Translation Shifts in Goenawan Mohamad ’ s Poem Collection “ On God and Other Unfinished Things ” ( with Special Reference to Poem 33 )

It has been acknowledged among translators that translating literary texts poses some difficulties. The translators have to make a decision among other choices related to diction. Not only diction, the inherent literary elements must also be rendered adequately in order to achieve “literariness”. Although the debate whether maintaining literary elements in a way that does not deviate from the source text or creating the elements anew is far from over, it is also worth noting that the essence of translation activity is not creating an original text, but it is a re-creation of meaning, a result of translators’ interpretation. Researches on literary translation are mostly about to what extent the translation is able to deliver a ‘similar’ literary value, the strategies applied by the translators, and how the target text readers respond to the ‘new creation’ of such texts. The elaboration of how the literary translation undergoes changes or shifts is not quite an issue in the field of literary translation research because it is considered ‘too linguistic’. However, in light of the Prague School tradition which examines shifts not only on surface level, but also on discourse level, the discussion on the shifts occurring in literary translation is worth


Introduction
Translation shift is introduced by J.C. Catford (1978) who sees translation (or language) as communication which should fulfill its core function: delivering the message successfully to the readers (p.73).In the process, the translation undergoes some changes (or, shift) in its target text.The shift according to Catford is the "departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from SL [source language] to TL [target language]" (p.73).The term formal correspondence refers to Nida's division of equivalence types, i.e. formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence (1971, p. 4).Therefore, when a translation undergoes shifts in its SL, it means that it is no longer formal equivalence, but it tries to move closer to the target language, which is called dynamic equivalence.
Literary translation, of course, is not on the level of formal correspondence, since it needs a recreation of meaning resulted from the translators' interpretation.The translators having a background which inevitably influences his perception to the text being translated will, of course, "shift" the elements in the text according to their native culture.Lefevere (1992) affirms that " [Literary] translation can teach us about the wider problem of acculturation, the relation among different cultures that is becoming important..." (p.12).Acculturation here also refers to language, a language acculturation, or shift, in Catford's term.

Lefevere
further suggests that translators "need to learn to proceed from the top down, that is, from the culture to the structure of that text to paragraphs, lines, phrases, and words..." (p.13).The elaboration of the micro-linguistic level will cater us the description of the translation shift.
The paper tries discuss Goenawan Mohamad's poem collection entitled "Tuhan dan Hal-Hal yang Tak Selesai" which is translated by Laksmi Pamuntjak into "On God and Other Unfinished Things".Goenawan Mohamad (or, GM) is notoriously well-known for his extensive knowledge on literature, politic, religious, social as well as economic aspect of life as seen in his "Catatan Pinggir", a weekly feature in Tempo magazine.His poem collection was published in 2007 by KataKita, Jakarta, so was the translation.The book consists of 99 selected poems, discussing things which are actually not related to God, but GM cleverly swerves them into Godmatter, a skill of GM's own.The paper focuses on Poem 33 talking about Pasternak (literature), cities (social condition), and sacred books (religion).The three categories represent GM's extensive resource.The comparison between GM's poems and Pamuntjak's translation will observe the shift and test whether the translation is able to cater GM's original message or it goes straying into other than GM's intended meaning.

Shifts in Literary Translation
Translation Shift Analysis Catford (1978) divides translation shift into two: level and category shift (p.73).Level shift is related to "something which is expressed by grammar in one language and lexis in another."(Munday, 2008, p. 60).Meanwhile, category shift is specified into structure, class, rank, and intra-system shift (Catford, 1978, pp. 76-81) textual, pragmatic, rhetorical, and stylistic component." (pp. 10-16).Added to microlinguistic analysis as in Catford's theory, the model sees the shift occurring in the target text more holistically.This in line with what actually Catford means about "departure from formal correspondence in translation" (1978, p.76).Formal correspondence, according to Catford, is "any TL category (unit, class, element of structure, etc.) which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the "same" place in the "economy" of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL" (1978, p. 27).Thus, he suggests that measuring translation equivalence does not stop at finding level and category shifts, but it should also consider textual equivalence, or "any TL text or portion of text which is observed on a particular occasion."(1978, p. 27).

Literary Translation
As mentioned previously, literary translation should emphasize on the "pursuing Journal of Language and Literature pISSN 1410-5691; eISSN 2580-5878 Christien Tiyuni Tirtayasa & Harris Hermansyah Setiajid 202 of coherence through the creation of unitary, stable representations of characters and events" (Barbaresi, 2002, p. 131).The difference of literary text and other text types puts under special treatment of analysis.What is pursued is not only on the linguistic level but also on the style, or extra linguistic level.The literary translation, as affirmed by Barbaresi (2002), should pursue adequate representation of the literary elements in the ST.Although there is possibility that the "representation" also undergoes changes, or shift, the translation should not go stray farther from the ST.
Nevertheless, since the translation is not created in vacuum but in a social milieu, the translator cannot free themselves from social and cultural influence around him.Both the ST writer and the translator "born into a certain culture at a certain time...they can write within the parameters set by that culture or they can try to bend them or go beyond them."(Lefevere, 1992, p. 86).
In light of this paradigm, it can be understood if the shifts that occur in the translation happen solely for the sake of catering the fluid rendition of the ST to the TT readers.

