A Study of the Reasoning Behind the Choices of Meanings

Forms of Errors and Their Causes in the Translation of Jumlah Ismiyah and

Fi’liyah

Syihabuddin Syihabuddin

FPBS, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung, Indonesia

syihabuddin@upi.edu

Keywords: Translating Process, Meaning Analysis, Translation Errors.

Abstract: This study aims to examine students’ ability to identify the structure of nominal and verbal Arabic sentences

and determine the meaning of the sentences. This research also aims to identify the forms of errors in

determining meaning and the factors causing the errors. The subjects of this study were 23 students who

were asked to identify sentence types, translate them into Indonesian, and explain the translation process.

The data collected through an open-ended questionnaire. The results showed that students successfully

identified 131 variants of the nominal sentences and 49 variants of the verbal sentences. However, in

general, they are incorrect in identifying both types of sentences, inaccurate in doing the process of

translation, and incorrect in choosing the type of the meanings. The errors in determining meanings are in

the forms of conceptual, morphological, lexical, and contextual errors. These errors are due to their lack of

understanding of the syntactic structure of Arabic language, and their lack of vocabulary knowledge.

Therefore, it is advisable that lecturers should add more exercise in translating.

1 INTRODUCTION

Translation is the process of disclosing the meaning

of the source language in the target language.

Meanings, which consist of ideas, thoughts, and

feelings, can only be fully expressed in sentences.

Because what the translator expresses is the meaning

or the message, then sentence is the smallest unit of

translation. Sentences also vary in kinds according

to the diversity of meanings conveyed. The variety

of meanings in turn has implications for the diversity

of sentence structures. It is this diversity that makes

students have difficulties in understanding,

identifying, and defining sentence types according to

their meaning and structure. Difficulties are also

found in understanding the meaning of vocabulary in

the sentence types. When determining sentence

types and their meanings, students follow a process.

How do students understand sentence types and

express their meanings? This question will be

answered in this research. The answer to that

question will be useful for improving translation

courses.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

So far, people have been inclined to use translating

machines. Some research reports indicate that to

some extent translation with the machine is useful,

but the translation is unreliable and useless without

the intervention of the human mind, because it is far

from accurate. A translating machine only works

with information input by humans (Stiegelbauer,

2013; Komeilia et al., 2011; Goves and Mundt,

2015). Only research by Ghasemi and Hashemian

(2016) found that the frequency of the errors was not

significant.

Volkova and Zubenina (2015) therefore

suggested that translators adapt pragmatically and

socio-culturally, namely by modifying the source

language to align with the needs of the target

language, as well as intervening the translations so

that there is a greater understanding between the

source language and the target language, to achieve

a good level of readability.

In addition to adaptation, another important point

in overcoming the weaknesses of translation

machine is by understanding the structure of the

Syihabuddin, S.

A Study of the Reasoning Behind the Choices of Meanings - Forms of Errors and Their Causes in the Translation of Jumlah Ismiyah and Fi’liyah.

DOI: 10.5220/0007174407490753

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 749-753

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

749

Arabic sentences, the meaning of the sentences, and

the meaning of the words.

Structurally, Arabic has two types of sentences:

jumlah ismiyyah and jumlah fi'liyyah (nominal

sentence and verbal sentence). Jumlah ismiyyah

consists of mubtada' and khabar. Mubtada refers to

words categorized into the marfu' noun that becomes

the topic of conversation, usually placed at the

beginning of a sentence. On the other hand, khabar

refers to words categorized as marfu’ nouns which

explain mubtada (Fayyadh, 1995; Abdulghani,

2010). Thus, the structure of jumlah ismiyyah can be

understood by looking at the categories of words

that begin the structure, understanding the words’

position as the topic of the sentence, and identifying

the khabar explaining the mubtada.

The second type of sentence is Jumlah fi'liyyah.

According to Fayyadh (1995) and Badawi et al.

(2004), Jumlah fi'liyyah is a sentence consisting of at

least two main elements, fi'il and fa'il and mafúl bih,

or na'ibul fa'il. The identification of jumlah fi'liyah

can be done by recognizing the category of verbs

that begin the sentence as a topic, searching for

words as fa'il from active verbs, looking for na'ibul

fa'il from passive verbs, or searching for mafúl bih

from active verbs.

