JoAL Journal of Applied Linguistics JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e- ISSN 2809 - 1922 , p-ISSN 2809 - 1914 Available online at:
https://journal.
org/index.
php/joal/index An Analysis of StudentAos Difficulties in Translating Argumentative Text Lastry Marsely Ginting 1*.
Fitri Ramadani Harahap2 Program Studi Sains dan Teknologi.
Institut Teknologi dan Bisnis Indonesia Program Studi Sarjana Keperawatan.
Institut Kesehatan Medistra Lubuk Pakam.
Indonesia *Correspondence Email: gintinglastri1@gmail.
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received : January 13, 2025 Revised : January 18, 2025 Accepted : January 18, 2025 Available online :January 22, 2025 Keywords:
Difficulties.
Translation.
Argumentative text Abstract In this study the objective is identify the difficulties of the students when they translate argumentative text from English to Indonesian, what is the difficulties of the students when they translate the text.
This research is done through descriptive qualitative method and the data collected by given the text to the students and the students translate the data.
After the data were collected then the writer analyzed the data by elaborated the mistake and difficulties of the students.
The result indicates that there are some difficulties that made by the students.
Such as when the students translate word to word they still make the mistake because they canAot find the word in the dictionary, the second group to group translation, the students still make the mistake when translate more than one words.
From the percentage of the factors that make the students difficult in translating argumentative text, the students dominant chose often and sometimes in their questionnaire and the average of percentage is 45 % students chose sometimes and 55 % students chose often.
It can be concluded that there are still so many studentsAo difficulties when they translate the English text especially argumentative text.
INTRODUCTION
Language is the most important tool of communication invented by human civilization.
Language helps us share our thoughts and understand others.
Language is important in our life because language can use as a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing because we need to interact each other in this world and every country will has a different language.
So, that is why language can make connection between each other especially in this era language really significant for us especially in young generation because we can sharing ideas and getting more kinds of information from other.
Without understand language we canAot go everywhere and difficult to communicate with others.
Sometimes, people in another place feel difficult to understand the meaning of what they are reading or talking with others.
In such a case, they need the translator to support the purposes that they want to reach.
English language is the primary language of several countries, including Australia.
Canada.
New Zealand and other, and English language becomes the second language in a number of multilingual countries, including India.
Singapore, and the Philippines and English language spoken worldwide more than 100 and itAos learned around the world by children in school as a foreign language and often becomes a common denominator between people of different nationalities when they meet while travelling, doing business or in other context.
Published by English Lecturers and Teachers Association (ELTA) Copyright A 2025, authors DOI: 10.
52622/joal.
Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 In this era we can read or listen all of the articles, books, journals, magazines, internet site pages, and many other are mostly written in English and published in English language.
Indonesian people feel difficult to understand the meaning of information that published and written in English because translating is not easy especially for the Indonesian people because English language just as foreign language that will learn in school and English not the important lesson in the school so the students still feel difficult to translate the text or the lesson.
According to Catford .
the theory of translation is concerned with a certain type of relation between languages and is consequently a branch of comparative linguistic.
In the other hand a translator has many obstacles at the process of translation in translating the text.
That means a good translator should have more knowledge about the topic of the text.
The audience refers to target of the readers and their education level.
Source language and target language refer to the circumstances in which the translation takes place or receives.
Baker and Mona .
There are many difficulties in translating English text, they are translator lack of vocabularies and lack of equivalence at word level.
Translation is difficult since the materials of translation are not suitable with the need of language learners, they may do errors in translating some idioms and some words which are not familiar with their native language.
Concerning the phenomenon above the writer has a experience in the process of translating the students have some difficulties to translate such as paragraph, text or article in their lesson that learn in school as the student of senior high school because they are not practicing themselves to translate anything in English.
The students also face the difficulties to understanding the meaning of the text and the students feel difficult to know the meaning of the new vocabulary and other.
When the students try to understand the text, the students should be able to translate each sentence or each paragraph of the text.
Between the kinds of the text, the researcher focuses on one of the kind of texts above, that is argumentation text.
This study will be focus to analyze the studentsAo difficulties to see their lack of vocabularies and their errors in translating word to word, group to group and sentence to sentence translation by using Text.
And the writer just elaborates the result of the Test and Questionnaire to find difficulties of the students in translating argumentative text.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Defenition of translation According to Nida and Taber .
the older focus in translating was the form of the message and translators took particular delight in being able to reproduce stylistic specialties e g:
rhythms, rhymes, plays on words, chiasmus, parallelism and unusual grammatical structures.
Translator should use the closest natural equivalent either the meaning or the style of the receptor language, in other words the result of translation should not sound as translation without changing the meaning of source language.
