Strategies Used by EFL Students in Translating English into Indonesian: A Review of Translation Practices and Challenges

Abstract

Translation is an important part of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It helps students transfer meaning from English into Indonesian accurately. This study aimed to investigate the translation strategies used by EFL students when translating English texts into Indonesian. The study used a qualitative descriptive research design. The participants were nine EFL students who were taking the Translation I course at STKIP Kristen Wamena. The data were collected through a translation task and semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed using descriptive qualitative analysis. The findings showed that literal translation was the strategy most often used by the students. They chose this strategy because they believed it was the easiest way to keep the original meaning of the source text. However, the students also had difficulties translating idioms, culture-specific expressions, and complex grammatical structures. These findings show that literal translation alone cannot always produce natural and accurate translations. Therefore, this study concludes that although literal translation is useful for beginner translators, EFL students should learn and practice different translation strategies to improve the quality of their English–Indonesian translations.