Postcolonial Trace in the Translation of Bumi Manusia

Abstract

Abstract. Bumi Manusia as a postcolonial novel became a vehicle for Toer to articulate his national identity as Indonesian during the Dutch colonialism. Its translation into This Earth of Mankind posts two questions of whether or not power relations are brought in the translation and how the translator represents Indonesian culture in English. In order to answer the two, postcolonial translation approach was employed. This research is qualitative for it aims at analyzing the text. Seven data were selected based on two indicators representing the most relation between the colonized and colonizer or postcoloniality of the Dutch East Indies and were analyzed employing Baker’s translation strategies. The findings reveal that there are unequal relations between the source language (Indonesian) and the target language (English). In This Earth of Mankind, the translator does not show Indonesian cultural representation. There are great loss of information, omission, biased information, and great loss of impactful meaning of the source language in the target language that create another colonial domain and leave colonial trace in the target language.Keywords: Postcolonial Translation, Bumi Manusia, Postcolonialism, Colonialism, Power Relations