Rahmatillah .
translation is similar with communication in a way that we can transfer information from the sender to the receiver in written text.
In the other hand Hanna and Rina .
said that translation in general can be defined as the process of translating from the source text into the target language either meaning of form.
The role of translation in foreign language learning cannot be ignored.
According to Nurlaila translation is one of subjects that are offered in curriculum for the students of university to be learned because by having this subject the students are able to transfer meaning from source language into target language in correct way.
So, the students in university will know how to be a good translator if they are having this subject and know how to translate well.
It is important to know how to translate the language because translation is a written medium and useful connection to communicate with other people in different language, culture and background.
According to Arono and Nadrah .
Some learners said that translation is difficult since the materials of translation are not suitable with the need of language learners, the activity of translation is boring, and the learners also lack of background knowledge about linguistic.
They may Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 do errors in translating some idioms and some words which are not familiar with their native language because the culture influences.
General difficulties in doing translation are no two languages are exactly the same in term of phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic features.
They are divergent in arrangement of sentences or syntax.
That is why students find it difficult in translating of English into the target language.
Then, another difficulty is to translate idiomatic expressions from English into the target language.
The Difficulties in Translation Translation involves two different languages.
Therefore, the difference between the system and the structure between source language and target language becomes the main obstacle in In translation process, translators were not doing translation without difficulties.
translator would face many kinds of difficulties in their work, for instance in difficulties related to the meaning, problems of ambiguity meaning, variance, equivalence, contextual or situation meaning, and grammatical meaning.
Newmark .
stated that there were 4 problems in cultural differences that can bother translation process, they are:
Ecological problem Ecological problems occur because there are some differences in existence such as the names of places, animals, plants or the existence of creatures that exist only in the source language, but not in the target language.
For instance, the name of the animal in Indonesia is Auorang utanAy.
the other place, they call them monkey or big monkey.
Material culture Material culture deals with objects produced by humans by a particular culture.
Each culture has its own specific characteristics and is expressed in its material.
The materials included in this category there are food, clothing, house, and city, transportation, etc.
For instance, the name of food likes AulemangAy.
It still translated into English AulemangAy and can mention the meaning by illustrating it to make the target reader more understand.
Lemang, like bamboo rice, is glutinous rice cooked in hollowed bamboo with coconut milk and salt.
Social culture Social culture is be connected with a human lifestyle, there are so many elements in different social cultures to each other and include the naming of ceremonies, things, people and many more that exist only in one culture.
Different cultural backgrounds will be reflected in the use of language in an ever-present society, and it can cause problems to occur when the translator must translate words that exist only in the source language but there is no equivalence in the target Religious culture Religious culture is related to the belief for each God in one place.
Each belief clearly has different terms in the way they do it.
This term may cause some difficulty in transferring or translating from source language to target language, it is because target readers who have different religions also have different interpretations in terms of trust from the source language.
This problem may make the target reader difficult to understand the meaning of a religious term if the translator cannot find appropriate meaning for the target language.
Argumentative Text Eemeren .
stated that cultural, social and intellectual progress require a continual flux of opinions.
Standpoints need to be brought to the fore and confronted with the doubt and criticism of those concerned to test their acceptability.
This means that differences of opinion come into being and are reflected upon and as far as possible discussed by the parties concerned.
These differences may be overt and expressed explicitly but they can also remain implicit.
However, in order to resolve the differences in a reasonable way, in all cases argumentation is to be advanced to overcome the pertinent doubts and criticisms.
Even if a resolution is reached, this resolution is often only temporary and new differences of opinion are bound to arise.
Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 According to Frans .
argumentation always arises in response to, or in anticipation of, a difference of opinion, and the lines of justification that are chosen in argumentation are contrived to realize the purpose of resolving this difference of opinion in the case Argumentation is advanced when people assume a standpoint not to be shared by others so that there is a difference of opinion whether this difference of opinion is real or merely imagined by the arguer.
Argumentation also means the action or process of reasoning systematically in support of an idea, action, or theory and argumentation is a logical way of discussing or debating an idea.
When use argumentation it means to prove something to be true or false.
Previous Research Journal Entitled AuTranslation Errors in the Process of TranslationAy.
Kartini Rahmatillah .
The aim of this research is to show that Translation nowadays is noted as a kind of skill of transferring messages from one language into another language.
One cannot translate something without ignoring errors that may happen during the process of translation.
These errors are not ignorable since translation deals with how to bring the same message from one language and to make these messages into the same meaning in other languages.
Form may differ but the message itself cannot be changed.
Since this paper is not a result of research, it is only intended to enlighten translation errors that may occur during the translation process.
Some errors are familiar but others may not to some translator due to different cultural background.
Regarding to these errors, there are also solution on how to overcome these errors.
