Cultural Substitution Translation Strategy on Japanese Comics: A

Sustainable Research to Understand Indonesian Language Identity

Shifting

Dhaniar Asmarani

, Daniel Hermawan

, Sandhya Widyatnya

Japanese Department, Faculty of Humanities,Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia 11480

Japanese Department, Darma Persada University, Jl. Raden Inten II, Pd. Klp., Duren Sawit, Jakarta Timur

Keyword: Cultural Substitution, Strategy, Japanese Comics

Abstract: Japanese comics gained popularity in Indonesia in 1980's. To make Indonesians enjoy it, the Japanese

language was translated to Indonesian. There are more than several thousand of language variants exist in

this world. Especially in digital era when the time and space for people to communicate has become smaller

and translation has become unavoidable. Problems occurs when there is no equivalent word in translating,

so the translator uses the cultural substitution method to solve this problem. Furthermore, there is problem

when the meaning of the word becomes not the same. In this paper, this phenomenon is analyzed by

comparing the Japanese language and Indonesian using the cultural substitution strategy, including the

contributing factors for the translators in using the cultural substitution strategy. This paper would like to

contribute to analyze one problem in translation method. This research is a preliminary series of sustainable

research, that lead to understand the shifting of Indonesian language identity from Japanese comics

translation method in Indonesia around 1980’s to nowadays.

1 INTRODUCTION

Recently translation has become inseparable from

communication in the world. There are more than

several thousand of language variants exist in this

world. Especially in digital era when the time and

space for people to communicate has become

smaller and translation has become unavoidable.

Translation is a process to change a text from

source language to an equivalent text in target

language (Catford J C, 1965).In addition of (Catford

J C, 1965),translation is also a process of giving text

a same meaning with the text meaning that the writer

intended(Newmark P, 1988). From the two

definitions of translation, we can simplify translation

as a way of conveying message using the target

language using written or oral communication as

intended by the writer or speaker.

Translation is an art of conveying messagein the

target language, Nida also added that translation is

process of meaning reproduction from the source

language to the target language in equal and natural

way. Translation should prioritize the meaning of

the text and then secondly the style of text (Widya,

Ayu D M I, 2015)

However, to reproduce meaning using a different

language is a complex job. Each language has its

own system that is unique to one another which

causes the possibility of inequality in each language

system. There are a lot of contributing factors to this

problem, but one of them is the Cultural Specific

Items.

Cultural Specific Item is a concept in the source

language that is a completely unknown in target

language (Baker M, 2011).Therefore, when

translating Specific Cultural Items, there is lot of

aspects the translator needsto consider and

understand regarding the cultural knowledge of the

source language and the target language (Tiwiyanti

L, Retnomurti A B, 2017).

From our observation ofseveral translation

results, there are several methods used to translate

Cultural Specific Item,one of which is the

descriptive method (Munday J, 2016). Nevertheless,

there is another method of translating Cultural

Specific Item, which is the Cultural Substitution or

Cultural Homogenation in order to easier for people

Asmarani, D., Hermawan, D. and Widyatnya, S.

Cultural Substitution Translation Strategy on Japanese Comics: A Sustainable Research to Understand Indonesian Language Identity Shifting.

DOI: 10.5220/0010003500002917

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences, Laws, Arts and Humanities (BINUS-JIC 2018), pages 119-123

ISBN: 978-989-758-515-9

119

to interact and communicate well (Akbari A, 2014).

In the Cultural Substitution strategy, the translator

uses words that have a different prepositional

meaning but the same impact when being used in the

target language (Baker M, 2011). This strategy is

also being known as Adaptation (Munday J, 2016).

Related on Cultural Substitution, this strategy can be

classified into target language-oriented translation

ideology (Hoed B H, 2006). There are two

ideologies in translation, target language-oriented

translation ideology and source language-oriented

translation ideology. This cultural substitution

translation strategy is target language-oriented

translation ideology because, the appropriateness of

good translation depends on the culture of the target

language community and the reader's tastes.

Even though Cultural Substitution can help

bridge the gap between the writer and the reader,

there is a new problem in Cultural Substitution

strategy. Because it uses a new word with different

prepositional meaning, this can lead to a loss of

meaning in the source language and in the target

language.

