Speech Acts in Translation: An Analysis on Speech Acts in Translating The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

Abstract

In translating literary works, there are some aspects that a translator needs to pay attention to the process due to the complexity of the literary works. Speech Acts is one of the variables that may have significant value in translation in order to produce and increase the quality of the translation works. This study is conducted to find out how speech acts in ST are delivered in TT and what translation type is used to translate the utterances or sentences that have speech acts in them. Using The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom as the book to be analyzed, this study is to analyze the translated text in Target language, and categorize the speech acts use in the process of transferring the meaning into the target language text, in this case from English to Indonesian. This study wants to know how speech acts are transferred in the TT in order to perceive the quality of translation works. It is focusing on implicit meaning in the translated text to be analyzed further and relate it to the type of translation used by the translator. It focuses on two main parts of speech acts by Searle (1976), Direct Illocutionary and Indirect Illocutionary and type of translation theory by Catford (1974). The result of this study shows that Free Translation (FT) is the translation type the translator mostly used to translate speech acts, especially those that are categorized as indirect illocutionary acts.