perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Research Background History plays an important role in people’s life. Many people learn good and bad things from history. By learning history they can avoid repeating past mistakes for better future. People can also know the situation and condition of their country in the past and will make good situation and condition by learning experiences in the past. People’s experiences in the past are valuable history in the present because their experiences will give wise thinking and action. Thus, history has an important meaning to the people and important role to the country. Talking about history, a history of country can influence people and the country itself. A history of country not only influences the people in one country but also influences the people in other countries, even people in the world. The most influential country in influencing people and countries in the world is America. America as a superpower country affects several fields such as; economic, politic, social and culture. Therefore, many people and countries learn American histories from historical books. One of historical books is An Outline of American History as the oldest book which is published by USIA (United States Information Agency). The distribution of this book is not only to American and European countries but also to worldwide in which many countries speak non- English. In overcoming the language barriers for those people who have not use English as their first language, language transfer is required to facilitate people’s commit to user 1 perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id2 comprehension from source language (SL) of historical book An Outline of American History to target language (TL). Therefore, it should be translated in order to that people understand the history in historical book. An Outline of American History contains many big historical events which influence the world. Concerning the event names, there must be some of fact event names. Therefore in translating event names it requires careful consideration. The understanding of target language history is often a problem for translators who have different historical and country background. The translator should be able to bring the historical meaning or historical identity (e.g. World War I and Black Monday, the names belong to historical event names) and should understand the U.S.A. historical country background. It does not mean that the translator should learn American history to translate the source text into target text. Event names as types of proper names may be complicated. Translating proper names may consider some aspects. Translation is especially complicated since proper names usually have various allusions indicating sex, age, geographical belonging, history, specific meaning, playfulness of language and cultural connotations.The translator may consider some aspects: the use of special names, the use of meaningful names, interpretation of names, the contribution to characterization, allusions in proper names, text function or effect they create, etc. (Jaleniauskienė & Čičelytė, 2009:31) Regarding those difficulties, translation of event names is interesting to discuss. It leads the researcher to analyze one type of proper names that is event names in historical book An Outline of American History. Those event names commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id3 should be translated accurately and acceptably in meaning. Some of them are not easy to translate, as can be seen in the following example: Example 1: ST: They also organized rallies, the largest of which was the March on Washington in 1963. TT: Mereka juga melakukan unjuk rasa, yang terbesar adalah Berbaris ke Washington pada tahun 1963. The example above shows that there is a big event called March on Washington where the people organized rallies on Washington. The translator translated March on Washington into Berbaris ke Washington. March on Washington is the event where people gathered and walked to Washington for protesting their right as described in An Outline of American History book. They also organized rallies, the largest of which was the “March on Washington” in 1963. More than 200,000 people gathered in the nation’s capital to demonstrate their commitment to equality for all. The high point of a day of songs and speeches came with the address of Martin Luther King Jr., who had emerged as the preeminent spokes-man for civil rights. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Geor-gia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” King proclaimed. Each time he used the refrain “I have a dream,” the crowd roared. (Endsley, et al 1990:277) The description above is proved with the picture taken from www.clintonfoundation.org which shows the people gathered and walked to Washington for fighting their freedom. It is shown from the banner they brought to Washington. commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id4 Figure 1.1 March on Washington Figure 1.2 View of Washington Monument during March on Washington Based on Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (2010: 906) March has several meaning, first, to walk with stiff regular steps like a soldier, second,to walk somewhere quickly in a determined way, third, to walk through the streets in a large group in order to protest about something and last, to force somebody to walk somewhere with you. Here, it can be concluded that march is an activity of people walking for something or with certain purpose. The translator translates march into berbaris, the translation is potentially accurate because berbaris means walk in Indonesia. As described in KBBI (1988:81) berbaris is membaris or berjalan berbaris (march). commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id5 Example 2: TT: The United States suffered an economic setback on October 19, 1987, so called Black Monday, when the value of stock stumbled 22 percent. ST: Amerika Serikat menderita kemunduran ekonomi pada tanggal 19 Oktober 1987, yang dikenal sebagai Senin Kelabu, ketika nilai saham jatuh 22 persen. The example above shows there is an event named Black Monday. Black Monday is the event when prices on stock exchanges all over the world suddenly began to fall, as described in An Outline of American History book. The United States suffered an economic setback on October 19, 1987, so-called "Black Monday," when the value of stocks tumbled 22 percent -- immediately bringing back memories of the fabled stock market crash of 1929, which had been followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s. (Endsley et.al, 1990) Based on Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2010: 138) black refers to something without hope; very depressing. Thus, Black in Black Monday refers to depressing thing. Here, the black in Black Monday has a connotative meaning. Black in Black Monday shows the depressing event when prices on stock exchanges began to fall. The word kelabu is familiar in Indonesia. There are also historical events which use kelabu to show the undesirable event which makes the people mourned. One of them is Mei Kelabu. The history noted that the turmoil during th th 13 – 15 of May 1998 can be categorized as vandalism and anarchism action by security forces and the society. Then those days were known as Mei Kelabu commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id6 (Maya Yudayanti, Suara Merdeka Online, May 19, 2006). Here, the meaning event name Black Monday is transferred properly in meaning by the translator since black is translated into kelabu which has similar meaning. Example 3: ST: Violent wind and dust storms ravaged the southern Great Plains in what became known as the Dust Bowl, throughout the 1930s, but particularly from 1935 to 1939. TT: Angin ribut dan topan debu menyerang wilayah selatan Dataran Besar dalam kejadian yang kemudian dikenal dengan sebutan Mangkuk Debu. Peristiwa ini terjadi sepanjang tahun 1930-an, namun yang paling hebat antara tahun1935 hingga 1938. The example above shows there is a disaster event Dust Bowl. Dust Bowl was a disaster when the giant dust storms were covering the southern Great Plains. The Dust Bowl, or the "dirty thirties", was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). Severe drought coupled with decades of intensive farming without crop rotation or other techniques to prevent erosion led to this wide-spread disaster. (Michele Buonanduci, The Encyclopedia of Earth, April 27, 2009) commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id7 Figure 1.3 The dust storm made it so dark the chicken thougt it was night. Figure 1.4 The dust storm covered in Elkhart, KS on April, 21st 1937. The pictures which are taken from www.livinghistoryfarm.org also show the blowing dust that makes the plains looked more like a desert than a farmland. The event name Dust Bowl in the source text creates an effect to the people in the source text. It reminds them of the unforgettable event that is Dust Bowl. It also makes the people can imagine how big the dust storms was. Then translator translated it literally into Mangkuk Debu. Therefore the translation is accurate because the meaning of event name translation in target language is the same as the meaning of event name in the source text. But, the problem is the literal translation sounds unfamiliar in target language culture. The following example also shows the interesting phenomenonrelated to the translation of event names. commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id8 Example 4: ST: Many died of disease and privation in what became known as the Trail of Tears.