Harry Aveling's and Willem Samuels (John H. McGlynn)'s English translations of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's novel Perburuan : a descriptive study of literary translation
Date
2014
Authors
Elyono, Dwi
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Abstract
This project investigates some segments of Harry Aveling's and John H. McGlynn's English translations of the functional elements of clause-simplex/complex relations, thematic patterns, and coherence related to historical/culture-specific references and culture-specific terms/items employed in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's novel Perburuan. The project aims to establish the translation methods, identify some of the macro factors underlying their choice, and develop a descriptive research framework to carry out these two aims. The project is based on the thesis that concepts and practices of literary translation may be developed and carried out in different ways depending on the underlying macro factors. Source-oriented theories of translation state that literary texts should be translated by preserving the source text, but in actual practice many literary texts have been translated by sacrificing it. Aveling and McGlynn, as shown by a preliminary observation, have translated Perburuan differently, but their translations are both considered acceptable. Most studies of translation between Indonesian and English which claim to be descriptive are actually mainly prescriptive, and in achieving their prescriptive purposes, most of them do not consider the real factors governing the translation. These facts led to the conduct of the project within the framework of descriptive translation studies and the adoption of the thesis and the formulation of the aims as stated above. The project is a descriptive-qualitative case study, based on interpretative epistemology, and applies comparative and causal models of translation. Fifteen segments of translation are analysed with the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to produce profiles of the functional elements in question employed in the source and target segments. The profiles in Aveling's and McGlynn's target segments are each compared with their original counterparts. The results are analysed with a combination of Nida's and Newmark's classifications to establish the translation methods. To identify some of the macro factors underlying the translators' choice of method, interview and written source data are analysed. The analysis is supported by a combination of the descriptive theories of Polysystem, Descriptive Translation Studies, and Translation as Rewriting, and the prescriptive theory of Skopos. The project establishes that Aveling's and McGlynn's translations have been produced with the methods of formal-semantic translation and dynamic-communicative translation respectively. Aveling's choice of method is influenced by, among other factors, personal aspects, the purpose of the translation, and the type of target readers while McGlynn's choice is influenced by, among other factors, personal aspects, the type of target readers, and the oral quality of Perburuan. These findings support the thesis. The fact that the translation methods and their underlying factors have been successfully established means that the framework developed to establish them has proven to be applicable. The results show that the combination of descriptive and prescriptive theories of translation, the application of the framework of SFL, and the combination of the analyses of interview and written source data are useful for investigating Aveling's and McGlynn's translations. Therefore, the framework developed and applied in the project can serve as a model for other descriptive studies of literary translation.
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