Notes on Literary Translation

Catatan Peter Newmark kali ini akan mempelajari beberapa catatan tentang penerjemahan sastra. Newmark (1998: 201) mengurutkan 12 catatan dalam penerjemahan karya sastra, berikut ini :

1. The more serious the text, morally and aesthetically, the more accurately and economically it should be translated, reflecting the thought, style (idiolect rather than variety of language), emphasis (through functional sentence perspective), and as far as possible, particularly in poetry, the rhythm and sound of the original.
2. The more important the language of a text, which is on a scale from poetry (where every word and feature are important, but paradoxically, there are so many factors, that close translation is most difficult and denotatively least likely or possible) through the short story and the novel to tragedy, drama, comedy and farce, the last four being actively affected by their audiences, the more closely it should be translated.
3. A deviation from normal SL social usage, whether lexical, idiomatic, or grammatical, should usually be reflected in the translation.
4. A word, whether key-word or leit-motif repeated in the source language text, should be repeated, never replaced by a synonym, in the translation.
5. An original universal metaphor should be translated literally; an original cultural metaphor should retain as much of the original image as is possible consonant with the situational and linguistic context bringing and making the meaning clear to the second readership.
6. A standard metaphor should be translated by its standard equivalent or, failing that, comprehensibly adapted.
7. Humour and irony must be reflected in the translation, sometimes at the cost of literal or denotative meaning.
8. If the dramatist intends the audience to cry or to smile or to laugh at a certain place in a play, the translator must do likewise, sometimes, in the case of broad laughter, at the cost of a faithful linguistic translation.
9. Sound should be reflected in onomatopoeia and compensated in assonance, but may have to be sacrificed in alliteration.
10. Essentially, literature, belles-lettres, is about individuals and their actions, while non-literature, Sachbücher, is about objects and movements. The salient features of literary texts are the human qualities expressed in adjectives, adverbs and nouns of manner. These are the more sensitive components of language, readily changing in meaning in response to their situational and linguistic contexts: thus, 'cool' (branché, super) or 'streetwise' (dégourdi).
11. Sound, linguistic rhythm, speech-rhythms, colloquial language and linguistic innovations are fundamental factors in literary language from poetry through drama to fiction, and have to be recreated in the translation.
12. Literary language is basically the recording of spoken language, a dialogue between writer and reader ('Reader, I married him'), or between the first and the second person singular. Nonliterary language is basically third person singular, impersonal or passive.

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd

The Translation of Irony

Newmark (1998: 24) elaborates on irony in translation as the following words:

Irony in translation is lost unless it is perceived and understood. I suspect it is not used in languages that have had little contact with others, and/or where a religious constraint against lying precludes it. Basil Hatin has pointed out that Arabic readers normally take sentences literally, and therefore misinterpret the sophisticated irony that appears in Western writing. Adjectives like 'interesting', 'remarkable', 'curious', 'odd' are misunderstood. Sentences like 'The Israeli government can take all credit fo. . . .' are construed as Israeli propaganda, where in fact they are ironical. Innocence of irony is the glory of little children, who always believe what you say and possibly the handicap of speakers of languages who have little contact with other languages.

Referensi :

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraph on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

Translating Humour

Kembali memahami catatan Peter Newmark mengenai Translation. Kali ini adalah penjelasan Newmark (1993: 18) tentang penerjemahan teks jenaka / teks humor. Lalu apa sih penjelasan beliau? Yuk kita lihat bersama-sama :

The essence of humor is incongruity of freshness. If you see a lot of men wearing top hats and white shirts in England, you might, or might not, laugh. But not in Israel. That is culture 'shock'. If you see a lot of people wearing red bulbs on their noses, you might laugh. That is a universal, but a sense of humour is individual as well as universal and/or cultural, and besides, what is humour? Something that makes you giggle or smile or chuckle or roar? If a text is humorous, it must be well written. I suspect that one day the translators will find P.G. Wodehouse, and he will be as popular as Lewis Carroll.

Singkat ya, namanya juga catatan.... tapi bisa dipahami, kan?

Referensi :

Newmark, Peter. 1993. Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Translating Difficult Sentences

Cara menerjemahkan kalimat yang sulit dan rumit? apa benar ada kalimat yang rumit dan sulit? Jawabannya ada. Lalu bagaimana menerjemahkannya? Oke, ini dia penjelasan Newmark. Dalam catatan Peter Newmark (1998: 110) mengungkapkan ada dua cara menerjemahkan kalimat yang sulit, berikut ini:

There are broadly two ways of translating syntactically/lexically difficult sentences: (a) read them carefully, get the sense, and edge it towards the full meaning; (b) in particular for long and syntactically complex sentences, and when you can scarcely make head or tail of them, first translate them literally ('plough through them', I say), get the sense, and then edge it in stages towards your final (intermediately positioned) version. Which method you use may depend on the occasion and your temperament, and you may use both methods, ending up in the middle and amending them for the appropriate register or discourse. Personally, I prefer the second method, and I think most people and most translators would prefer the first.

