Kinds of Translation - Literal / Idiomatic Translation

According to Larson in her book entitled Meaning-Based Translation, there are two kinds of translation, one is form-based and the other is meaning-based translation. They are called the literal translation and idiomatic translation. To make it clear, let us see the discussion below.

1. Literal Translation

            Literal translation is a form-based translation; in literal translation, the form of the source language is transferred into the form of the target language. Although this literal translation is useful for the purposes that related to the study of the source language, it has little help to the speakers of the receptor language who are interested in the meaning of the source language text. A literal translation has little communication value.

            According to Larson in his book entitled Meaning-Based translation, literal translation is:

Form-based translations attempt to follow the form of the source language and are known as literal translations (Larson, 1984: 17).

Here is an example of literal translation:

SL: Koan daro (Chuava – Papua New Guinea).

TL: Your-name call! (Larson, 1984: 17).

            Larson stated that this literal translation makes little sense in English. The appropriate translation would be What is your name? (Larson, 1984: 17).

            This literal translation gives priority to form whether that in words, clause, or sentence and it makes the result of the translation sounds unnatural and has a little communication value. This translation often becomes a bad translation because the translator makes over the use of equivalent of the appropriate words with the contextual meaning.

Examples:

1)      SL : Who has he been living with? (Margono, 1999: 4)

TL : Siapa telah dia tinggal dengan? (Margono, 1999: 4)

2)      SL : Beliau sudah mendahului kita (Margono, 1999: 7).

TL : He has left before us (Margono, 1999: 7).

The translations above sound unnatural. The word who is simply translated into siapa. Has is translated into telah, he is translated into dia, been living is translated into tinggal and with is translated into dengan. The result is translated by word – for – word translation and it causes the combination of the target language sentence sounds unnatural and it usually makes the readers confused. This case also happens in the second example. The word beliau is simply translated into he, sudah into has, mendahului into left before and us into kita.

Larson in her book Meaning-Based translation quoted Barnwell’s statement (Barnwell 1980:18). It says: If the two languages are related, the literal translation can often be understood, since the general grammatical form may be similar. However, the literal choice of lexical items makes the translation sound foreign. The following bilingual announcement was overheard at an airport.

2. Idiomatic Translation

            Idiomatic translation is the second types of translation. It can be found that the definition of idiomatic translation in Larson’s Meaning-Based translation which is written:

Idiomatic translation is meaning-based translations which make every effort to communicate the meaning of the source language text in the natural forms of the receptor language (Larson, 1984: 17).

Based on Larson’s statement, idiomatic translation uses meaning-based in the translating process. It means that a translator basically needs to know about the meaning of the source language before he transfers this meaning into other languages. Idiomatic translation uses the natural forms of the receptor language, both in the grammatical constructions and in the choice of lexical items. The idiomatic translation does not sound like a translation, it sounds like it was written originally in the receptor language.

Usually, some good translations are finished using mixtures of a literal transfer of the grammatical units along with some idiomatic translation. So, by doing it, the results of the translation will sound more natural.

Example:

SL   : Who has he been living with? (Margono, 1999: 4)

TL   : Dengan siapa dia tinggal? (Margono, 1999: 4)

In example above, we can see that there is a change of structure. The word dengan is placed in front of the sentence and it makes the sentence better. The result of the translation is easier to understand and to accept by the readers.

Reproducing a good receptor language text which communicates the same message as the source language but using the natural grammatical and lexical choice of the receptor language becomes the main purpose of a translator. Here is one more example of idiomatic translation:

Example:

SL   : She is a woman of steel (Margono, 1999: 7).

TL   : Dia wanita yang berjiwa kuat (Margono, 1999: 7).

Idiomatic translation above is acceptable for the target readers because it sounds natural. The phrase a woman of steel is not simply translated into seorang wanita dari besi but idiomatically translated into wanita berjiwa kuat because the translator understands the original meaning and knows both languages well.       

            Further, there are some types of translation proposed by Margono (1999).This explanation is based on Essential of Theory and Practice of Translation (Margono, 1999: 4). According to Margono, there are several types of translation:

a.       Morpheme-by-morpheme Translation

English	Who	Has	He	Been	Liv-	-Ing	With
Indonesian	Penanya orang	Kata bantu aspek perfect	Personal tunggal maskulin	Past Participle be	hidup	Sedang	Dengan

Example above shows that the type of translation that used is morpheme-by-morpheme translation. Lexical morpheme (in this example live: hidup) in the translation is presented differently from grammatical morphemes. In this case, every morpheme is given an explanation about its function rather than its equivalent in the target language.

b.      Word-by-word Translation

English	Who	Has	He	Been	Living	With
Indonesian	Siapa	Telah	Dia		Tinggal	Dengan

Word-by-word translation is used in the example above. Each word in the source language is translated into a word in the target language. If one of them has not a corresponding form, the word can be left untranslated (e.g. been).

c.       Sentence-by-sentence Translation

English	Who has he been living with?
Indonesian	Dengan siapa dia tinggal?

A sentence above is considered as a unit of grammatical structure, it is not a text. Because it has not contexts, the translation is usually disappointed.

d.      Contextual Translation

Margono concerned the discussion in this type of translation. When the translation is related to its context, a possible translation might be like this:

English	Who has he been living with?
Indonesian	Selama ini dengan siapa dia tinggal disana?

To make the sentence better and also fits the context, an addition selama ini in the beginning of the sentence and di sana in the end of the sentence is needed. These additions make the result of the translation better and acceptable in the target language.