Translation Alternatives of Indonesian Public Signs

Abstract

Public signs written in two languages are found everywhere in public places in Bali. Appropriate translations of the public signs could help foreigners get information and they also could reflect good image of the places. To be able to create better image of the place, deep investigation on the translations of public signs is needed. This study examined the translations of public signs from Indonesian into English found in Bali. Deploying the concept of translation equivalence by House (2015) and translation strategies by Malone (1988), this study focused on target text alternatives when a certain strategy was applied in translating public signs from Indonesian into English. The data were collected in two regions in Bali, i.e. Denpasar city and Badung regency. This research revealed that the Indonesian public signs were translated by applying strategies of substitution, amplification, reduction, condensation, and re-ordering. The strategies resulted in some translation alternatives. In some cases, the alternatives induced by the translation strategies applied involved the changes of pragmatic and textual meanings. However, they are semantically equivalent.