Shifts in the Translation of Goenawan Mohamad's Poems 33
The following discusses somewhat at length the various types of shifts found in GM's translated poems.The discussion is presented part by part, followed by elaboration of the types of shifts in each poem.The first stanza in the poem number 33 indicates there is a class shift, syukur (noun) translated into "grateful" (adjective), and structural shift, Boris Pasternak memberi kita suatu definisi (S+P+D+O) translated into "Boris Pasternak, with his definition of poetry" (S+OP) with no predicate.Beside those two category shift, we can also see an expression shift (i.e.change of certain expression).The translator changes the word empat with "single", indicating that it has become a common practice that a stanza consists of four lines, thus called "single".The sound of "single and compact" also suggests the fluidity of the poem, compared to, for example, "four-line, compact stanza."Datum no 2/TT/P33/S2 indicates that there are three category shifts found, structural, class, and rank.In the ST, the structure is varied, while in the TT it is uniformed: S+P+O.The repetition style in the TT compensates the different rhyme aabb in the ST and abab in the TT.By maintaining the rhyme, however, the translator sacrifice a certain meaning, i.e. beku translated into "ice" to pursue rhyming pattern aa for line 1 and 3.This also highlights the expression shift (change/omission of certain expression) as in Duel suara bulbul dalam lagu into "It's a duel of two nightingales".The omission of suara and lagu in the TT suggests there is a serious change of meaning.The TT only refers to the "duel of nightingale's voice", while in the TT there is a sense of physical duel is happening between two nightingales.Nevertheless, such change of meaning is compensated by the rhyme of "gale" in line 2 and "nightin-gale" in line 4.The interpretation of hijau into "green leaves" shows the translator's boldness to go beyond what is stated.In fact, there is a strong indication that the translator, perhaps forced by a more urgent task to make the poem fluid, translates somewhat differently from the ST.It is interesting to note that the translator, she herself a writer, tends to give a rather free rendition to the TT in terms of the diction and style.The stanza three of the poem furthers emboldens translator's style by modulating the point of view.The ST employs unspecified things first, hal-hal, while the TT already gives a headstart by mentioning hal-hal ("the things"), which are then referred anaphorically.Hal-hal which is plural is also translated into singular noun "value", an intrasystem shift.It is interesting to note, however, that both GM and the translator seems to interchange their diction (rumor has it that the translator translated the poem with a close supervision from GM).In stanza two and three, GM employee the word "es" and "beku", referring one thing, siul, so does the translator use the word "ice" and "freeze" twice referring to "whisper".In datum number 4/TT/P33/S3, the translator seems to shift the style from denotation to idiom.Ajaran yang kekal is translated into "teachings cast in stone"."Cast in stone" is idiomatic expression showing a longevity or perpetuality of an action.

No
The other style shift found is the translation of mendukung into "throw his weight behind", another denotation to idiom.The shift style applied here highlights the translator's choice to be more subtle than the TT writer in conveying certain idea.The blunt style of GM, however, seems wrapped in idiomatic expression which is softer and more obscure.The number of stanzas in poem 33 differ starts from this stanza.The translator divides stanza 3 into two stanzas, beginning with this part.There is a shift in the form of addition of certain expression and style shift of generalspecific.

No
The ST goes on further by adding the word "word" for the translation mengungkung -"imprisoned his words".This also shows the occurrence of style shift of changing the general to specific description.Partai yang mengungkung implies the imprisonment of not only physical but also psychological being.Meanwhile, its translation "Party that imprisoned his words" shows the detail of what is being forbidden.There is a changing tone both by GM and the translator.GM's tone is changing every stanza after stanza, from being obscure to being clear, and vice versa, so is the translator.The tone maintenance here indicates the translator's faithfulness in Level shift is found in the TT translation, indicated by the lack of time aspect.The word sebelum in the ST is not conveyed in the ST so that the sequence of event is missing.There is also a rank shift in the form of condensing two sentences into one sentence.In datum 8/TT/P33/S6, the name Yesus is changed into "Christ", last name is more familiar mentioned in the target language to suggest a respect or distance.In the source language, the common calling for people is their first name.Thus, the tone is shifting from calling someone his or her first name to indicate intimacy to distancing oneself from others by calling their last name.This stanza undergoes category shifts, which are rank and system.Rank shift also occurs in the condensation of the sentences from four sentences to three sentences.Intrasystem shift is indicated by the change of voice from active (ST) in passive (TT).Di sekitarnya mengepung orang-orang "farisyi" is translated There is no shift found in this stanza.