Enrichment of Indonesian Culture through Translation

Abstract

Globalization enables people to be a part of a global community and live with global cultures. Nowadays, modern transportations and the advancement of information technology ease people to interact. Their interaction through different languages will automatically make a ‘dialog’ among cultures possible. Besides, translation also plays an important role in the spread of global cultures. As language is a part of human culture, inevitably, there is an exchange of cultures between the languages involved. This paper discusses the enrichment of Indonesian culture though translation from English into Indonesian. In the translation process, cultural words in English as the source language (SL) are transferred into Indonesian as the second language (TL). To illustrate how English words have entered Indonesian vocabulary, some works of translation including letters, novel, and textbook from English into Indonesian were investigated. As a result, it was revealed that English words are incorporated into Indonesian vocabulary through different ways which are classified into four types, namely (1) Pure borrowing (loanword), (2) Naturalized Borrowing, (3) Natural Equivalent, and (5) Created Equivalent. The latter, then, results in similar type called Newly Localized Equivalent. Besides, it is inferred that the influencing factors are the Indonesian goverment’s policy and the widening scope if cultural words.