Potential Students’ Grammatical Errors in Translation: A Case Study at the Fourth Semester in English Department of Letters Faculty at Universitas Pamulang

Students at English Departement, Letters Faculty, The University of Pamulang get one subject namely English-Indonesian translation at the fourth semester. In studying translation, all English knowledge and skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading dan Writing) are required to get the translation result satisfied to readers. However, there are lots of problems faced by the students which are caused by grammar and other related factors in translation. The process of translation begins with skimming in a reading texts (Source Language=SL) until to get the main idea of the text. The students often think that careful reading is wasting of time so that they tend to try to find unfamiliar words in the dictionary straight away. This article is trying to recognize potential grammatical errors faced by a student and identify the types of errors made by the fourth semester students of the English Department, Letters Faculty of the University of Pamulang at the periode of 2012/2013.


INTRODUCTION
Translation is one of the subjects, speaking assigned to the fourth semester students of English Department, Letters Faculty at The University of Pamulang after they have been learning 4 language skills involving listening, speaking, reading and writing and others related knowledge.
Translation as writing activity is not only a matter of converting words from the source language to the target language and it is not as simple job as people would probably think.There are many language aspects that we have to master when doing translation, not only English knowledge as the Source language (SL) and Indonesia as the Target Language (TL) but also cultures of both languages, they play important roles in translation.English and Indonesian are different root of culture so that many of cultural expressions differ from English and Indonesian.Besides, English grammar is more complex than Indonesian.
In order to make a good translation product, converting the meaning from SL to TL must be held constant and equivalent.It means that the meaning of the source language impacts the same meaning on the target language, or at least the closest meaning.Meaning deals with ideas which is used in the form of sentences.
As we are all aware that English to Indonesian students is the first foreign language, so that studying English is not only studying grammar but culture as well.Studying translation needs writing ability to require all language skills, Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing.Speaking and Reading commonly called receptive skills as they are produced, but Speaking and Writing are produced by students.Writing competency will be the basic for students to be able to produce a good translation competency.In other words it determines the success of translation work.
As it was mentioned above that English and Indonesin have different cultures, so that it is very common if Indonesian students can not avoid of making errors in constructing English Sentences due to the cultural differencies.Grammar and culture aspects, are the two important aspects that are attracted to the writer to find out which part and why the students make errors in doing a translation.The writer collected the data from the class activity in translation subject and then identify and classify the errors after finding the structure/ grammar's matters between the two languages, English and Indonesian.
Some problems faced by the students at the fourth semester in doing translation are errors such as: From the examples above, it therefore attracted to be studied and to get the solution to the problems encountered.This study focuses only on the English - Indonesian translation.The problems that were studied are: 1.
Types of error made by the students of the fourth semester Faculty of Letters; 2.
Grammatical differences between English and Indonesian that are confusing to the students.Therefore, the study was done to find types of potential errors done and which grammatical matters confusing to students when translating English to Indonesian.By studying it, hopefully it will make the students aware the contribution of 4 language skills of English that have been learned at the previous semester.The result of the study may provide valuable inputs to the language learners, language teachers, for those who like studying translations for the future job.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The first step in identifying errors in doing translation is it needs to understand definition of translation.It can be read from some books written by experts, and the following are some theories that can help the writer to understand the definition of translation.Catford, (1965:20) stated that translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL) .To get clearer understanding on what translation is, then the writer also learned from Larson (1984), he states that translation is studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural context of the source language text; analysing it in order to determine its meaning, and then reconstructing the same meaning lexicon and grammatical structure which meaning are appropriate in the receptor language and its cultural context.
From those two experts, it gives almost complete and details information on how one can do translation and reach the equivalence and balance translation.The study on lexicon, grammar especially sentence structure, comunication situation and cultural expression are required to make translation satisfied to readers.
To be able to construct new sentences in TL, the students will use their knowledge of grammar which includes sentence patterns.As we may be aware that the basic concept of studying English is studying grammar which is knowledge of the rules.Some experts mentioned the important of grammar to writing skill.
The role of grammar is the basic fondation to master 4 language skills in learning English, .reffering to Ur (1988: 04) who defines " grammar as the way a language manipulates and combines words ( or bits of words) in order to form longer units of meaning ".Therefore, the converting of lexicons ( noun, verb, adjective and adverb) and non lexicon must follow its rules.Lots of practice and experience in learning grammar give opportunity for students who develop their grammar and creativity in making sentences.
Larson also mentions that a good translation must fulfill three characteristics, they are clarity, accuracy and naturalness.The ideal translation should be accurate (reproducing as exactly as possible the meaning of the source text), natural (using natural forms of the receptor language in a way that is appropriate to the kind of text being translated), communicative ( expressing all aspect of the meaning in a way that is readily understandable to the intended audience).
Accuracy: if the translator understands correctly the source language and attempt to communicate the understandable message in the target text to make the reader easier to understand the message, the accuracy is meant the reproducing is as exactly as possible.In order to reach the criteria of accuracy, the translation should: a. Reproduce as exactly as possible the meaning of the source language, b.Maintain the dynamic of the original source language text with adding nothing or deleting nothing, c.Avoid or minimize the distortion of message that happens in the translation version.
Clarity: Larson (1984:487) says the translation may be clear if the readeris well-undestand it according to the context of target language, while according to Oxford Dictionary (1995:70) Clarity is the translation which clearly understandable.
Naturalness: The nature of language may differ from one language to another, it may happen at the forms and figurative meaning.According to Larson (1984:487) translation may be natural if it is acceptable with the readers, because they have the same and appropriate tradition and culture into target language.
This study tries to find errors commonly made by UNPAM Students at English Department , Faculty of Letters.Combining theory from Catford (1965) and Larson (1984) about definition, the writer also refers to Ur (1988:04), Newmark (1989:94), Harmer (1987:01), and Thornbury (1999;01) to get the understanding about grammar in order to identify errors and different patterns of each grammar ( SL and TL).Catford ( 1965: 20 ) stated that translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material.Hanafi (1986:25) states in Nida (1969:12) that translating consists in producing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.The role of grammar and culture is described by another theory of translation from Larson (1984) which states that translation is studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural context of the source language text; analysing it in order to determine its meaning, and then reconstructing the same meaning lexicon and grammatical structure which meaning are appropriate in the receptor language and its cultural context.Newmark (1989: 94) mentions culture as a way of life and its manifestations peculiar to one speech community.In order to convert or translate the language, the learners have to master English grammar so that they have the ability to recognize the language structure and able to identify its written form, in context of meaningful sentences.
While Harmer( 1987:01) defines grammar as '(The study and practice of) the rules by which words change their form are combined into sentences'.The rule and practice are the two basic elements, grammar will talk on how words change and put together into sentences.Those references also show the important of knowing and understand grammar help students to do the translation assignment.It is also said that teaching grammar is important to improve speaking and writing skill.Both can help the students to speak and write using the right tenses in every sentence or every what they are saying, and accoding to Thornbury (1999:01) "Grammar is partly the study of what forms (structure) are possible in a language.Grammar attempts to explain why the following sentences are acceptrable".It means grammar is relating to analysis of a sentence.
In the translation study students learned to translate the text from various sources such as scientific books, newspapers, magazines etc which contain various types of text, while the process of translation can be done by either literal translation or comunicative/dynamic/idiomatic translation.Based on the limitation of the study, the writer will only see the potential grammatical errors commonly made by students so that it is not including other potential aspects/matters.

