STRATEGIES OF TRANSLATING LITERARY TERMS BY STUDENT TRANSLATORS

Abstract

This article reports one stage of a whole translation process of academic text from English into Indonesian. This process involved students enrolling in Translation class in Semester I, 2019-2020 academic year, English Department, Universitas 17 Agustus 1945 Surabaya, Indonesia. This article discusses translation strategies of technical terms in the source language. The study involves 437 technical terms found in the data source (Thornley and Roberts’s An Outline of English Literature (1984) translated using strategies elaborated in Baker (1992). This descriptive qualitative study involves Google Translate as the instrument at the initial stage, followed processes of revising and editing. The result of the study shows four strategies commonly used by student translators: (1) the technical terms are not translated (borrowing), (2) the technical terms are partially translated (thus borrowing with adaptation), (3) the technical terms are literally translated (translation emphasizing on form), and (4) the technical terms are equivalently translated into the target language. This discussion is hoped to shed lights on problems in translating technical vocabulary in specific fields.