Begitulah penjelasan tentang 2 cara menerjemahkan kalimat yang sulit. Lalu seperti apa sih kalimat yang sulit itu? Jika melihat penjelasan tentang cara penerjemahan kalimat yang rumit di atas, saya simpulkan bahwa kalimat yang rumit dan sulit adalah complex sentence (kalimat majemuk bertingkat) yang benar-benar panjang dan penuh dengan sisipan. (lihat di Jenis Kalimat menurut Jumlah Predikatnya)

Contoh penerjemahan kalimat bahasa Inggris yang rumit ini juga pernah diberikan oleh Choliludin s(2007: 125) eperti di bawah ini :

The point that it would be interesting, in view of the cultural division in America between Whites and Blacks,, if their speech had not developed differently.

Kalimat di atas dianggap rumit karena ada sisipan adverbial phrase (in view of the cultural division in America between Whites and Blacks) diantara main clause dan sub clausenya. Dan terjemahan kalimat tersebut ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia menjadi :

Mereka menekankan bahwa akan sangat mengejutkan jika gaya bicara mereka tidak berkembang secara berbeda karena pada kenyataannya terdapat pembagian budaya di Amerika antara orang kulit putih dan orang kulit hitam.

Referensi :

Choliludin. 2007. The Technique of Making Idiomatic Translation. Jakarta: Visipro.
Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

(Translating) Poetry

Penerjemahan Puisi (Poetry) memang dianggap beberapa Ahli Penerjemahan sebagai hal yang mustahil. Namun ada juga beberapa ahli yang mengatakan bahwa menerjemahkan puisi itu bisa saja dilakukan. Seperti Andre Lavefere yang memberikan 7 Cara / Metode Penerjemahan Puisi. Lalu apa pendapat Peter Newmark tentang penerjemahan puisi? Yuk, kita pelajari catatan Peter Newmark (1998: 126) tentang menerjemahkan puisi berikut ini:

The more important the words and their order in the original, the more closely the original should be translated. Since the genre where words and their order are most important is poetry, you would expect the translation of poetry to be the closest form of translation. Far from it. This is not possible since the language of poetry includes so many additional important factors the kind of poem, poetic form, metre, connotations, rhythm, sound, including rhyme, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, word-playwhich are missing or not so important in other types of writing. Nevertheless, poetry translation is always worth attempting, and I think the best poetry translations are miracles of closeness. (Stefan George, Roy Campbell, Pierre Leyris.)

Meskipun Newmark juga menganggap penerjemahan puisi sangat tidak mungkin dilakukan; namun Newmark juga mengajak untuk mencoba menerjemahkan puisi. Lalu, sudahkah kita mencoba menerjemahkan puisi???

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd

The Translation of Footnotes

Kembali belajar memahami catatan Peter Newmark: Setelah kemarin membahas mengenai siapa sih The Perfect Translator, sekarang saatnya mengutip keterangan Newmark (1998: 151) tentang cara menerjemahkan footnote / catatan kaki. The Translation of Footnotes dijelaskan Newmark berikut ini :

The footnotes of non-literary authoritative texts should normally be closely translated as an integral part of the SL text, with the same references and in the same position. Any additional translators' notes, for the purposes of explanation or comment, to assist the new readership, should be framed: [. . . -Tr.]

In non-authoritative texts, the translator may decide to shorten, summarize or omit the footnotes if she considers them of little interest culturally or professionally, or as already known to the new readership.

In literary texts, explanatory footnotes frequently have to be expanded or added to accommodate the second readership.

(I am grateful to my former outstanding student Rhona Wilson for pointing out that no translation theorist has discussed this topic. Note that the above remarks are tentative, for the reader to react against or to assent to.)

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd

The Perfect Translator

The Perfect translator adalah catatan Peter Newmark mengenai siapa sih orang yang bisa dianggap sebagai penerjemah yang sempurna. Mari kita lihat bersama pendapat ringkas Newmark (1998: 114) berikut ini:

Listening to the great Brendel discussing his teacher Edwin Fischer's faithful and true renderings of the great classics and deploring all the fioriture (ornamentations, embellishments) and free 'improvements' of past generations of pianists, I thought I was listening to the perfect translator. Admittedly, there is no absolute fidelity, all Brendel's interpretations are stamped with his own genius (pardon, ideology), there is no definitive translation any more than there is definitive musical interpretation, but what a difference between this and the cultural relativism that puts (lately) Raymond Chandler on the same level as Shakespeare.

