Kusniawan Pratama

2201406020

Rombel 7

An Analysis of Translation Quality of Harry Potter and

the Chamber of Secrets: Chapter One

Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets is the second series of the whole seven series of the novel that stories about the adventure of Harry Potter in the magic world. This series is the masterpiece of J. K. Rowling, a great novelist from Scotland with a huge talent and imagination in creating attractive, great and fascinating stories. The chamber of secrets stories about the adventure of Harry potter in breaking the mystery of a mysterious hidden chamber that spread the terror in Hogwarts after it is opened.

The novel itself had also translated in Indonesia because of the popularity of the novel so that plenty of Indonesians wish for read it. Listiana Srisanti, the translator, had done her job quite well in transforming the whole story from English into Bahasa Indonesia. And now allow me to make an effort in analyzing the translation quality of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Chapter One.

Overall the method of the translator in transferring the meaning of the novel is good enough in representing the overall imagination of the author that want to share to the readers. As a ‘Bridge of Meaning’ the translator might has understand the entire components of the novel from the technical components, which is the problems of equivalence, until the source culture of the novel used in the story, British culture.

I’m able to perceive the method of translating she used is word to word translation. However, the result of the translation is satisfaction enough. The translator can simply represent the situation wanted to catch by the readers from the author. But here, sometimes this technique doesn’t work well. The chemistry and the beauty of the sentence is almost gone because of the words used by the translator are not very attractive. For instance in the sentence “He’d almost be glad of a sight of his arch-enemy, Draco Malfoy, just to be sure it hadn’t all been a dream…” The sentence is translated “Dia bahkan akan senang kalau bias melihat musuh besarnya, Draco Malfoy, sekadar meyakinkan bahwa bukan hanya mimpi…” We are not able to catch the difference of mood if we haven’t read the original one and then compare it with the target language version.

In the original novel, every sentence, phrase, and even a word has a very unique character and purpose that spread the aim of the author to represent each situation, character, special moment, and even trivial things to be caught by the readers. The description of something has a very powerful outcome to the readers so that we can explore our imagination toward the story. In the Indonesian version, the chemistry of the story is represented in a not really attractive way. For example “Countless times, Harry had been on the point of unlocking the Hedwig’s cage by magic and sending her to Ron and Hermione with a letter, but it wasn’t worth the risk.” that is translated “Sudah puluhan kali, Harry hampir membuka kandang Hedwig dengan sihir dan mengirimnya kepada Ron and Hermione dengan membawa surat, tetapi terlalu besar resikonya.” That sentence is an evidence for how poor the vocabulary used by the translator in representing the sentence. As a result, we can frequently found the paragraph which is truly clear and is able to carry on the plot of the story very well, but in the aspect of beauty and the sense of the story, it is not delivered well. It can be seen by how easy we read the novel, but occasionally we are not really enthusiasm or even feel bored then we feel sleepy in enjoying this wonderful novel. The diction used by the translator should be full of chemistry and attractive sense to build the curiosity and the interest of the reader in taking pleasure of the novel.

However, I assume that the translator has done her job well. She was capable of delivering the major message the author want to share to the reader in Bahasa Indonesia. Almost the overall message has been converted well so that the readers would not get lost in reading the story since the plot is well organized. She was also capable of creating the meaning that is considered easy to understand. She was also able to adjust the effective and ineffective words used in the source novel by omit it or maybe add some words to construct understandable story for us. So I would like to say thank you to the translator, Listiana Srisanti for her well-done job.