The Extent of Language Naturalness in the Translation of Children's Storybooks Produced by Novice Translators in Ganesa Library

Abstract

Ganesa Library is a public reading center that provides thousands of English storybooks for readers. Being aware of the target readers’ limitation in understanding English stories, the library welcomes university students in Solo and surrounding areas to translate the storybooks into Indonesian. Translating children's storybooks is challenging because message, language style, and readability need serious attention. Although the students' translation has facilitated many readers, the translation quality needs thorough evaluation since the translators are novice translators with limited competence. This rationale has triggered the researchers to further examine the language naturalness in the translation of English children’s storybooks into Indonesian produced by intern students and the factors contributing to the level of naturalness. This qualitative descriptive study was carried out through textual analysis of the translation results. The findings show that most of the translation falls into less natural and unnatural categories, and this is attributable to both linguistic and cultural aspects.