From the observation to several Japanese comics

published in Indonesia, there are lot of translators

who used Cultural Substitution Method to solve the

inequality problem. Words like dorayaki, dango, or

University of Tokyo are translated to kue pukis,

martabak, or Gajah Mada University. There are

several factors that influence the translator in

choosing to use the Cultural Substitution strategy,

one of which is the strict censorship in the New

Order regime.

From this fact, the authors formulate two

research questions, namely(1) what kind of words

are translated using the cultural substitution method,

and (2) what factors cause the translators to use

cultural substitution strategy.

2 METHODOLOGY

This research was a preliminary series of sustainable

research which is still continue in the next few years.

This research was conducted in several steps. These

steps were required for the authors to formulate the

answers to the research questions: to know the

shifting of Indonesian language identity from

Japanese comics translation method in Indonesia

around 1980’s to nowadays.

The first step of the research was to choose

several Japanese comics that have been published in

Indonesia around the period of 1980’s to 1990’s.

After that, the authors took words from both the

source language and the target language and

compared the meaning. The third step was using the

results of the comparison as the base to analyze the

translator’s reason.

From this research, the authors would like to

help reader to understand that it requires certain

considerations before choosing the methodology in

the translation process.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The authors collected data on 6 comics from three

genres. From each comic, two volumes were

selected randomly. The authors discovered that

every comics’ translation used cultural substitution

strategy. The table below shows the number of

cultural substitution translation strategy found on the

data.

Table 1: The number of cultural substitution translation

strategy found on the data.

Genre

&Title

Target

Reader

Number of Cultural

Substitution Translation

Comedy 27

Asaric

han

Children 15

Koboc

han

Children 12

Shonen 10

Kung

Fu Bo

Teenager

Legend

a Na

Teenager

Shojo 10

Sailor

moon

Teenager

Topeng

Kaca

Teenager

Grand Total 47

Cultural Substitution strategy is the translator

replacingwords or expressions from the source

language with different words and prepositions but

have the same meanings when used on the target

language (Baker M, 2011). From the collected data,

cultural substitution strategy is classified into two

types. First, the cultural terms from the source

language are translated to the target language with

suitable words for the target language.The result of

this translation is that the meaning from the source

language and the target language is compatible.

Example:

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Table 2: Cultural terms are translated with suitable words

for the target language.

Comics Source Lan

Target

Lan

Asari Chan

Vol 5 Pg 51

あっ千円！ネコ

ババネコババ。

Hah. Rp 1500!

Biar

kukantongi

saja!

Kobo Chan

Vol 11 Pg

きょう婦人会で手

作り石鹸作ったの

よ

Tadi di PKK

membuat

sabun.

Kung Fu

Boy Vol 1

Pg 10

酒

Tuak

As the table shows, the cultural terms from the

source language are translated into cultural terms

from target language with the same meaning. For

instance, the currency from the source language, 千

円 (Sen Yen), means 1000 Yen, is translated to the

target currency, Rp.1500. Another example, 婦人会

(Fujinkai), which means women association

(Matsuura: 1994), is translated to PKK. PKK,

whichhas the similar meaning with 婦人会

(Fujinkai), is Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga

(Family Welfare Education) (KBBI Online,

https://kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id/entri/pkk accessed on 6

July 2018, 14.44). The third example, 酒 (Sake),

Japanese alcohol (Matsuura: 1994), is translated to

tuak, which has similar meaning, fermented

niraaren (coconut, siwalan) alcohol beverage (KBBI

Online, https://kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id/entri/tuak

accessed on 6 July 2018, 14.50).

The second cultural substitution strategy is

translating cultural terms from the source language

to the terms target language with different

meaningto adjust the cultural differentiation between

the source and the target. Example:

Table 3: Translating cultural terms with different meaning

to adjust the cultural differentiation.

