A. Semantics
a. Definition of
Semantics
According to Oxford Advanced Learner
Dictionary, semantics is “1. The study of the meanings of words and phrases, 2.
The meaning of words, phrases or systems.”[1]
According to Charles, “Semantics is the systematic study of meaning, and
linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express
meanings.”[2]
According to Palmer, “Semantics is technical
term used to refer to the study o meaning.”[3]
While according to Wagiman, “Semantics is the study of meaning in language.”[4]
From the explanation above, it can be
concluded that semantics is a term refer to study of meaning in language.
b. Meaning is complicated
A word’s
meaning cannot be simply gained by consulting the dictionary, because the
dictionary definitions of a word are “context-free”, e.g.:
（1）Out in
the west where men are men.
（2）Do you
mean funny, peculiar, or funny, ha ha?
（3） He
helped many young writers to find themselves and then to find publishers.
In the
above examples, the two men, funny, and find have different meanings, and it is
just through this difference of meaning that the effect of humor is achieved.
No wonder that Wittgenstein said, “The meaning of a word is its use in the
language.”(Wittgenstein, 1953)
In
deciding the precise meaning, we would have to distinguish different kinds of
meanings. Besides, the semantic relations should also be taken into
consideration, such as polysemy, synonymy, antonymy, etc..
c.
Different
types of meanings
Meaning
is complicated. The first difficulty in the study of meaning is that the word
“meaning” itself has many different meanings. In their book the Meaning of
Meaning written in 1923, C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards presented 16 major
categories of them, with sub-categories all together, numbering 22.
Different
linguists have categorized multiple types of meanings.
1. Charles Morris’ three types of meanings
According to Charles Morris, there are three types of meanings:
referential meaning (the relationship between signs and entities in the world),
pragmatic meaning (the relationship between signs and their users; it includes
identificational meaning, expressive meaning, associative meaning, social
meaning, and imperative meaning), and intralingual meaning (the relationship
between different signs; it includes phonological meaning, graphemic meaning,
morphological or lexemic meaning, syntactic meaning, and discoursal or textual
meaning).
2. G. Leech’s seven types of meanings
Leech identified seven types of meanings. They are: conceptual meaning
(logical, cognitive, or denotative content), connotative meaning (what is
communicated by virtue of what language refers to), social meaning (what is
communicated of the social circumstances of language use), affective meaning
(what is communicated of the feeling and attitudes of the speaker/writer),
reflected meaning (what is communicated through association with another sense
of the same expression), collocative meaning (what is communicated through
association with words which tend to occur in the environment of another word),
thematic meaning(what is communicated by the way in which the message is
organized in terms of order and emphasis). Types 2-6 are also categorized as
associative meaning.
3. Peter Newmark’s model of meaning
There are three types of meanings according to Newmark: expressive
meaning, informative meaning, and vocative meaning.
4. Roman Jakobson’s model of meaning
Jakobson classified meanings into 6 types: expressive meaning,
informative meaning, vocative meaning, aesthetic meaning, phatic meaning, and
metalinguistic meaning.
These different types of meaning are not classified according to the same
criteria, and different linguists have different opinions for classifying
meanings. Thus some types of meaning are overlapping, which causes much
confusion.
All these meanings can be stratified into lexical, phraseological
(idiomatic), sentential (prepositional), and discourse meaning. Lexical meaning
includes denotational, connotational, affective, collocational, metaphorical,
and cultural meaning, and discourse meaning includes literary (hermeneutically
construed) and epistemic (analytically construed) meaning.
B. Translation
a.
Definition of Translation
According to Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary, 1.
translation is “ Process changing someting that is written or spoken into
another language. 2. A text or work that has been changed from one language
into another.”[5]
According to Peter Newmark, translation is “rendering the meaning of a
text into another language in the way that the author intended the text” (Peter
Newmark, 1988: 4).
From the explanation above, it can be concluded that translation is
process changing the meaning of something from one language into another
language, it is not only text or written but also spoken.
C.
Relationship between Semantic
and Translation
Semantics is a part that cannot be separated with translation . talking
translation must be combine with talking semantics because the purpose of
translation has closed relationship with term transfer meaning that included to
one language into another language.
According to Nida (1975) in Rudolf Nababan, “A word can have many
defferent meanings.”[6] Rudolf states that “Meaning of a word is not
only influenced by the position in a sentence but also influenced by science
field that use the word.”[7]
Further, he states that sometimes meaning of a word is decided by the situation
and culture.[8]
For example:
1.
He sat on the chair.
2.
He has the chair of
philosophy at the university.
3.
He will chair the meeting
4.
He was condemned to the
chair.
If that sentences are translated into Indonesian so the translation are
1. Dia duduk di kursi
2. Dia menjabat mahaguru dalam ilmu filsafat di universitas itu.
3. Dia akan memimpin rapat itu.
4. Dia dihukum mati dikursi listrik.
Practically, a translator is not only focused on transfer meaning of a
word. His attention extend to transfer massage. It can be seen below:
a. Lexical meaning
Lexical
meaning is meaning that is included in dictionary. For example: bad have
meaning jahat, buruk, jelek, susah, tidak enak, busuk. It cannot be known surely
what the meaning is. It can be understood when word bad stay in a sentence.
b. Gramatical meaning
Gramatical
meaning relate to word class in a sentence. For example: can have
meaning bisa or dapat, kaleng, mengalengkan. That meaning depend on the class
or position of a word in a sentence. Word can in sencente “ They can
the fish” has function as a predicate or verb.
c. Contextual meaning
Contextual
meaning relate to the contex or the situation when the word is used. For
example: Good morning is not
always translated selamat pagi. That utterance
can be translated to keluar! If that utterance said by the chief to his
employee that always come late.
From the explanation above it can be conclude that Translation is the
transfer of meaning, and semantic analysis is an important way of defining
meaning, which can help us to have a better understanding of the source text.
We should combine the translation studies with linguistics, and try to use the
discoveries of the linguistics to help the study of translation.
Conclusion
Semantics is a term refer to study of meaning
in language. A word’s meaning cannot be simply gained by consulting the dictionary,
because the dictionary definitions of a word are “context-free”. Meaning is complicated. The first
difficulty in the study of meaning is that the word “meaning” itself has many
different meanings.
Ttranslation
is process changing the meaning of something from one language into another
language, it is not only text or written but also spoken.
Semantics is a part that cannot be separated with translation. A
translator is not only focused on transfer meaning of a word. His attention
extend to transfer massage. It can be seen below:
a. Lexical meaning is meaning that is included in
dictionary. For example: bad have meaning jahat, buruk, jelek, susah,
tidak enak, busuk. It cannot be known surely what the meaning is. I
b. Gramatical meaning relate to word class in a sentence.
For example: can have meaning bisa or dapat, kaleng, mengalengkan.
c. Contextual meaning relate to the contex or the situation when
the word is used. For example: Good morning is not always translated selamat pagi.
We should
combine the translation studies with linguistics, and try to use the
discoveries of the linguistics to help the study of translation
REFERENCES
As Hornby, Oxford
Advanced Learners Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010.
Charles Kreidler, Introducing English
Semantics, Routledge, New York, 1998.
Palmer, SEMANTICS: Second Edition, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1981.
Rudolf Nababan, Teori Menerjemah, cet.
3, Pustaka Pelajar, Yogyakarta, 2008
Wagiman, SEMANTICS: An Introduction to the Basic
Consepts, Penerbit andi, Yogyakarta, 2008
[4] Wagiman, SEMANTICS: An Introduction to the Basic Consepts,
Penerbit andi, Yogyakarta, 2008, p. 1.