Subsequently, the identified sentences are

analyzed for their structure. According to

Syihabudin (2011), in analyzing a sentence, the

translator needs to understand the meaning of the

sentence syntactically, understand the type of

relationship between phrases or sentence

constituents, and analyze the meaning of the words

contained in the sentence. Even Tartir and Abdul-

Nabi (2017) asserted that analysis can be done on

the feelings and attitudes of a person as reflected in

his or her sentence.

The next step is to analyze the general and

specific syntactic meanings, understand the forms of

relationships that relate the syntactic functions to

one another, understand structural cues based on

morphological analysis, and interpret vocabulary

based on the previous stages of understanding

(Hasan, 1979).

All of these processes are summarized in the

three stages of translation as proposed by Nida and

Taber (1982), which are: (a) understanding the

source text through linguistic and semantic analyses,

understanding the translated materials, and

understanding the cultural context, (b) diverting the

meanings or messages cited in the source text, and

sentences until the final results of the translation in

the target language are obtained.

3 METHODS

The present research is focused on the process of

translating an Arabic text into Indonesian and its

translation. It aims to reveal the process of

identifying the types of nominal and verbal

sentences, the process of understanding the two

sentence types, the accuracy of translation, the forms

of translation errors, and the factors causing the

errors. The source texts, in the forms of seven long

sentences, are extracted from al-Ahram the online

newspaper.

To achieve the stated goal, data were collected

from 23 students of Arabic Department at UPI

(Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia) in the forms of

translation results and responses to open-ended

questionnaire. Data were analyzed inductively, from

specific to partial data, and then the data were

analyzed for categorization, interpretation, and

signification as a whole. In identifying sentence

types and determining the quality of translation, the

translation quality criteria proposed by Syihabuddin

(2011), namely accurate, inaccurate, and natural,

were used.

4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Presentation of findings and discussion in this

research starts from the process of identification of

nominal and verbal sentences, the process of

selecting meaning, the forms of errors in the

selection of meaning, and the factors causing the

errors.

4.1 Translation of Nominal Sentence

The research has found that respondents identify

variations of the nominal sentences, resulting in 131

variants. Then, the variants are sorted according to

the level of accuracy of identification with the

results as shown in table 1.

Table 1: Identification of Nominal Sentences.

Categorization of the 131 Sentences

Accurate Less accurate Inaccurate

F% F % F %

23 18 50 38 58 44

Table 1 shows that of the 131 variants of the

nominal sentence, only 18% of the sentences are

accurately identified. A total of 44% of the

respondents make errors in the identification, and as

many as 38% identify the nominal sentences less

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

750

accurately. The sentences are identified through

patterns of understanding as presented in table 2.

Table 2: The Process of Understanding Nominal

Sentences.

No Patterns f %

1 Analyzing sentences preceded by isim

as mubtada Æ looking for khabar

2 8.71

2 Analyzing sentences preceded by isim

as mubtada Æ looking for khabar Æ

determining meaning

9 39.00

3 Analyzing sentences preceded by isim

as mubtada Æ translating Æ looking

for khabar

2 8.71

4 Analyzing sentences preceded by isim

as mubtada

5 22.00

5 Analyzing sentences preceded by isim

as mubtada Æ translating

5 22.00

Total 23 100

Table 2 shows that in general the students

identify the nominal sentences by showing words

categorized as isim (noun) which serve as mubtada

and searching for the words that serve as khabar,

then determining the meaning. However, very few

sentences are accurately identified because the

means used is cognitivist, whereas the determination

of sentences requires an applicative understanding.

Thus, the students’ ability is only up to

understanding nominal sentences cognitively as put

forward by Fayyadh (1995).

This cognitivist understanding is evidenced by

the result of the translation that they make, in which

the percentage of inaccurate translation is greater

than that of the accurate translation, namely 73.86%

versus 26.14%, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Variants and Accuracy in The Translation of

Nominal Sentences.