DISCUSSION
Translation text assignment given to the students of the fourth semester at the English Departement, Faculty of Letters at UNPAM are varied, some extract or texts are taken such as from the scientific books, magazines or newspapers, etc.Some texts are written by native English speakers but sometimes from Indonesian writers who wrote English articles.Having done observations to the assignment, the writer classified the findings into 2 types of errors; Grammatical points and Sentence Patterns.Vocabulary is also one of the big problems to the students since English and Indonesia language come from different root, culture and far away from geographical point of view.English is a foreign language to Indonesian students so that they need to study hard regarding this differencies.Another problem in vocabulary is one English word can have more than one meaning, so that it will be confusing if the students do not read lots of English texts.As stated by Larson, students have to study lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation and cultural context to avoid errors.It proves that studying English is not only studying vocabulary but there are other aspects too.
The example below shows that one English word has more than one meaning, so that it will be used in different way.
Example 1.The English sentence: I have the right to say it.The word right means: hak but it can also means kanan or tepat/benar in Indonesian, hak is noun, while kanan is adjective and benar is adjective/adverb.The vote tried to find the right man.Right means benar (adjective) and base on the pattern, adjective determined noun.Adjective will answer the question: What is it like?The answer to that question is 'right' or he is the right man.
There are indicators or signs that can help students in choosing the right or equivalent translation of words but when they do not use this guidance, it can cause the wrong choice.The students should also read the whole sentence from the text of the source language to avoid misunderstanding.

