analyzes the translation of English Idioms into Indonesian in four contemporary English novels: I'll be Seeing You (Mary Higgins Clark), All Around the Town (Mary Higgins Clark), Doomsday Conspiracy (Sidney Sheldon), More Than Friends ( Barbara Delinsky) and their Indonesian translations : Kan Kutemui Dikau (Diniarty Pandia), Kota Kenangan (Juni Suharjo), Konspirasi Hari Kiamat (Budijanto) and Lebih Dari Sekedar Sahabat (Suwarni AS).
The fundamental question of the study is how the translators transfer the meanings of English Idioms into Indonesian. Since English idioms are closely related to English cultural background and this does not always match between English and Indonesian, I think that translating Idioms should involve several stages. First, in the analysis stage, the English idiom is analyzed in terms of its grammatical structure, the meaning of its individual words (linguistic meaning) and the meaning of its combination of words (idiomatic meaning). Secondly, in the transfer stage, the analyzed material should be transferred in the mind of the translator from English to Indonesian. Since the idiomatic meaning of English idioms is closely related to the metaphorical conception in English culture, the translator should try to find out the suitable conception in Indonesian culture whose meaning is similar to meaning of the English idiom. For example, the metaphor 'He is a chicken' in English denotes the meaning of 'he is a coward'. On the other hand, 'chicken' in Indonesian refers to 'a bad girl'. Therefore, in the last stage, the restructuring stage, this transferred material should be restructured to make the final form and meaning fully acceptable in Indonesia.
After analyzing the texts, the study has found 210 samples of idioms which are classified into seven types : Binomials (e.g. night and clay), Similes (e.g. as sharp as a dash of water), Metaphors (e.g. he is a bear), Exclamation (e.g. Jesus Christ), Proverbs (e.g. looking for a needle in the haystack), Phrasal Compound Noun Idioms (e.g. nail in the coffin) and Tournures (e.g. dance in the air).
As to the strategy to translate idioms, the study shows that the translators mostly paraphrase the English Idioms, i.e. they explain the meaning of the idioms. Adaptation , i.e. using original Indonesian idioms, is also used to translate several English idioms. Next, the translators also translate some English idioms literally. Finally, the translators also keep the original English words or omit the idioms in their translation.
Finally the study concludes that (1) most English idioms are untranslatable in the sense that there are no lexical, syntactic and cultural equivalents in Indonesian; but (2) the meaning of English idioms can be transferred into Indonesian after going through the translation shift and modulation of meaning. |