AN INVESTIGATION OF THE STUDENTS’ METHODS, STRATEGIES, AND DIFFICULTIES IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH TEXTS INTO INDONESIAN :A Case Study at One Madrasah Aliyah in Bandung

This study investigates the students’ problems, methods and strategies in translation from English into Indonesian. It deals with the aspects of lexical and grammatical meanings, and their frequency in global and local problems. The research problems formulated in this study were (1) what strategies do the students use in doing the translation tasks? (2) what difficulties do the students encounter in translating English tasks into Indonesian? And (3) how do the students solve their problem in translating English texts into Indonesian? Forty three students of one Madrasah Aliyah in Bandung were chosen as the participants. The data are obtained by gathering the learners’ worksheets of English-Indonesian translation of four texts. The data were analyzed by identifying, classifying and describing, and interpreting. The study finds that students encounter problems in the form of grammatical errors (morphological errors, syntactical errors, omission and addition), and the lexical errors. The lexical type of errors is the most prominent among the four types, and the syntactical error was the most prominent in the grammatical errors. Some suggestions are recommended: (1) treatment of the problems of lexicon (special terms and content words) and of grammar be conducted in the classes of reading comprehension and English vocabulary, (2) treatment of problems of morphology, syntax, and function words are conducted in the classes of English grammar, and Indonesian writing. The orientation of English teaching should be aimed at using the language rather than studying about the language, and (4) findings of the current case study indicate that learners’ errors of translation are resulted from inadequate command of function words, inadequate command of word equivalence, and inadequate command of writing in Indonesian. More research of the same type can be carried out at other schools to have reliable picture of the problems of translation from English into Indonesian encountered by the Indonesian learners