Translating Imperative Sentences from English into Indonesian: COVID-19 Outbreak Text

Abstract

The imperative sentences in the source language are categorized as imperative instructions. World health organization instructs the general population not to over-take information when reading or searching for information about Corona Virus Disease 2019 because it affects our mentality. It also instructs to avoid using unhelpful coping strategies. The imperative structure rules for English and Indonesian are different. This paper aims to explore the translation techniques used in translating imperative sentences in the ‘Mental health and psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19 outbreak’ text into Indonesian. The authors use Molina and Albir’s (2002) translation techniques. Data collection is done by taking twenty-three the imperatives in the source language of thirty imperative sentences in the text. The imperative sentences in the SL which have infinitive verbs without to are followed by a noun, verb-ing, past participle, adjective, and second person reflexive pronoun. It is found the suffix -lah to emphasize the verb in the TL. Twenty-two data consist of positive imperative sentences and one negative imperative sentence. The results show that from the twenty-three data, the authors found that there were six translation techniques used by the authors as the translators, namely: compensation, establish equivalent, reduction, transposition, literal, and modulation. The authors used literal translation mostly, and it is done because the starting point of the imperative sentences are at the initial of the sentence and they are readable in the TL. The imperative is the starting of meaning for the source language and the target language. The readers are more acceptable to understand the context of the text. They are expected to implement the instructions in their daily lives.