Though this paper is not a scientific research but still there are information that may be used for translator, especially those who always face these similar In the end, it can be concluded that how expert a translator is, he or she cannot ignore and may face the errors, and it becomes a tricky problem for translators.
The benefit got from the previous research about the difficulties in translating English text is know that the difficulties in translating not only about the lack of equivalence but also the students have some difficulties in translate the idiom, ellipsis and textual meaning and other.
So this previous research really helps to add more knowledge about translating English text.
And another previous research explain that the students difficult to translate English text because they are lack of vocabulary and grammar some of them had difficulties if they found the unfamiliar words and difficult to arrange the words.
From both of the previous research.
METHOD
Research Design To analyze the studentsAo difficulties in translating argumentative text from English to Indonesian the writer used qualitative research.
According to Creswell .
Qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.
To analyze the studentsAo difficulties in translating argumentative text from English to Indonesian used qualitative research.
The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically collected in the participantAos setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the Research Subject The subject of this research were the students of Senior High School Katolik 1 Kabanjahe and the writer decided to use the sample of this research is especially the students in grade XI Ips-1.
The Instrument of Collecting the Data A research instrument is a tool used to measure natural and social phenomena observed.
this research, the writer used two instruments to analyze studentsAo difficulties in translating argumentative text.
The instruments to collect the data are:
Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 Text Text refers to any written record of a communicative event.
The event itself may involve oral language .
or example, a sermon, a casual conversation, a shopping transactio.
or written language .
or example, a poem, a poetry, a newspaper, advertisement, a wall poster, a shopping list, a novel and other.
) Text consists of more than one sentence and the sentences combine to form a meaningful whole that is convey a complete message.
The test was done by one time, the researcher asked the students to translate the text in 60 minutes.
When the students finish their translation, the researcher collected it and then the researcher analyzed every single words, sentences and paragraphs of the students translation.
Questionnaire Questionnaire is the number of written question should be answered or completed by respondent.
The questionnaire instrument was used to find the percentage of the students difficulties in translating argumentation text.
Each question consists of 4 .
categories of response options.
The questionnaire had number of items which are 20 items.
Each items of questionnaire has four answers which are symbolize by:
Often .
Sometimes .
adang- kadan.
Seldom .
Never .
idak perna.
After the students translate the text and answer the questionnaire, the writer observed all of the text and the questionnaire to find the difficulties of the students and verified them.
The Technique of Collecting Data Collected the data by choosing one class in eleventh grade of social class in Sma Katolik 1 Kabanjahe to translate the text and answer the questionnaire.
In this research there are some procedures which used by the writer in collecting the data, they are:
The writer distributed the argumentative text to all the students in the class and the students are given 60 minutes to translate the argumentative text.
After that, when the students finish with their argumentative text, the teacher collected the Then the writer distributed the questionnaire to answer by the students and the students are given 20 minutes to answer the questionnaire.
After that, when the students finish with their questionnaire the writer collected the After the writer collect the text and questionnaire the writer started to analyze the data to find the difficulties of the students when they translate the argumentative text.
The Technique of Analyzing the Data Data analysis is the process of searching and systematically compiling data that obtained from interviews, field notes, questionnaires, translation into units, arranging into patterns, and choosing which is important and studied so it can make the conclusion that easier understood by ourselves.
accordance with the instrument of data collection in this study, that the data are collected through Read the result of translating argumentative text and the answer of the studentsAo questionnaire.
The writer chose the wrong words or wrong sentences that have translated by all the students.
The researcher Explained and elaborated the wrong words and the sentences to find the studentsAo difficulties to translate the argumentative text.
Made the summary of translation of the studentsAo translation error from each sentences Made the conclusion.
FINDINGS
Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 This data was taken from students in SMA Swasta Katolik 1 Kabanjahe class XI ips-1.
After collecting the data, the researcher found some difficulties that studentsAo face in translating argumentative text.
There were many sentences that have ambiguous meaning and some vocabularies that are not translated correctly because they are lack of knowledge about new word in English.
There are 37 subjects that become the sources of the data but the writer just made 10 subjects and the other in the appendix.
The English Text that Will be Translated by The Students Is Smoking Good For Us? Before we smoke, it is better to look at the fact of smoking effects, not only for smokers but also for non smokers.
About 50 thousands people die every year in Britain as the direct result of smoking.
This is the seven times as many as deaths in road accidents.
Nearly a quarter of smokers die because of diseases caused by smoking.
Ninety percent of lung cancers are caused by smoking.
If we smoke five cigarettes a day, we are six times more likely to die of lung cancer than a non-smoker.
we smoke twenty cigarettes a day, the risk is nineteen times greater.
Ninety five percent of people who suffer from bronchitis are people who smoke.