From the example above, the translation between

the source and the target use terms with different

meaning because the translation is adjusted to the

target language culture. The first example, the

source language text said that “will eat rice with

Furikake and Takuwan”. ふりかけ(Furikake)is a

sort of sprinkles made of seeds and is tasteful. タク

ワン(Takuwan) is pickles made from radish. Both

wordsare translated to tahu and kangkung. Tahu and

Kangkung have different meaning with ふりかけ

(Furikake)and タクワン(Takuwan). But if the

translator directly translated ふりかけ(Furikake)

and タクワン(Takuwan), the readers would find it

difficult to understand because of the cultural

differentiation. In the target language, there is no ふ

りかけ(Furikake) and タクワン(Takuwan). So, the

translator chose to change it into familiar foods from

the target language, Tahu and Kangkung. The

second example, ポークソテー(PookuSotee) is

translated into Steak. ポークソテー(PookuSotee) is

an English uptake from SautéedPork, which in

Indonesian is “Tumis Daging Babi”. However,

Pooku Sotee, instead of Tumis Daging Babi, is

translated into Steak, which has different meaning. It

is because pork is not familiar for the target culture

(mostly Muslims) and if translated directly, the

readers from target language would feel

uncomfortable. The third example, 雑魚(Zako)

which means “Little Fish” (Matsuura, 1994: 1210) is

translated into Tikus-Tikus (Rats). This term is said

by a character when he tries to insult the addressee.

In the source language, 雑魚(Zako) is an insulting

word

(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9B%91%E9%

AD%9A accessed on 15 July 2018, 12.22 AM).

Nevertheless,in target culture, little fish is not an

insulting word, so the translator translate it into rats,

which has a different meaning with 雑魚(Zako) to

make the insulting word understandable to the target

readers.

Next, after analyzing the cultural substitution

translation strategy, the authors also observed from

its genre distribution. The following is a graphic

representing the number of cultural substitution

translation data from the comics’ genre:

Cultural Substitution Translation Strategy on Japanese Comics: A Sustainable Research to Understand Indonesian Language Identity

Shifting

121

Figure 1: Cultural Substitution on 6 Japanese Comics.

As seen as from the graphic, most of the cultural

substitution strategy translation is used on comedy

comics instead of Shonen and Shojo genre. This

genre qualification is also related with the readers’

age. The authors classified the readers into 2 types,

children and teenagers. The teenagers are classified

further into 2 types based on the gender, boys and

girls. The following graph below indicates the

numbers based on the types of readers.

Figure 2: Cultural Substitution Based on Reader Type.

As seen from the graph above, cultural

substitution is mostly found on comedy genre

comics, 58%, which is read mostly by children. As

for Shonen and Shojo genres, read by teenagers,

each genre only accumulates to21% and 22%

respectively. It is because children have a lack of

understanding regarding the terms, compared to

teenagers/adults. As a result, translators must adjust

some cultural terms from the source language to

familiar terms to the target language. As stated that

cultural substitution strategy is classified as target

language-oriented translation ideology (Hoed B H,

2006).

4 CONCLUSIONS

There wasa lot of strategies thatcan be used in

translating documents one of which is cultural

substitution strategy. By using this strategy, the

translation will be easily understandable to the target

language reader because the terms from the source

language will be translated into familiar terms in the

target language with similar meaning. Therefore, the

translation ideology will be inclined to target

ideology.

After analyzing 6 comics from 3 different

genres: comedy, shonen and shojo, it is found that

most translation of using the cultural substitution

strategy is used incomedy comics, which is mostly

read by children (58%), instead of shonen (20%) and

shojo (21%) comics which are read by teenagers.

This is because the translation with cultural

substitution strategy will help children, who have

less knowledge about cultural terms compared to

teenagers or adults, to understand the eventsin the

comics.

This research was conducted in several steps that

leads to sustain in the next few years. One the first

step of the research, it is known that comic

translation around 1980s is using cultural

substitution strategy. This is, allegedly, for the

readers to understand the meaning although Japan

and Indonesia has different culture and customs.

Next research will be focusing on Japanese-

Indonesian comic translation data from 1990s to

2000s, so that the translation style changes could be .

As the translation style is changing, we can keep

trying to find the factors that effected the translation

style, so the change on this era’s Indonesian

language identity can be identified. We hope that the

final results of this ongoing research can contribute

to some targets on United Nation’s Sustainable

Development Goals. This research will show the

most recommended translation style to Indonesian

language and help more foreign literature to be

translated into Indonesian language with the

intention of development of Indonesia’s education,

which is appropriate with 4

Sustainable Factors,

Quality Education (United Nations, 2015). In

addition, a good translation will be a good bridge for

two countries to cooperate, which is appropriate

with 17

Sustainable Factor, Partnerships for The

Goals(United Nations, 2015 ).

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Cultural Substitution Translation Strategy on Japanese Comics: A Sustainable Research to Understand Indonesian Language Identity

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