A Description Dealing with Cultural Terms Translation

Since the past, culture is considered as being an issue in society. Culture brings uniqueness of a group society. It differentiates one group to another groups of people. Since culture represents the uniqueness, then it also influences the language of the people. They create language that belongs to their group and turns into their identity. It is no wonder that language as part of culture gives significant implication to life of people.

As the language represents culture, it is known only by the member of a group. It is only recognized and used by those people who are being the member of group. At the same time, today, in the world, there are more than thousand groups of people. It also means that there are more than thousand variations of languages in the world. It spreads from the biggest one into the lower group. It can be a nation and some also a small group of people represent profession like farming, fishing, or any groups. This group shares their features of language about their group and it is only known well by the members. Other people with different background, of course, face difficulties dealing with the language.

The difficulties are also faced in translation. As translation means in general to transfer the meaning from source language into target language. Transferring the meaning is a challenge in translation for reason of differentiation. This differentiation comes from the culture behind the language. The challenge is scaling up when it deals with translation of cultural terms. Discussing the cultural terms, it means we are working with the terms that are used in specific ways. The terms probably represent the culture, the daily life of people, the profession, the custom, the religion, ecology, and many other things. This specific term needs special technique when it should be transferred into other languages with different cultures.

The special technique introduced by some experts in translation is a description. Beckman and Callow (in Larsson, 1998) described a description enable a translator to deal with specific term. One of them is cultural term. In detail, they mentioned a description is the first choice in translating cultural terms. Besides the description, they also stated the loan word and a cultural substitute. Description is possible in transferring meaning from source language into the target language. It enables a translator to describe the terms with focusing on the form, the function, or combination of both. Defining a specific term with description also allows readers with different culture to have a background of new knowledge about the term.

The Balinese cultural terms are also special terms. They represent the culture and the life of Balinese people. When the Balinese terms are used in English online texts, most of them are modified with description. Those terms are for example ogoh – ogoh and banjar. The Balinese cultural term ogoh – ogoh is translated descriptively different regarding to the writer’s understanding. One of English online text describes ogoh – ogoh as scary creatures of respectable size through the streets accompanied by noise and gamelan music. Meanwhile, other write it as demonic, giant statues made of bamboo and paper, symbolizing negative elements or malevolent spirits. Those two variations of description give complete understanding to readers regarding to meaning of ogoh – ogoh. Even the description is different, the two descriptions enable to deliver the meaning of ogoh – ogoh to English readers. Another example is banjar. One of English online text writes banjar as local community. The description of local community gives the meaning of banjar in Balinese culture to readers of English. The local community is considered to be close understanding to readers. They will recognize the meaning of banjar in Balinese culture by understanding local community.

Description is a way of alternatives in translating difficult terms. The terms are known as part of culture. Specific terms need special technique in delivering or transferring the meaning. It is because the meaning is only acceptable by the people who use the terms. Meanwhile, others who want to know different cultures need special way to learn and understand them. In this way, the description is one of them.

References

Larson, Mildred L. 1998. Meaning Based-Translation A Guide to Cross-Language Equivalence. Maryland: University Press of America.

Setianingsih, Ni Ketut Alit Ida dan I Gusti Ngurah Parthama. 2019. Penggunaan Pinjaman (Borrowing) Istilah Budaya Bali di Media Online Berbahasa Inggris. Laporan akhir Penelitian Unggulan Program Studi (PUPS). Denpasar: Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat Universitas Udayana.

Setianingsih, Ni Ketut Alit Ida. 2003. Some Alternative Ways of Establishing Lexical Equivalences of Balinese Cultural Terms in English. (Tesis). Denpasar: Program Studi Linguistik, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Udayana.