The Intervention of Indonesian Students’ Culture in Translating Into English Collocation: A Case Study at Universitas Muhammadiyah Luwuk Banggai

Abstract

Once Indonesian students translate collocation into English, they remain under their culture and language system. This qualitative research intends to identify Indonesian collocation that translated inappropriately into English and explain how their Indonesian culture intervene in translation. A list of some sentences containing Indonesian collocation was translated into English by the students. The differences lies in the way the lexical choice of collocation is inappropriate. Both of Indonesian and English dictionaries were used to reflect meaning transparency, commutability, and the patterns. This research found that 33 data were inappropriate. Students translated those literally as their culture and the common way of thinking, and prefer to their own collocation patterns. Those sound fairly familiar to Indonesian students. They did not recognize meaning and culture of target language. The research findings offer valuable insight on undergoing foreign language learning as a part of understanding other cultures.