Sentence

Variants

Categories

Accurate Inaccurate

F % f %

Sentence 1 13 9 43 14 57

Sentence 2 9 4 17 19 83

Average 23 30% 70 %

Based on the data collected, the inaccuracies in

translation are due to the length of the verbal

sentences which consist of 32 words and 4 verbs, so

that students find it difficult to find the key ideas and

explanatory ideas constructed by their subordinate

A Study of the Reasoning Behind the Choices of Meanings - Forms of Errors and Their Causes in the Translation of Jumlah Ismiyah and

Fi’liyah

751

clauses. Another difficulty pertains to the

determination of fa’íl. Students have a difficulty in

translating complex sentences.

Then, what about understanding the meaning in

an attempt of translating the sentences?

4.3 Meaning Understanding

Table 7: Patterns of Meaning Understanding.

No Pattern F %

1. Searching for meanings based on word

origin Æ determining meaning

according to contexts

6 26

2. Determining sentence types Æ

determining subject -predicate Æ

understanding meanings of words

according to contexts Æ translating

1 4.35

3. Determining sentence types Æ looking

up for meanings in a dictionary Æ

translating

2 8.70

4. Identifying subject-predicate Æ

looking up for meaning in a dictionary

Æ determining meanings according to

contexts

2 8.70

5. Looking up for meanings in a

dictionary Æ determining meanings

according to contexts Æ translating

7 30.43

6. Giving syakal Æ translating word for

word

1 4.35

7. Giving syakal Æ determining sentence

types Æ looking up for meanings in a

dictionary Æ translating

1 4.35

8. Giving syakal Æ translating words Æ

translating the whole sentence

2 8.70

9. Translating sentence by sentence Æ

translating the whole tex

1 4.35

Total 23 100

As seen in Table 7, a total of 56.43% of the

respondents translate the text directly by looking up

for the meanings of words in the dictionary.

Therefore, they have difficulty in choosing the

meanings offered by the dictionary, so that the

chosen meaning is not in accordance with the

context; consequently, the translation cannot be

understood. There are respondents who initiate the

translation by giving syakal, and there are some who

search for the subject and predicate then translate

word for word. Only about 13% of respondents start

their translation by understanding the sentence first,

identifying the topic discussed in the text, and

determining the meaning in context. So it is not

surprising that as many as 87% of the students make

errors in starting translation.

4.4 Errors in Choosing Meanings and

the Causing Factors

The research has found four forms of errors made by

the respondents.

First, conceptual error, namely an error in

matching a general concept to operational terms,

such as the word manhaj which is equated to

thariqah.

Second, morphological error, that is an error

caused by misunderstanding of the forms of word,

morpheme, or morph, as happens in the whole

translation of mutakaamilan.

Third, lexical error, namely an error in giving

lexical meanings directly from the dictionary; for

example, al-fardu is translated into children.

Fourth, contextual error, that is an error that

occurs because of ignoring the context.

These errors occur because, (a) students do not

understand the syntactic structure of the source

language, (b) students do not know the root words,

students are less careful in reading the text.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND

RECOMMENDATION

In general, students make errors in identifying

nominal and verbal sentences. These errors cause

errors in translating the sentences. Such errors occur

because of their lack of understanding of the main

clauses and subordinate clauses of Arabic language,

the complexity of the sentence structure, and the

presence of fa’íl or subject which often appears in

the form of omitted pronouns, and their knowledge

is that still cognitivist and non-applicative.

In translating sentences, students make errors in

the forms of conceptual errors, morphological errors,

lexical errors, and contextual errors. These errors are

due to their lack of understanding of the syntactic

structure, not knowing mashdar or madli verbs, lack

of vocabulary, and carelessness in reading or

understanding the meaning of words.

The students’ errors in identifying sentences are

also due to their cognitive knowledge. Therefore, it

is suggested that lecturers of Tarjamah course give

more exercises in identifying types of sentences,

practicing translating, and analysing syntactic

elements.

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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A Study of the Reasoning Behind the Choices of Meanings - Forms of Errors and Their Causes in the Translation of Jumlah Ismiyah and

Fi’liyah

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