Transposition and Modulation to Translate Tourism Texts from English into Indonesian

Abstract

This study attempts to evaluate the types and accuracy of two translation strategies, i.e. transposition (change of grammatical category) and modulation (change in point of view) used to translate tourism texts from English into Indonesian. The study is intended to be a descriptive and qualitative method. The data sources are obtained from documents and inter-raters. The documents are tourism texts along with their translations taken from Garuda Indonesia magazine. To reveal the types of transposition and modulation, the English and Indonesian texts were analyzed by the researcher. To know the accuracy of transposition and modulation, the translations were rated by three expert raters. The results of the analysis show that: (1) there are three types of transposition: (a) the change from singular to plural (and vice versa), or in the position of the adjective, (b) the change in grammatical structure from SL to TL because the SL grammatical structure does not exist in TL and (c) an alternative to when literal translation of SL text may not accord with natural usage in TL; (2) there are two types of modulation: (a) obligatory modulation and (b) free modulation; (3) the transposition used is generally accurate; and (4) the modulation used is generally less accurate. The findings imply that transposition and modulation might be fundamental for translation strategies, a distinction which has been taken for granted in translating activities.