English word (source language)
Translation in Indonesian (target language) Other meaning Indonesian (target language) Right Hak (N) Ex.2.He has to sort the list.The word sort means: 'bentuk' (noun) and 'memilah'(verb).The word have/has to is usually followed by verb.The word 'bentuk' in Indonesian is noun but the word needed at the text is verb, so 'memilah' is the suitable word for the translation.The word 'to' in the SL help the students to identify which word function needed at the target language.'to' will be followed by infinitive (verb) but not noun.
Ex.3.The blood is taxing chemicals to the heart.The word taxing come from the word taxi which means 'mengangkut', membawa as (verb) while other meaning of taxi is 'taksi' which means a vechicle to transport people or things.
Considering the sentence pattern /structure which clearly indicate the tense of the sentence ( Subject +to be+ Ving= continous tense), it is very clear that taxing is meant to transport chemicals to the blood but not taxi as a noun (taksi).
English ( SL) Indonesian (TL) I have the right to say it Pemilih mencoba menemukan orang yang tepat/benar He has to sort the list

Dia harus memilah daftar
The blood is taxing chemicals to the heart

Darah mengangkut bahan kimia ke Jantung
Part of Speech is more confusing to the students as there are many different patterns in English and Indonesian.Noun pattern and Verb pattern are two important parts in sentence pattern.The following are some examples of translation problems caused by the different pattern of English and Indonesian.
It has been mentioned above that problems in reaching equivalent translation can occur at various levels, starting from word (vocabulary) to textual level.The problem could be at choices of word(s), grammatical differencies and culture.Those three aspects interwinded with one another.It could happen that the meaning of a word refers to culturally bound and sometimes it can be understood through its context of use.
Some scholars say that an exact equivalence is difficult to reach, they classified the equivalence in different types.Nida (1964: 159) suggests formal and dynamic or functional equivalence.Formal equivalence focusses attention on the message in both form and content.The message in the TL should match as closely as possible to the SL.Dynamic, is based on the principle of equivalent effect.Newmark (1981) divides translation into communicative and semantic translation.When it is related to Nida's dynamic equivalence, communicative translation also tries to create the effect on the target text reader which is the same as received by readers from the source language text.Problems in translation could happen when transpose SL to TL as shift.Shift, is transposition procedure involving a change in the grammar from SL to TL, (Newmark, 1988;85).These transposistion happened much when translating English into Indonesian as both language have different pattern.The following are the examples: Example1.a structural change that involves word-position in phrase: English : they receive a warm welcome from the residents Indonesian : mereka menerima sambutan yang hangat dari penduduk setempat.
"a warm welcome" consists of an article (a) warm (adjective) and welcome (noun), while in Indonesian adjective describes noun (welcome) but adjective is located after noun, while in English adjective located before noun and English noun need an article.
Example 2. from clause into particular type of phrase English : Human is a thinking animal Indonesian : manusia adalah hewan yang berfikir "thinking animal" is phrase with adjective, the posistion of adjective and noun should be interchangeabled according to Indonesian grammatical order.The word "rice" in English has many meanings in Indonesian.Rice means padi, gabah, beras dan nasi.The students must see the context to translate the sentence.It happens meaning changed since there is different perspective from SL and Target language.The rice eaten by people translated into nasi while the raw material which imported from Viet Nam is beras.
The errors can be corrected if the students follow the process of translation suggested by the experts.The process of translation should follow the following diagram: After having their first draft, the students should observe if there is still unbalance or unequivalent translation made.The students have to revice the draft and finalize it after getting the right choice of word and sentence pattern.Mackey (1965) states that the process of learning English as a second language is a special accomplishment.The students will face some problems and it may need a long time for adjusment.There are some aspects of English as a second language which may differ from the students' native language or Indonesian.Mackey (1965:107) suggests: the problem dealing with these same surroundings and this same experience an entirely different way, not only with different sounds; words and sentences but with diffrent grouping of things........and different arrangement of time and matter, all of which may conflict with the structure of his native language.
The most problems encountered by the students to do translatation were the construction of writing new sentences into target language.They have to master many paterns such as verb pattern, noun pattern or sentence pattern.These problems were found in the following examples: Example 1. Phrasal verb which usually consists of two-words, either verb plus preposition or verb plus adverb also one of quite big problems to the students, He blew the candles all at once, the word blew means meniup He blow off the stuffs from the her bag, the phrase blow off means membiarkan keluar He blow out the fire right away, the phrase blow out means memadamkan Translating metaphore/simile or idioms are also confusing the students since there are so much word use in different way.Simili and metaphore which are called as figurative language which is used to characterized one thing or idea in terms of another.According to Ortony and Fainsilber (1987), metaphore allows one to convey a simpler and more comprehensible experience to describe a relatively unfamiliar and abstract one.In other words we can have similar or different perception in viewing everything seen and experienced in the world.Metaphore is an equation while Simile is an approximation.
Example 1 for metaphore English : I saw an angry sky Indonesian : Saya melihat langit yang marah The phrase angry sky when translated into Indonesian becomes: langit yang marah since SL and TL have the same image about the sky.
Example 2 for metaphore: English : Your motor bike has wings Indonesian : Sepeda motormu lari bagaikan terbang Only birds that has wings, but to give impression to one or thing that move very fast is used the word wings as wings that make birds can fly.
Example 3 for metaphore translated by simile English : has wings Indonesian : Waktu bagaikan mempunyai sayap As it was mentioned earlier that simile is more poetic than metaphore, so that the translation into TL (Indonesian) is using the word bagaikan which showing figurative meaning for has wings.

