Angie Kilbane’s Translation Techniques Used in Dealing with Cultural Untranslatability in the Translation of Ahmad Fuadi’s Negeri 5 Menara

Abstract

The current study concerns with the problem of cultural untranslatability that occurs in the process of translation due to the distinction of cultural features between the source language and the target language. The object of the study is a novel written by Ahmad Fuadi entitled Negeri 5 Menara, as well as the English version, entitled The Land of Five Towers, and translated by Angie Kilbane. The novel tells the story of Alif’s journey at Madani Islamic Boarding School, in which he meets his new friends from different cities and cultures of Indonesia. The selection of the novel as the object of the study is supported by the fact that it includes a great number of cultural terms that may lead to the problem of cultural untranslatability when being translated. The purposes of the current study, furthermore, are to find and classify the culturally untranslatable terms found in the translation of the novel, and to analyze the translation techniques used by the translator in dealing cultural untranslatability while translating the mentioned cultural terms. The current study can be categorized as a case study, and is also a qualitative study, as it uses qualitative data. The data were taken from both the Indonesian and the English version of the novel, and collected by using purposive sampling. The sampling results in data that include 55 terms labelled as culturally untranslatable. The terms were then classified based on Newmark’s (1988) classification of cultural words. Having been classified, the culturally untranslatable terms were then analyzed in order to determine the translation techniques for translating them based on Pelawi’s (2014) proposed translation techniques. The findings of the current study show that the 55 cultural terms could be classified into 5 categories, which include: ecology; material culture; social culture; organizations, customs, and ideas; and gesture and habits. Out of the 55 terms, most of them fall into the subcategory religious terms (15 terms), which is under the category organizations, customs, and ideas. In addition, it was also found that the translator used 11 different translation techniques, which include 6 single translation techniques and 5 double translation techniques. The single translation techniques include natural borrowing, generalization, amplification, literal translation, omission, and reduction. The double translation techniques, on the other hand, include amplification plus generalization, natural borrowing plus addition, natural borrowing plus amplification, natural borrowing plus literal translation, and natural borrowing plus reduction. Out of the 11 translation techniques, the translator, Angie Kilbane, mostly used natural borrowing translation technique (10 times) while translating the cultural terms. According to the discussion of the current study, furthermore, the cultural terms found in the novel are mostly classified into the subcategory religious terms because the setting of the novel takes place in a pesantren, an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia. In addition, the translator, Angie Kilbane, mostly used natural borrowing translation technique in translating the cultural terms mainly because the target language, which in this case is English, does not have an equivalence for the cultural terms.