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

The Importance of the Source Text Language

The Importance of the Source Text Language adalah salah satu catatan Peter Newmark. Namun begitu, bagi seorang penerjemah, Teks Bahasa Sumber adalah salah satu elemen penting dalam penerjemahan. Untuk itu, mari kita bersama-sama melihat apa yang diungkapkan oleh Peter Newmark (1998: 112) berikut ini:

In my opinion, in the future, the degree of closeness both of a literary and a non-literary translation should depend on the importance of the source text language. (By 'language', I mean 'the words on the page' (Leavis), as opposed to the thought-content, the facts or the hidden agenda of the original.)

The importance of the language depends on the following factors:

1. The authority of the text. I take it that in serious poetry (the densest and most expressive of all forms of language), short stories, plays to a lesser extent, novels, works by experts with pretensions to style, statutes, patents, treaties, and many official statements, the language is as important as the content.
2. The make-up of the language. Technical and institutional terms and standardized language have to be translated by their accepted equivalents, if these exist, and, additionally, explained in couplets, if the readership is unlikely to understand them. Cohesive markers are always important. Translationally, concrete nouns are more important than verbs, concept-nouns, adjectives and adverbs (in that order) since the four latter are more affected by ideology, and are likely to have more synonyms in the source and target languages. Thus in a headline, 'A nasty odour in Parliament', only 'Parliament' is likely to be invariant in translation.
3. In art for art's sake writing and in nonsense literature, as well as strongly alliterative, sonorous and figurative passages, the sense where necessary gives way to the rhetoric.
4. In strongly reader-oriented texts, the source language where appropriate gives way to cultural or technical explanations.

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Translate Everything

Seorang penerjemah, translator, itu harus menerjemahkan apa sih? Nah ini dia Peter Newmark (1998: 133) menjelaskan secara singkat tentang apa saja yang harus diterjemahkan. Yuk kita lihat sama-sama:

I think university students are so used to having to translate untitled and sourceless little extracts that I continually have to remind them to translate everything: in a newspaper article, straplines (across the top of the page), headlines, sub-headings, by-lines, standfirsts (introductory paragraph in bold), cross-heads, titles, sub-titles, cross-titles, the small print anchors (final paragraph in bold), captions, footnotes, and full detail of the source, including date and year of publication, the latter usually at the head of the translation. Mr Bill Duffin of Cottingham reminds me in an opportune letter that the translator must be the only person, apart from the author, who reads and translates every single word of the original, including the title page, back of title page, ISBN number, preface(s), table of contents, list of diagrams or plates, text, appendices, references, bibliography, all notes, epilogue.

Wah, ternyata buanyak juga...

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

The Paradoxes of Translation

Peter Newmark (1998: 99) menjelaskan dengan sangat lugas mengenai The Paradoxes of Translation berikut ini:

Like my master F. R. Leavis, I am always trying to find areas of agreement about my subject with my colleagues and my students; but this is often a vain task, since translation reflects politics, morality, aesthetics. Most people would agree that one purpose of translating is to make the original text comprehensible to the putative reader. I would add, normally outside the text, if the text is authoritative and needs explanation. Many would disagree. I would add, even if the text is culturally or linguistically obscure to the first readership. Many would disagree. And then, in other moods, I say why not make the second readership do its own homework, which the first readership had to do? Why hand out everything on a plate?

Sangat mengena  !!!!

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

A Concise Definition of Translation

Pada awal pertama saya blogging, telah dengan panjang lebar saya berikan beberapa definisi penerjemahan menurut beberapa ahli. Diartikel tersebut juga terdapat definisi penerjemahan oleh Peter Newmark. Nah, sekarang ada lagi nih referensi mengenai definisi singkat penerjemahan dari beliau. Oke langsung saja.. Peter Newmark (1998: 119) memberikan definisi singkat dan padat tentang translation sebagai berikut:

The accurate and elegant transfer of the meaning of the text of one language to the text of another for a new readership with a different culture.

Seperti biasa, silahkan terjemahkan menurut aliran dan kepercayaan masing-masing. Ups, ko malah kaya ngajak berdo’a ya. Maksudnya, menurut kemampuan masing-masing.

