Raising Pragmatic Awareness by Translating Idiomatic Expression

PRESENTER’S IDENTITY HEREName: Izzati Gemi Seinsiani; ChristiantiTri HapasariAffiliation: Universitas Negeri SemarangAbstract Code: ABS-ICOLLITE-20039

Introduction & Literary Review

• Pragmatic Awareness is part of communicative competence in language learning and it has become one of the main concern of academicians and language experts to take the knowledge of pragmatics into account in language teaching (Murray, 2009).

• The knowledge of pragmatics can help the language learners to balance the lack of grammatical skill with the cultural knowledge to infer the intent of the speaker in a communication, this practice is called cultural matching (Davies, 2004).

Introduction & Literary Review

Translation in Language Classroom

• Translation is no longer viewed only as linguistics process but also as an alternative medium to learn culture (House, 1996).

• Language exercise using translation will give the students chance to have real-word experience in the teaching-learning process, therefore, automatically it can improve their communicative competence (Ishihara, 2007)

Methods

• This research is a qualitative research

• The data in this research were collected from the sentences in Novel “Crazy Rich Asian” which contain idiomatic expression. The idiomatic expressions were classified into similes, Binomials, Trinomials, Proverbs, Euphemisms, Cliché, and Fixed Expression (O’Dell & McCarthy, 2010).

Methods

• The data were presented using descriptive and comparative method as the result of this research was described and compared to find out whether translation can be used in language classroom to raise the students pragmatic awareness.

• According to Sudaryanto (1988) descriptive method is used to describe and interpret an object as it is while comparative method aims to find out differences or similarities of the data.

Methods

• The data were presented using descriptive and comparative method as the result of this research was described and compared to find out whether translation can be used in language classroom to raise the students pragmatic awareness.

• This research involved 60 students of English Department of Universitas Negeri Semarang

• Pre-test and post-test are given as the medium to collect the data

Finding and DiscussionPre-test Post-test

….he knocked the glass out of Nick’shand.Translation:1. ...dia menepak gelas yang digenggam oleh

Nick2. .... dia mengetuk gelas Nick'shand.3. ...dia menjatuhkan gelas yang berada di

tangannya Nick4. .... dia merobohkan gelas dari Nick'shand.5. Dia menghancurkan gelas dari tangan Nick.

Astrid’s voice was suddenly drowned out by thestaccato scream of a police siren.Translation:1. Suara Astrid tiba-tiba teredam oleh bunyi

stakato dari sirine polisi.2. Suara Astrid tiba tiba hilang karena

lengkingan sirene polisi3. Suara Astrid tiba-tiba tengelam oleh raungan

sirine polisi.4. Suara Astrid tiba-tiba menghilang oleh

teriakan stakato dari sirene polisi.5. Suara Astrid tiba-tiba tidak terdengar oleh

teriakan staccato dari sirene polisi.

Finding and Discussion• The table displayed the students’ translation of the idiom, the results had been put together based on the similarities of

the translation.

• for the pretest, the students translated the fixed expression “knock out” in the sentence “….he knocked the glass out of Nick’shand.”. Based on the result of the translation, it is found that there were 10 % of the students translated “knock out” to “menepak”, 35% of the students translated the word to “menjatuhkan”, 40% of the students translated the word to “menghancurkan”, 10% of the students translated the word to “merobohkan” and 5 % of the students translated the word to “mengetuk”. Based on the context of the sentence, the closest translation of the word “knock out” is “menepak” and “menjatuhkan” even though it is not really an accurate translation of the word “knock out” in the sentence because it changes the sense of the word in the target language, the word “menepak” is more accurate and only 10% of the students translated the word “knocked out” to “menepak”. It showed that most of the students were not really thinking of the accuracy and naturalness of their translation in the target language which indicated that the low awareness of the pragmatic aspect.

• In the post-test, the students were also given similar fixed expression, the students needed to translate the idiom “drowned out” in the sentence “Astrid’s voice was suddenly drowned out by the staccato scream of a police siren”. The result of the students’ translation showed 40% of the students translated “drowned out” to “teredam”, 25% to “hilang”/”menghilang”, 25% to “tenggelam” and 5% to “tidak terdengar”. The result of the translation showed that they were more aware of the pragmatic gap between the idioms. The word “teredam”, “hilang/”menghilang”, tenggelam”, and “tidak terdengar” are considered accurate as the equivalent translation of the word “drowned out” based on the context of the sentence. Therefore, it indicated that the students were more aware of the pragmatic aspect when they translated the idiom.

Conclusion

• Based on the discussion, translation can be used as a medium to teach cross-cultural understanding in order to raise the students’ pragmatic awareness. The comparison of the translation in pre-test and post-test showed that the students’ translation improved after they were given an explicit explanation that they should be aware of the pragmatic differences between the idioms in the source language and target language. It can be concluded that translation can be used by students to explore the pragmatic gap of two different languages. As a result, they can improve their pragmatic awareness which can be helpful when using the language.

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