This study focused on a study of Indonesian translation of similes and metaphors in Julius Caesar. It
was a qualitative study. The data were collected from Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare
and its Indonesian version translated by Dewan Kesenian Jakarta. The collected data were analyzed
based on Keraf’s and Larson’s frameworks on the classification of similes and metaphors.
The main objectives of this study is to answer the following research problems: (1) to find out
the types of similes and metaphors, (2) to find out the translation methods, and (3) to find out how the
simile and metaphor Indonesian translation meets the principles of accuracy, naturalness and clarity.
The result shows that first, the use of closed simile (24 item) was more dominant than open simile (18
items). Of metaphors, live metaphors definitely became the foremost figure found in the Julius Caesar
(110 items), while dead metaphors only appeared in 36 items. Second, the most dominant procedure in
simile translation were literal with 13 items (6.91 %) of open simile and 14 items (7.45 %) of closed
simile. In the metaphors, modified literal translation were found with 21 items (11.17 %) of dead
metaphor, and 51 items (27.13 %) of live metaphors. The fact showed that the metaphors were not
easy to translate because their meaning are implicitly stated, and hard to identify. Therefore, the
translator should pay more attention to the metaphors in order to catch the source language meaning,
master the translation methods, and consider the contents of the text in a whole unit of sentence in
order to avoid mistranslation. It is also found that accuracy, naturalness and clarity were connected
one another in the translation process.
Keyword: simile, metaphors, accuracy, naturalness, and clarity.
Tesis
Lalita Vistari S.W.D.
Atma Jaya Catholic University
