TRANSLATING MOCHTAR LUBIS’S SHORT STORY “KULI KONTRAK” INTO ENGLISH: A NOVICE TRANSLATOR’S AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

This article is of reflection category exploring the common mistakes often occur in translating Indonesian literary texts into English by a non-native speaker of English. It argues that translation of literary texts is meticulous as it should involve interpretation and fluency in both source and target languages as well as creativity in order that the translated texts communicate equally well. It is the communicative power of translation that makes this undertaking of language transfer miraculous. Applying sufficient principles in translation and creative writing method, this article exemplifies the translation process of Mochtar Lubis’s short story “Kuli Kontrak” into “The Contract Coolies” that appears in the Your Story page of California-based Dalang Publishing bi-lingual website. Autoethnography is the method used in reporting the results. Three main problems that ensue in the Indonesian-English translation of this short story include (1) the concept of time, (2) the non-idiomatic use of body-parts, and (3) the unnecessary use of object construction/ passive voice that often do not translate well in English. By tackling these problems, the English reader may hopefully obtain the meaning-message of the short story as closely as possible to that acquired by Indonesian readers.

Life cycle engineering of a construction object

Building objects are anthropogenic objects that are born - planning, arise - design, develop - build and die - are demolished or modernized at the end of their lives. In this way, they create a life cycle in which human needs in the field of broadly understood construction are met.The article presents the use of engineering for the analysis and assessment of the construction life cycle."The essence of engineering object construction is the procedure leading to the creation of a safe object throughout its life cycle."

EXPRESS: When the independence of syntactic representation meets the sentence processing of Mandarin: Evidence from syntactic priming

There is no consensus on whether syntactic representation is independent of semantic representation in Mandarin. In four experiments, we adopted the syntactic priming paradigm to investigate the independence of syntactic representation in Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the priming effects of double object construction (DO) and prepositional object construction (PO) with the ditransitive verb being repeated across the prime and target. Experiment 1 showed two-way priming effects of DO and PO. Experiment 2 showed that the syntactic priming effects persisted regardless of whether the semantic features (animacy of the Theme) matched across the prime and target or not. Furthermore, such effects persisted in Experiments 3 and 4 where the ditransitive verb across the prime and target was not repeated. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that syntactic/semantic independence is universal and favored over the traditional Chinese grammar account, which claims that the syntactic representation of Mandarin is not independent of the semantic representation.

DEVELOPMENT OF SPATIAL PERCEPTIONS IN PRESCHOOL AGE THROUGH GEOMETRIC TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE APPLICATION OF A COMPETENCE APPROACH

During preschool age a number of notions are formed related to the development of the child’s personality. Orienteering within space is part of the mathematical preparation of children in kindergarten. This section is one of the most difficult to master. A specific feature of childhood is the concrete-image thinking. To perceive the world around them, children need many examples. Preschoolers handle objects – they rotate, move, but do not analyze their actions. This paper describes the need and role of setting appropriate cognitive tasks to promote the development of spatial orientation of preschool children. The main part of the cognitive tasks related to the formation of spatial perceptions is intended to be mastered through the mathematical educations. Insufficient provision of materials and difficulty in perception by children do not motivate teachers to prefer to work in time for additional activities. It is this fact that provokes us to show that many resources can be created that are interesting for children and at the same time have great cognitive value. Practical developments about the topic are presented, which are realized in the education of students – future pedagogues. Various options are proposed, related to translation or transfer of an object, construction of objects and counting of geometric figures. The presented practical results are part of a study of the possibilities for applying a competency approach in kindergarten. In order to achieve a change in the educational system, it is necessary the University to prepare young educators for a new way of pedagogical interaction.

Explaining Siewierska’s generalization

This article presents an explanation for a cross-linguistic gap observed by Anna Siewierska: morphologically unmarked indirect objects may alternate with prepositional marking in what is sometimes called a ‘dative’ or ‘prepositional-dative’ ditransitive frame, but never with actual dative case marking. ‘Dative’, to the extent it alternates with accusative, is always expressed as a preposition. I show firstly that German, which has a robust dative case paradigm, also displays a double object alternation in which the erstwhile dative DP occurs in a prepositional phrase, meaning both accusative (in English) and dative (in German) indirect objects alternate with prepositional encoding. I construct an analysis in which the the indirect object may be generated as either a DP (which receives dative in German and accusative in English) or a PP in the same theta position. This characterization of the double object alternation does not admit an alternation between dative and accusative case on the indirect object, capturing Siewierska’s generalization. The analysis also extends to ‘symmetric’ passive languages, in which either object in the double object construction can be raised to subject in the passive. Some current perspectives on this phenomenon make such languages exceptions to Siewierska’s generalization, but not the analysis proposed here.

