Authored by: Leandro Limjadi and Risa Simanjuntak

The study titled Technology Aspired through Accurate and Acceptable Literary Translation investigates how translators handle technology-related terms in literary works and how readers perceive the quality of those translations. Using Indonesian translations of Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen and Glass Sword as corpora, the researchers identified 164 instances of technology-related expressions in the former and 153 in the latter.

The study employed a descriptive-qualitative method, supported by questionnaires completed by 41 respondents, to evaluate translation quality based on Nababan’s criteria of accuracy and acceptability, while analyzing strategies through Baker’s framework. The findings reveal that translators frequently relied on generalization, paraphrasing, and superordinate terms when direct equivalence was unavailable. The reason for this is socio-cultural and technological differences between English and Indonesian contexts.

Despite instances of non-equivalence, such as translating “push cycle” as otopet, most respondents still perceived the translations as acceptable and understandable. Overall, 54.8% of responses rated the translations as accurate, and 50.2% considered them acceptable, resulting in 77% accuracy and 75.6% acceptability across the selected cases. Interestingly, many respondents suggested alternative translations even when they rated the original translation positively, indicating that perceived improvements were influenced by personal preference and background knowledge of technology.

The study concludes that translators effectively maintained meaning by using broader or descriptive terms to accommodate readers with diverse knowledge levels, and it suggests that translation studies can further benefit language teaching by promoting cultural awareness and reader-oriented translation strategies.

You can find the full paper here: https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/abs/2023/63/e3sconf_icobar23_02005/e3sconf_icobar23_02005.html