English
: He is as strong as an ox (about a person with great strength) Her face is as white as a sheet (when somene's face is white due to fear) Indonesian : Dia sekuat banteng Wajahnya seputih kapas English and Indonesian is some way connotate the same thing for certain objects or things, it seen at the example 1, but for example 2, English and Indonesian connotate differently for color.It is sometimes there is an equivalence translation ( see ex. 1 and 3) when translating proverbs but there are many more proverbs do not have the same meaning ( ex.2 ) or English and Indonesia expresses in different way since both English and Indonesian have different culture.To translate idioms is different way from translating the (root) word.Idioms have new meaning which differ from its root ( see ex. 1-3).

Conclusion
After discussing the finding in the previous pages, the result of the study can be summerized as follows: 1.
Theory of translation needs to be learned by students so that they know the right steps that the students have to do to get a good result of translation and follow the steps in the process of translation make the translation more perfectly; 2.
Grammar helps students to construct good sentences so that it will be understood easily by the readers.Four Language skills especially reading is very important to help students to understand the text material; 3.
There are so many cultural aspects that we have to learn and experience by ourself so that we will get the nuansa and deep meaning of the source text.We have to explore the cultural aspects from various text such as newspaper, magazine and any original text or text written by the native speaker.
Recommendation 1.For Readers, The readers can learn from the discussion the possible errors that could happen when doing translation so that they will not face the same problems; 2.
For the Teachers, Before starting translation exercise, the lecture should introduce the theory of translation to the students so that they know important aspects related to translation as there will be many problems that they will encounter.
The theory of translation helps translators to ease the job.As it was always mentioned by the experts that knowledge of both grammar SL and TL determines the success of the translation work.The support from other language skills such as reading contributes lots of benefit to the students; 3.
For Writer, There is still a lot of problems faced by students that need to be explored and solved.The writer hopes that this is only the first step for the writer before futher exploration on translation.

Example 3 .
Phrase with adverbEnglish : Indiana Jones narrowly escape the cluthes of Lao Che Indonesian : Indiana Jones hampir lolos dari cengkraman Lao Che Additional word 'dari' can not be avoided to in order to clarify the meaning Example 4. Change in part of speech English : Formaline is categorically prohibited Indonesian : Formalin dikategorikan terlarangA shift happen at the word "categorically" (adverb), when it is used in Indonesian it functions as verb ( as predicate for Formaline in the English sentencedengan suasana yang nyaman "the embiance" when translated into Indonesian needs more word in order to make clear communication situation.Example 6. Specific meaning into general meaning English : He eats rice almost every day Indonesian : Dia makan nasi hampir tiap hari.