Another turn of the screw on the history of the reaction object construction

This article deals with the Reaction Object Construction (ROC), as in She smiled disbelief, where an intransitive verb (smile), by adding an emotional object (disbelief), acquires the extended sense “express X by V−ing” (i.e. “She expressed disbelief by smiling”). Earlier research has suggested a diachronic connection between the ROC and Direct Discourse Constructions (DDCs) of the type She smiled, “I don’t believe you” (Visser 1963–1973). More recently, Bouso (2018) has shown that the ROC is primarily a feature of 19th century narrative fiction. This paper aims to bring together these insights. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus and De Smet’s Corpus of English Novels, it investigates the productivity of the ROC in 19th and 20th century fiction, and the role of DDCs in its development. The results reveal a peak in the productivity of the ROC that coincides with the development of the sentimental novel, and a correlation between the development of the ROC on the one hand and of those DDCs that have been mistakenly hypothesised to be its single source constructions on the other. Extravagance is proposed as a triggering factor for the use of the ROC in the 19th century as an alternative to DDCs.

Landscape reclamation of open pits – an innovative direction in architecture

The article reflects the issues of transformation of landscapes damaged by craters of spent stone quarries located in urban and suburban areas to create safe and favorable conditions for human life. The following issues are considered by the author: planning organization of the site taking into account the specifics of the terrain, natural and biological factors; design practice of object construction with various types of civil purpose (residential and public buildings); use of certain compositional techniques; development of an artistic and imaginative solution in a harmonious relationship between the aesthetics of technogenic landscapes and objects of new civil use.

Dendrochronological dating of St. George’s Orthodox Church in Drohobych, Ukraine

St. George’s Orthodox Church in Drohobych is a wooden monument of sacral architecture, recently registered in the UNESCO World Heritage List. However, clear, unequivocal written sources about the origins of the structure are lacking. Absolute dating was attempted with the dendrochronological method, and it was carried out in a noninvasive way due to the status and value of the object. Construction elements of the church were documented with over 40 macrophotographs. The studies were made for selected elements, displaying distinct perpendicular or tangential cross sections. Most of the elements examined represented fir wood. It turned out that the wood used for the construction of this church was contemporaneous and most likely represented a single construction phase. The 124-year chronology based on correlated curves covers the period 1464–1598 AD. Construction elements with the outermost rings retained indicate that the timber was harvested in the 1590s. In most cases, the outermost rings were lacking, which allowed only for dating terminus post quem. The youngest preserved rings (1598 AD) from the church wood apparently reveal the dates of both the wood harvesting and the structure’s construction. Such a dating may indicate that the church mentioned in the sources as purchased in Nadiyevo in 1657 AD could be the basis for the rebuilding of Drohobych St. George’s Orthodox Church, only adapted to the new conditions. The church later underwent renovation, consisting in reconstruction of the dome in 1821 AD.

The diachrony of the cognate object construction in Romanian and Hungarian

Building on the cross-linguistic observation generally valid in the majority of languages according to which cognate object constructions are frequently subject to diachronic changes, this paper provides an analysis of the history of diachronic changes in the cognate constructions of two typologically unrelated languages. We demonstrate that, although the present stage of Romanian and Hungarian lacks the canonical (aspectual) cognate object construction illustrated in to sleep a sound sleep, this structure does exist in both languages but either at an earlier language stage (the case of Romanian) or at the present language stage, as a result of a clear increase in it towards the modern period, but the cognate nominal is expressed by a pseudo-object (the case of Hungarian). Consequently, the diachronic change in these constructions of these languages is in two different directions.

A smuggling approach to the dative alternation

This chapter proposes a smuggling approach to the dative alternation. On the basis of traditional c-command tests, it is argued that the prepositional dative example in (ii) is derived from the structure underlying the double object construction in (i). i. John gave Mary the car (Double Object Construction). ii. John gave the car to Mary (Prepositional Dative). A smuggling analysis is motivated for the derivation of (ii). Once the VP containing the theme is moved over the goal, the theme then moves to a higher A position c-commanding the goal. Lastly, it is shown how the distribution of particles provides support for the smuggling analysis.