Indonesian Young Adults’ Interference in Translating English Cursing

Abstract

Interference has become a crucial matter to recognize in bilingual and multilingual communities. The phenomenon of interference has affected how we as at least members of bilingual or even multilingual communities speak to the others. As the members of multilingual communities, the Indonesian young adults receive many influences in the way they speak and understand languages. However, these influences often lead to the wrong way. In this case, many Indonesian young adults understand English cursing inappropriately. This misunderstanding may lead to the abuse of English cursing in daily conversations. This article provides the insight of how interference affects the way the Indonesian young adults understand English cursing. Using the questionnaire-based research method, this articles tends to find out the attitudes of Indonesian young adults towards translating English cursing to Indonesian, which interference that affects the translation process of English cursing resulting to the inappropriate understanding of English cursing among Indonesian young adults, and which suitable translation method for translating English cursing to Indonesian. Apparently, the present writer has found out that there are two attitudes towards translating English cursing to Indonesian, that is, first, the English cursing is translated to the Indonesian cursing and second, the English cursing is translated literaly to Indonesian. Further, the present writer has found out that the interlingual interference has affected the translation process of English cursing to Indonesian and the suitable method for translating English cursing to Indonesian is adaptation based on Newmark (1988).