Category Shift of Noun Phrases in the Movie “Avengers: Infinity War”
on
DOI: 10.24843/JH.2019.v23.i04.p01
Terakreditasi Sinta-4, SK No: 23/E/KPT/2019
p-ISSN: 2528-5076, e-ISSN: 2302-920X
Humanis: Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol 23.4 Nopember 2019: 259-264
Category Shift of Noun Phrases in the Movie “Avengers: Infinity War”
Muhammad Ardliansyah*, I Nyoman Tri Ediwan English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University [ardliansyah198@gmail.com] [tri_ediwan@unud.ac.id]
Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia *
Corresponding Author
Abstract
The translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from English into Indonesian has many category shifts occurrences. This study with the title “Category Shift of Noun Phrases in the Movie “Avengers: Infinity War” has two research problems: (a) what kinds of category shifts can be found in the translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from English into Indonesian, and (b) how do category shifts applied in the translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from English into Indonesian. The purposes of this study are to find and describe and analyse the kinds of category shifts occurred in the translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from English into Indonesian, and to describe how the category shifts occurred in the translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from English into Indonesian. The data were collected from the film “Avengers: Infinity War” itself with its Indonesian subtitle. The data were in form of noun phrases, in which category shifts occurred. They were collected using observation and documentation methods. The data were then analysed using descriptive and qualitative method. This study is limited to the analysis of the category shift occurrences of noun phrases in the English-Indonesian subtitle using the theory of translation shift proposed by Catford. The result of this study is that all kinds of category shifts were found in the data, such as shift of structure, shift of class, unit shift and intrasystem shift. Category shifts occurred in the English-Indonesian subtitle due to the different grammatical structure, the different word classes, the different ranks, and the different internal systems of a source language and a target language.
Keywords: noun, noun phrases, translation, category shift
Abstrak
Terjemahan dalam film “Avengers: Infinity War” dari Bahasa Inggris ke Bahasa Indonesia memiliki banyak kejadian category shift. Penelitian ini yang berjudul “Category Shift of Noun Phrases in the Movie “Avengers: Infinity War” memiliki dua masalah penelitian: (a) jenis category shift apa saja yang dapat ditemukan dalam terjemahan film “Avengers: Infinity War” dari Bahasa Inggris kedalam Bahasa Indonesia, dan (b) bagaimana category shift diaplikasikan dalam terjemahan film “Avengers: Infinity War” dari Bahasa Inggris ke Bahasa Indonesia. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menemukan dan mendeskripsikan category shift apa saja yang dapat ditemukan dalam terjemahan film “Avengers: Infinity War” dari Bahasa Inggris ke Bahasa Indonesia, dan mendeskripsikan bagaimana category shift diapliasikan dalam terjemahan film “Avengers: Infinity War” dari Bahasa Inggris ke Bahasa Indonesia. Data-data
Received 20 May 2019
Received in revised form 18 November 2019
Accepted 21 November 2019
diambil dari film “Avengers: Infinity War” itu sendiri beserta subtitle Indonesianya. Data-data tersebut berupa frasa nomina dimana fenomena category shift terjadi. Data-data tersebut diambil dengan menggunakan metode descriptif kualitatif. Penelitian ini hanya terbatas pada analisis kejadian category shift yang dapat ditemukan pada data, seperti shift of structure, shift of class, unit shift dan intra-system shift. Category shift terjadi pada subtitle English-Indonesia dari film ini dikarenakan perbedaan struktur gramatikal, perbedaan kelas kata, perbedaan tingkat, dan juga perbedaan sistem internal dari bahasa sumber dan bahasa tujuan.
Kata kunci: nomina, frasa nomina, terjemahan, category shift
In this era of globalisation, translation becomes very crucial to every aspect of society, starting from the field of medicine, technology, arts, entertainment and any other important fields. Many of those fields might not be available on certain languages, indicating that the terms on those fields need to be translated into a certain language for a certain community in order for that community to fully comprehend the context of the terms. Thus, it clarifies the definition of translation.
Newmark (1998) stated that translation is “the process of rendering the meaning of a text into another language in a way that the author intended the text”. Film is not an exception when it comes to translation phenomena.
Usually, films are translated with subtitles, which can mostly be found in the bottom of the screen. When translating a certain film, there are important theories and processes which a translator has to pay attention to in order to make an equivalent and logical translation. One of these translation theories is the theory of translation shift proposed by Catford.
Venuti (2000) stated that “Shift means the change from formal correspondence in the process of translating from the source language to the target language”. It can occur both on the surface of word and structure. It is supported by a translation theory called translation shift
proposed by Catford which can be found in Venuti (2000). He stated that translation shifts can be divided into two major types, level shifts and category shifts. Category shifts can be classified into four types, namely structure shift or a shift of grammatical structure, class shift or shift of word classes, unit-shift or shift of rank, and intra-system shift or shift of internal system of the languages.
Translation shift theory can be implemented in various kinds of fields. It has no exception that the theory is being implemented in the film Avengers: Infinity War. This film was chosen to be analyzed due to the translation of the film Avengers: Infinity War from English to Indonesian which contains high amount of translation phenomena on its subtitle which supports the theory of translation of shift, especially the category shift.
According to the background of the study that has been elaborated above, there are two problems of the study: a. What kinds of category shifts can be found in the translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from
English into Indonesian?
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b. How category shifts were applied in the translation of noun phrases in the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from English into Indonesian?
The aims of this study are as follows:
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a. To define kinds of category shift found in the translation of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” from
English into Indonesian.
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b. To describe how category shifts applied in the translation of noun phrases in the film “Avengers:
Infinity War” from English into Indonesian.
The research method is divided into four parts; namely the description of the data source, how the data were collected, how the data were analysed, and how the data were presented.
