Contextual meaning in translation: a relevance analysis

Abstract

Translation as an act of communication relates to pragmatic studies. Pragmatic studies are convinced that when a text is written there is communication between the author and the reader. In the context of translation, the translation of a text is also a communication between the translator and the reader. Translation as an effort to transfer messages makes the study of meaning significant. The meaning of a text is not only analyzed from the textual meaning. It means that the meaning of a text does not only come from the sentences meaning of the text. The meaning of the text, however, can also be studied contextually. This article discusses how contextual meaning in translation is studied using relevance analysis. This study used a qualitative method with a case study so it focused on the study of meaning in translation using relevance analysis in certain cases. The data source is a YouTube video of a children's story from an Indonesian fairy tales channel entitled Amin dan Telur. The data are all the utterances, subtitles, and images contained in the video. The results show that the relevance degree of the translation utterance is included in the high category. It is due to the translator's ability to maintain contextual effects and minimal processing efforts through relevant utterances and images. The translator's success in producing a high degree of relevance causes the reader to have minimal effort in understanding the utterance. The success in maintaining the degree of translation relevance contributes to the equivalence of the translation.