Negotiating Cultural Translation in The Gift of Magi

摘要

Translating a text, literary or non-literary text, is always concerned with culture, writer's and readers' culture. Consequently, the translation process is inevitably involved in adjustments, changes, agreements, and cultural activities that can influence a translator's decision. On the one hand, a translator probably wants to introduce the source language culture to readers' culture, just like sending readers abroad. On the other hand, a translator has to change the foreign culture in order to be accepted by readers' culture. The decision that has been made by the translator, according to our opinion, is considered as negotiation. Therefore, this article endeavors to discuss the translator's strategy to negotiating cultural translation aspects, particularly the culture-specific concept (items), such as names of the characters, place or setting, food, and lifestyle of the story in The Gift of Magi and its Indonesian translation Pemberian Sang Majus. The discussion of the translator's negotiation, however, is focused on the translation as a product, not as a process. The data is qualitatively analyzed by using the concept of Translation Ideology as well as the concept of Foreignization and Domestication. In general, it can be concluded that the negotiation of cultural translation is preferably oriented to source language culture or foreignizing rather than domesticating.