The data source is the film Avengers: Infinity War, and its subtitles taken from Google Play Movie. The film and the subtitles are distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion. The movie tells the story about the strongest group of superheroes on Earth and their efforts on stopping the mad Titan called Thanos from eradicating living species from the galaxy with the power of infinity gauntlet and the six infinity stones. The Avengers must prevent Thanos from collecting all six powerful infinity stones to complete his goal. This film was chosen because category shift phenomena occurred gradually in this film.
The data were collected using observation and documentation methods. The object of the observation is the subtitle of the film. The techniques of collecting the data are as follows: a. Downloading the film and its subtitles from Google Play Movies & TV;
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b. Note-taking the utterances and part of the conversation in SL and TL;
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c. Listing the SL and TL in which category shifts occurred within a table;
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d. Defining the noun phrases in which category shifts occurred in the English-Indonesian subtitle.
The data were analysed using qualitative descriptive method, since the analysis of the data are being described. The techniques of analysing the data are as follows:
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a. Defining the word classes from the data using an online tool called POS-tagging which can be accessed online at https://parts-of-speech.info/;
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b. Classifying the kinds of category shifts of the data using the theory of translation shifts proposed by Catford;
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c. Describing the category shifts occurrences in the noun phrases.
This study is using qualitative descriptive to present the data. The data are presented in table, with their analysis placed beneath them. The techniques are as follows:
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a. The SL and TL are put into tables;
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b. The data were classified into the types of category shift. The utterances in which category shift phenomena occurred are formatted in bold;
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c. The detailed descriptions of the analysis are presented as paragraph below the tables.
Structural shift means that the structure from the source language is being shifted or changed when translated into the target language; therefore, as seen in the data below:
|
SL |
TL |
|
You really are |
Kau memang |
|
the worst |
saudara yang |
|
brother. |
terburuk. |
|
SL |
TL |
|
No other being |
Tidak ada |
|
has ever had the |
mahluk yang |
|
might |
cukup kuat. |
In the table above, the structure of the noun phrase in the source language is different from that of the target language is different. If seen from the d-m (diterangkan-menerangkan) structure theory proposed by Alisjahbana (1975), the structure of the source language is md (the worst = menerangkan; brother = diterangkan), while that of the target language is (saudara = diterangkan; yang terburuk = menerangkan). This indicates that in the source language, the phrase “the worst” modifies the word “brother”, while in the target language, the word “saudara” is being modified by the phrase “yang terburuk” as illustrated below:
The worst Brother
Adjective Noun
Modifier Head
Noun Adjective
Head Modifier
Qualified (diterangkan) Qualifying (menerangkan)
Class shift is a process of translation when a word class of an item in a source language is being translated with a different word class in the target language, as seen in the data below:
It can be seen that the word “might” in the source language indicates that it is a noun, but the translator translated it into the word “kuat”, which indicates that it is an adjective. This indicates that there is a shift of class happening in the data, since the noun “might” in the source language is being shifted or changed into the adjective “kuat”. It can be inferred that the reason why the translator changed the word class is that the structure of the source language is different from that of the target language, that the translator created a new situation by adding the word “cukup” as the modifier and adjective, a head that corresponds to the word “cukup” as needed; however, at the same time, it should be equivalent to the context of the phrase “the might” in the source language. Therefore, the word “kuat” is chosen.
Unit shift means the change of rank, meaning that the rank of an item in a source language is being changed into different rank in a target language, as seen in the data below:
SL TL
We’re gonna Kita akan
have a nice makan malam.
dinner tonight.
From the table above, it can be seen that the word “dinner” in the source language is translated into a phrase consisting of “makan” and “malam” in the target language. This happened because the word “dinner” cannot be represented or translated into only one word in the target language. Besides, the only equivalence translation of the word “dinner” in the
target language is the phrase “makan malam”.
Intra-system shift is a process when an internal system of a source language is being changed or shifted according to the internal system of the target language, as seen in the data below:
SL TL
The engines are Mesin mati, dead, life pendukung
support failing. hidup lumpuh.
It can be concluded that there is an intrasystem shift of plural to singular phenomenon occurring in the noun phrase translation above. In the source language, the -s in the word “engines” indicates plurality. In the target language, however, the word is translated into the word “mesin”, which is not translated plurally.
Based on the research about the category shift occurrences in the noun phrases found in the English-Indonesian subtitle of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” in the previous chapter, there are several conclusions that can be drawn. The category shift occurrences that can be found in the noun phrases in the English-Indonesian subtitle of the film “Avengers: Infinity War” are shift of structure, shifts of class, shifts of unit, and shifts of intra-system. There were changes in the noun phrase translations as a result of the difference between the source language and the target language. However, the meaning was held constant. There are several factors that determined categories shift of noun phrases found in the English-Indonesian subtitle in this film, namely the difference of grammatical structure of the source language and the target language; in this
case, the grammatical structures were analysed using the theory of d-m structure proposed by Alisjahbana. The source language has a structure of m-d structure (menerangkan-diterangkan),
where the qualifier (menerangkan) is placed in the left, while the qualified (diterangkan) or the head is placed in the right. The target language has a structure of d-m structure, where the qualifier (menerangkan) is placed on the left, while the qualified (diterangkan) or the head is placed on the right. There is also a difference of word class between the source language and the target language that has to be done in order for the translation to sound more natural and to keep the meaning intact. In this study, there are several occurrences; they are the shift of word class from noun to adjective and the shift of word class from noun to verb. The difference of ranks among the source language and the target language is also one of the factors that determined category shift. In this study, it has been found that there are rank shifts from word to phrase and phrase to word. The difference but formally corresponding internal systems between the source language and the target language is also one of the factors that determined category shifts. For the internal system, the concepts of singular and plural is becoming the main focus.
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