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd

To Translate

Beberapa hari yang lalu saya sudah memberikan penghormatan terakhir kepada Prof ahli bidang penerjemahan, Peter Newmark. Nah, sekarang saatnya saya berbagi tentang catatan beliau dalam beberapa bukunya yang sangat masyhur. Newmark (1998: 115) menjabarkan dalam catatannya tentang apa itu ‘menerjemah’. Berikut kutipannya:

To translate is to choose. Choice depends on criteria. Criteria are subordinate to a theory. A translator consciously or unconsciously follows a theory of translation, just as a language or a grammar teacher follows a theory of language. Therefore, pace Gutt, Douglas Robinson, Anthony Pym and other distinguished translation 'theorists' who think that translation can dispense with a theory, a theory of translation (which has to give some kind of answer to the 'free or literal' question) is indispensable. (I withdraw my statement in Approaches that no general theory of translation is possible, but, to cover all texts, it has to be on a high level of abstraction.) Further, elegance and neatness, in their 17th century mathematical senses, should normally be the stylistic criteria of a translation.

Silahkan baca dengan seksama, karena saya tidak bisa menerjemahkannya dengan baik. Hehehe.. Jika ada diantara kalian yang dengan suka rela mau menerjemahkan paragraf diatas, yuk cepetan.

Referensi:

Newmark, Peter. 1998. More Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Mengenang Peter Newmark

Pada tanggal 12 Juli 2011 yang lalu salah satu tokoh bidang penerjemahan, Prof. Peter Newmark, meninggal dunia pada usia ke 95 tahun. Kami ikut berbelasungkawa, dan semoga ilmu yang Prof. Newmark berikan bisa bermanfaat untuk kita semua. Untuk mengenang beliau, insyaAllah kami akan memberikan kumpulan catatan Peter Newmark.

Beberapa tokoh penerjemahan juga ikut mengenang Peter Newmark, salah satunya adalah Anthony Pym. Mengenang Prof. Newmark, Ia mengatakan:

Professor Newmark was one of the main figures in the founding of Translation Studies in the English-speaking world from the 1980s. He is widely read through a series of accessible and occasionally polemical works, the titles of which are as straightforward as the man himself: A Textbook of Translation (1988), Paragraphs on Translation (1989), About Translation (1991), More Paragraphs on Translation (1998).

From the early 1980s, Professor Newmark was associated with the founding and development of the Centre for Translation Studies at Surrey. He was chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Specialised Translation. He also wrote "Translation Now" bimonthly for The Linguist and was Vice-President, Council member, Editorial Board Member of Institute of Linguists.

Professor Newmark cared passionately about language, civilisation, and respect for great texts. His views were generally conservative, but always offered in the spirit of lively public debate.

Generations of students and scholars have built up a stock of Newmark anecdotes. He first earned my own admiration when I saw him take off his shoes to listen to a lecture (admittedly he was at the back of the lecture hall). He is much missed.

Selain Anthony Pym, tokoh lain dalam bidang penerjemahan, Margaret Rogers juga ikut mengenang Prof. Newmark. Dalam hal ini, ia mengatakan:

Known worldwide as an early pioneer of the nascent discipline of Translation Studies, our friend and colleague, Professor Newmark, has died aged 95 in his home town of Guildford. ‘Passions’ and ‘commitments’ are a common and often weakened currency in the language of the 21st century. Not so for Peter. He was truly passionate about and committed to the learning and teaching of modern languages, was vehemently opposed to restrictive changes in government policy, and dedicated his time, expertise and energies to his beloved Institute of Linguists.

For Peter, life was a matter of absolutes: truth, family, friendship, literature, music, Palestine, ethics, good translation and bad translation. In a valueless (as Peter saw it) post-modernist world, this got him into trouble in many ways and on many occasions, but it also won him friends and admirers.

In the early 1980s, Peter was a true friend to the newly born Centre for Translation Studies at Surrey, founded in the aftermath of the Thatcher government’s university cuts by Nigel Reeves and our friend and colleague Gunilla Anderman, whose own death in 2007 greatly affected Peter until the end.

Peter continued to teach and lecture in the Centre during the following decades. His final lecture at Surrey was given only two years ago to a packed room, full of students eager to see and hear the man whose books and publications they had read and learnt from.

I shared many jokes with Peter about social class, disagreed with him about corpus linguistics and lexicography, and indulged in many a welcome glass of wine. Peter’s roots were firmly planted in a close family life. Our thoughts are with Pauline, Liz and Matt.

I will miss Peter, as will not only my colleagues but also our future generations of students, whom he would have loved to go on teaching.

Selamat jalan Prof, dan mari kita lanjutkan pelajaran Peter Newmark. 

Translaiton menurut Peter Newmark 

Tujuan Penerjemahan menurut Peter Newmark