Word, Above Word And Grammatical Level Equivalence In The Translation Of Nokia 2300 Manual (P-75)

1.1 Background of the Study

Communication can not be limited only in a certain area or community but people in all over the world need to communicate each others. It is because the needs of life are more complex and various. Not only the needs of food, clothing and housing but nowadays the needs of information, education, science and technology, fashion and many more become very important.

The issue above can not be separated from language as a mean of communication. Language is the tool by which we express what we think, the typical vehicle of communication that humans use of dealing with one another. On the other hand, the presence of various languages that people speak in different nations all over the world, has more or less caused obstacles in the process of communicating among speakers of different language. Not every human can speak in all languages. How we can understand information from others country with different languages? How we can share the experiences, sciences and technology and many things to the people in all over the world? Translation plays important role here. Catford in A Linguistics Theory of Translation said, “Translation is an activity of enormous importance in the modern world and it is a subject of interest not only to linguist, professional and amateur translators and languages teachers, but also to electronic engineers and mathematicians”. The
statement shows us how very useful translation for enhancing the people
knowledge so that not only the professional translators who take interest in this subject.

We often are not aware that translation gives much contribution to the growth of the world. As stated by Smith,
The man in the street doesn’t always realize that in the world today, the vast bulk of translation is performed in the fields of commerce, industry and science, and that literacy translation, exciting as it is a relatively minor activity. (1989:19)


In line with Catford, Smith agreed that translation is needed in the fields of life for example commerce, industry and science.
Especially in the fields of industry, science and technology, it saying without doubt that translation bring much ease to their progress. As we know that nowadays there are so many products of technology have been launched and most of them are sophisticated tools. For instance, computer, mobile phone, plays station and others electric tools.

Of course the distributions of those products are not limited in a certain country. The companies compete to enhance their distribution to the international market. Of course in order to use those products optimally, the companies have to provide user’s guide book or manual. Beside it will facilitate the users, the manual useful for them in avoiding the mistakes which cause the damage and endanger the users. Automatically they have to provide the manual in languages where the companies distribute their products. Here, the translation will take the important role to give much understanding of how to use the product properly by conveying the message of the Source Language.

Translation is not as simple as most people think. It’s more than just ability in speak in the target language and understand it. A translator has to know and understand the language not just semantically and grammatically, but also the culture of where the language is used.

The problem of translation is very complicated, from the level of finding the most equivalent in word level until the problem of cultural. One in millions problems of translation is the words beras, gabah, menir (Indonesia) only can be translated rice in English. Another example is how to translate words that are not available in target language? For example a noun rawon (Indonesia/Javanese) must be defined as kind of beef stew made with ‘keluak’. In the previous translation analysis of manual, Rofiatun (2005:2) gave an example, “At Nokia, we call it human technology. (Nokia 3530:1) is translated Di Nokia kami menyebutnya teknologi yang mengerti Anda (Nokia 3530:1)”. There is a shifting in meaning in translating the phrase ‘human technology’ which should literally mean ‘teknologi manusia’, but it was translated ‘teknologi yang mengerti Anda’. Here, the translator strives for every effort to find the closest equivalent of the target language. The translator also has to know the suitable strategies how to translate the language naturally, therefore the message can be understood correctly.
From those issues above, the writer will analyze the translation of Nokia 2300 manual. The analysis will be focused on the strategies used by the translator based on the classification word, above word and grammatical level equivalence.

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