The Difficulties of the Third Year English Department Students to Translate an Educational News Text from English into Indonesian at Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

Translation is a process of transfering the meaning from the source language into the target language. Translation is divided into two types. literal translation (form based translation) and non literal translation or free translation (meaning based translation) This study was designed to describe and analyze the difficulties of the third year English Department  students in translating an educational news text from English into Indonesian in terms of lexical equivalence and grammatical adjustment. The population of this research was the third year English Department students that comprised 112 students. For choosing the sample, the writer used cluster random sampling technique. The instrument was translation test. After  analyzing the data, the writer found that in average, 19 students (76%) had the difficulties in translating an educational news text from English into Indonesian. Specifically, 23 students (92%) had difficulties in terms of lexical equivalence and 15 students (60%) had difficulties in terms of grammatical adjustment. Based on this study, the writer suggests the students to learn more to master vocabulary because it has contribution to find an appropriate meaning and to make the grammatical adjustment. The students should find the appropriate meaning based on the text to make the sentences more acceptable by the reader. It is expected that the lecturers give the students more exercises to improve their vocabulary mastery and to add their knowledge about translation, and develop the teaching materials to increase students’ ability in translating a text from English into Indonesian.

Key Words : Translation, News Item Text, Difficulties