This research aims to analyse the types of abbreviations in the book Start Me Up by Ebong Eka, the translation techniques used to translate the abbreviations, and the assessment of the translation in terms of accuracy and acceptability.
This research falls into the category of descriptive qualitative research. The data sources consisted of documents and informants. The documents refer to the book Start Me Up by Ebong Eka and Indonesian translation with the same title “Start Me Up” translated by Zita Rarastesa. The information on the internet about the use of abbreviations is also included as the source of data in the form of document. The informants refer to the three raters. This research employs purposive sampling technique to ascertain the sources of the data. Content analysis and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) are employed to gather all the data.
There are 95 data that are analysed in this research. The analysis of the abbreviation types shows there are six types of abbreviations as according to Mattiello’s proposal (2013): non-elliptic initialism, elliptic initialism, back-clipping, random-clipping, mid-clipping, elliptic acronym; with dominant non-elliptic initialism type. There are nine translation techniques used as according to Karaban (2002), and Molina and Albir’s (2002) proposals: borrowing a foreign word (preserving the Latin spelling), omission, transfer of a foreign abbreviation to the corresponding abbreviation of another language, translation of a foreign abbreviation into the appropriate full form in another language, generalisation, implicitation, discursive creation, paraphrase, and borrowing a foreign word (preserving the Latin spelling) and explicitation. The most frequently used technique is borrowing a foreign word (preserving the Latin spelling) whereas the least used are generalisation, implicitation, discursive creation, and paraphrase. The assessment shows the majority of the abbreviations are translated accurately and acceptably. The translation technique borrowing a foreign word (preserving the Latin spelling) is seen to translate the abbreviation accurately whereas omission and discursive creation are seen to affect negatively towards the quality of abbreviation translation.
