Avoiding Error in the translation of Prepositional Relative-Clause Sentences from English into Bahasa Indonesia

Abstract

Translating is an endeavour to replace a piece of a written work in one language, called the source language, into that of another language, the target language. Although a translator has absolutely total freedom in replacing the language making different translators render a sentence or series of sentences into various form and style of sentences, there are at least two fundamental aspects which bind a translator in their jobs. First is the aspect of accuracy which means that translation should have the same message as that of the original or source text. The second is the naturalness which means that translation should read as if it were written in the target language which in turn influence the communicativeness of the translation, the more natural the translation the communicative. Prepositional relative clause is an adjective clause whose relative pronoun, commonly whom or which, is preceded by a preposition, for example the tools with which the carpenter make the furniture. This clause has the function of modifying a noun. This construction causes inconsistency in translation. In adjective clause with which without preposition, the which is commonly translated into yang, which is correct because yang is the conjunction which is used to introduce a modifier. However when the which is preceded by a preposition, it is often translated into mana and the preposition is translated using word-for-word approach, resulting in Alat dengan mana tukang kayu itu membuat kursi, which is neither accurate nor communicative. This paper tries to propose how such construction should be translated into bahasa Indonesia accurately and communicatively.