Jawaban:

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE STUDENTS’

PAST TENSE MASTERY AND THEIR ABILITY

IN TRANSLATING NARRATIVE TEXTS

Marita Safitri

Universitas Bandar Lampung, Indonesia

Corresponding email: [email protected]

Abstract

Most students got confused and difficulty when translating from Indonesian into English. They were

confused to use active voice or passive voice in past tense to state past activities. Therefore, to solve the

problem they needed to be trained to use past tense regularly. One of the ways was by asking them to

translate Indonesian narrative texts into English. The objective of this research was to find out the

correlation between the students’ past tense mastery and their ability in translating narrative texts of grade

eleven students of SMAN 1 Pagelaran. Two kinds of tests were administered. They were grammatical test

and translation test. In the grammatical test, multiple choice tests were used, while in translation test, each

student was asked to translate a kind of narrative text into English. The method of this research was the

correlational research. Data were analyzed using r-Product Moment. The result of r was 0.772. The p- value in 5% was 0.355 and in 1% was 0.456. So, the result showed that there was a significant correlation

between the students’ past tense mastery and their ability in translating narrative texts of grade eleven

students of SMAN 1 Pagelaran. Based on the result of the research, it was important both for the English

teachers and the students to realize one of the factors that gave positive contribution to the students’ ability

in translating narrative texts was their past tense mastery.

Keywords: Past tense mastery, translation achievement, narrative text.

1. INTRODUCTION

SMAN 1 Pagelaran is one of the Senior High Schools in Lampung that always concerns to all subjects

and one of them is English lesson. The students learn English because it is one of the required lessons

taught in this school. There are many materials learned in English. One of the materials is understanding a

text but the most popular text taught in this subject is about narrative texts.

The English teachers frequently use narrative texts to teach the students. It is based on the curriculum

that the students should study the texts from grade ten until grade twelve. The students are frequently asked

by their English teachers to translate the texts and then retell them in front of the class.

Translating always has a close relation to the Senior High School students’ English subject. The

students must be conquering in four important English skills such as, listening, speaking, reading and

writing. Writing is closely related to translating. When the students are asked by teacher to write a story or

sentences in English, they will compose it in Indonesian form primarily. After that, they change the first

language or Indonesian form into English. The activity means they are translating. So, the researcher uses

translation as her research because it has a close relation to Senior High School’s subject.

Based on the descriptions above, the students must obligate translation ability to aid them to translate

narrative texts. Translating is not an easy thing. Translation is the process from changing an authentic text

which is named as the source text with a replacement. It is named as the target text or a process from

changing a text in one language to another one by a text (House, 2009).

A written form is the media used in translating as in translating a narrative text. Translating narrative

text means translating a story in the text. The story tells about a fairy tale or legend that happened in the

past time. This text purposes to amuse the readers. It retells past stories and absolutely uses past tense.