Smokers are two and half times more likely to die of heart disease than non-smokers.
Additionally, children of smokers are more likely to develop bronchitis and In one hour in a smoky room, a non-smokers breathes as much as substance causing cancer as if he had smoked fifteen cigarettes.
Smoking is really good for tobacco companies because they do make much money from smoking habit.
Smoking, however, is not good for everybody else.
The underline words and sentences in the text are the data There are 19 data from the text.
There are 5 words, there are 8 group to group and there are 6 sentences to sentences.
The Result of the StudentsAo Difficulties in Translating Argumentative Text Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914
No Identity Word Group
to Sentence to Total
APG
DAM
Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 Jumlah From the table the students still have some difficulties in translating argumentative text because they still make mistake more than two for each parts.
Three Types of Translation Difficulties Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 No.
Types of Translation Word to word translation Percentage Explanation The students still lack of vocabulary or knowledge about some words in English.
Group
65,5%
difficult when they translate the group to group.
Sentence into sentence The students feel
71,65%
The students have some difficulties when they translate the text the difference between English structure to Indonesian Difficulties in Translating Argumentative Text Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 Statment Percentage Explanation I have difficulty adjusting sentence patterns that have been translated from English into Indonesian sentence patterns Sometimes I have difficulty finding words that are not in the dictionary Often I found words that had double meaning that made it difficult for me to determine which meaning was right Sometimes I have difficulty in translating phrases Sometimes I have difficulty in arranging words in Indo nesian so as to produce ambiguous sentences that are difficult for the reader to Often English sentence pattern that made it difficult for me to translate it into Indonesian Often I have difficulty in translating idioms in English Sometimes I have difficulty in translating some expressions in English.
Sometimes I have difficult interpreting the whole sentence even though I know the meaning of the Sentence.
Often I have difficulty understanding the meaning of the source language so it makes it difficult for me to translate it into the target Sometimes I have difficulty translating a long English Sometimes I have difficulty in translating two words collocate and create new meaning.
Often I found the differences patterns in Indonesian and English, so it makes difficult to find the meaning Often Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914 I have difficulty in translating grammatical relationship between different elements of the text.
Often DISCUSSION The purpose of the study was to identify the difficulties of the students in translating argumentative text.
The students in SMA Katolik 1 Kabanjahe still lack of knowledge about translation English text into Indonesian.
The writer found some difficulties when the students translated English text especially argumentative text into Indonesian, they are :
Word to word translation, the students still make some mistake when the students did translation in some words in the text.
Group to group translation, the students make some mistake when the students did translation in the text.
The students seldom to try translate the English text.
Sentence to sentence translation, the students still make some mistakes when the students did translation in the sentence.
The sentences still have the ambiguous meaning when the students did translation from English into Indonesian.
From all of the explanation above, we know that the students have some difficulties in translating the text expecially argumentative text because they are still lack of knowledge about translating English text and the witer thought the students seldom to try and practice to translate some text to train themselves.
And the writer make sure that the students felt difficult in translating English text because their culture especially they stay in Karo so they used Karonese everyday and sometimes used Indonesian and rarely used English.
The differences between English language and karonese language make them felt difficult when they find some new words and the words that canAot find in the dictionary.
Recommendations for further research By analyzed the studentsAo difficulties in translating argumentative text the reader will find new knowledge why the students feel difficult in translating English texts.
The writer suggests to the teacher to give more practice to the students in translating text.
Teacher to search some methods or strategies that can make the students interest in translating the The students should learn more in home, try to translate start from words, idioms, paragraph and CONCLUSION After analyzing all the data based on studentsAo difficulties in translating argumentative text the researcher found some conclusion they were:
The students of senior high school katolik 1 Kabanjahe still lack of vocabulary that make them difficult to translate the text.
Especially in translating the word that they already use in their daily Such as.
Aunon smokersAy they still use AunonAy in Indonesian, and AupneumoniaAy they didnAot translate into Indonesia and still use AupneumoniaAy.
For Auroad accidentsAy all of the students translate into Aujalan rayaAy but the correct is Aukecelakaan lalu lintasAy all thye explanation mean the students still lack of vocabulary.
When the students translated the sentence they still make some mistakes because they feel difficult how to relate the meaning from one word into another word in the sentence so the sentence has the ambiguous meaning.
The students have some difficulties in translating English text, we know from the questionnaire that answered by the students all of them dominant answered by chose often and sometimes.
That means they are seldom to practice themselves to translating English text or other.
They still make some errors in translating long sentence that make the reader confuse to read their translation.
Journal of Applied Linguistics (JoAL).
Vol.
4 No.
January 2025 e-ISSN 2809-1922, p-ISSN 2809-1914
REFERENCES