Analysis of Translation of Negative Polarity Idioms in Jonathan Stroud's Novel "Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase"

Oleh :
Clarissa Arantika Firdayanti - B0320018 - Fak. Ilmu Budaya

This research is conducted because idioms are challenging to translate since they are often culturally specific expressions which meanings may not directly correspond across languages. For people who are not familiar with idioms, idioms look like regular expressions, and they tend to translate them literally. The aims of this research are: (i) to discover the types of Negative Polarity Idioms found in the novel, (ii) to investigate the translation strategies used to render the Negative Polarity Idioms found in the novel, and (iii) to analyze the quality of the translation of the Negative Polarity Idioms in the novel in terms of accuracy and acceptability. The data in this research are linguistic and translation data. The linguistic data are the Negative Polarity Idioms in the source language. The translation data are the Negative Polarity Idioms in the target language, the translation strategies, and the translation quality of the Negative Polarity Idioms in terms of accuracy and acceptability. The research conducted is descriptive qualitative research because qualitative research focuses on finding answers to queries regarding a phenomenon’s “what”, “how”, or “why”, rather than “how many”. This research is also a product-oriented research. This research used content analysis method and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) to collect the data. The data from this research were analyzed using Spradley’s data analysis technique. The findings of the research are as follows: (i) there are two types of Negative Polarity Idioms found in this research. They are no-negation and not-negation, (ii) the strategies applied by the translator are translation by using an idiom of similar meaning and form, translation by using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, translation by paraphrase, translation by omission of a play on idiom, and translation by omission of entire idiom, and (iii) the average scores of accuracy and acceptability are 2.66 and 2.96 respectively, meaning that the translation is accurate and acceptable. However, some of the data are still inaccurate and unacceptable. They are primarily due to deleted meanings in the target language, resulting in distorted meanings. In addition, those deleted meanings in the target language also cause the translation to be unacceptable because the translation becomes unnatural in the target language.