AN ANALYSIS OF THE FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN TRANSLATING BUSINESS LETTER FROM ENGLISH INTO INDONESIAN AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

INTRODUCTION [1] English language plays an important role, since almost of all knowledge or information is written in English language. There are many language components of English. One of them is translation. [2] Translation is process of finding the closet meaning in written or oral language from source language (Indonesian) into target language (English). [3] in addition, translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. In this research, the researcher chose a business letter as the instrument for this research. [4] A business letter is a formal communication between people or companies and it is written to conduct some sort of business. Relating to this, the researcher conducted this research on purpose of finding out and describe the students’ ability in translating business letter from English into Indonesian at English Department of Bung Hatta University. METHOD This research belongs to a descriptive research because it describes the current status of the research subject [4]. The population of this research was the fourth year students at the English Department of Bung Hatta University who register in the academic year 2017/2018. [5] Population is larger group, and sample is a group, items, or events that represents the characteristics of the larger group from which the sample is drawn. The number of samples was 20 students. The researcher used the total sampling technique because the sample of this research was the same as the population. The instrument of this research was the translation test. The criterion of a good test is reliability. Reliability is the degree of the test to measures whatever it measures. To make the test reliable, the researcher used inter-rater method. To find out the correlation index of two sets of scores, the researcher used Pearson Product Moment. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS Based on the result of data analysis, it was generally found that the students’ ability generally in translating a business letter from English into Indonesian was very good. The result of the analysis of the data showed that 17 students got very good ability (85%), 3 students got good ability (15%). It means that the ability of the fourth year students in translating a business letter was very good. Table 1. The Students’ Ability in Translating Business Letter from English into Indonesian Grade Number of Students The Percentage of Students Very Good 17 Students 85% Good 3 Students 15% The Ability of the Fourth-year students in the English Department of Bung Hatta University in Translating Business Letter from English into Indonesian in Using Lexical Equivalence Based on data analysis, the researcher found that, the result of the data analysis showed that the highest score of students’ ability in translating a business letter from English into Indonesian using lexical equivalence was 18 and the lowest score was 17. The result showed that 20 students got very good ability (100%). It means that the ability of the fourth year students in translating a business letter from English into Indonesian at the English Department of Bung Hatta University in using lexical equivalence was very good. This research is in line with a previous study by Festy Fikra. (2014) entitled describe the fourth year students’ ability of the English Department of Bung Hatta University in translating job vacancy text from English into Indonesian in terms of lexical equivalence and grammatical adjustment. She found that on average, 18 students (72%) had moderate ability in translating a job vacancy text from English into Indonesian. Specifically, 17 students (68%) had moderate ability in terms of lexical equivalence and 18 students (72%) had moderate ability in terms of grammatical adjustment. The Ability of the Fourth-year students in the English Department of Bung Hatta University in Translating Business Letter from English into Indonesian in Using Grammatical Adjustment Based on data analysis, the researcher found that the highest score of students’ ability in translating a business letter from English into Indonesian in using grammatical adjustment was 24 and the lowest score was 13. The result showed that 8 students got very good ability (40%), 11 students who got good ability (55%), 1 student who got moderate ability (5%), and 0 students who got low ability (0%). CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Based on the results of data analysis above, it can beconcluded that the ability of the fourth year students in translating a business letter from English into Indonesian at the English Department of Bung Hatta University was very good. There were 17 students (85%) who could translate a business letter from English into Indonesian. Dealing with such conclusion, it is suggested to the teacher to give more exercises to students to make their ability more increasingly in translating the business letter and build up their understanding of the grammatical rule of the text. The students should maintain their ability in translation in using lexical equivalence and improve their ability in grammatical adjustment by practising translation and doing some exercises, and pay more attention to grammatical rules on the text to make the sentence more acceptable by the reader.