Complaint Speech Acts in Indonesian Translations of Franklin Storybooks: Pragmatic Quality and Child-Oriented Acceptability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v14i2.13145Keywords:
complaint speech acts; politeness strategies; translation quality; children’s literature.Abstract
Translated children’s literature must preserve not only propositional meaning but also pragmatic force and language suitable for child readers. This study examined how complaint speech acts and politeness strategies are realized in 13 Franklin storybooks and their Indonesian translations, and evaluated the translations for accuracy, readability, and psychological-educational acceptability. A descriptive qualitative, document-based case study analyzed 76 purposively selected source-target complaint pairs. Complaint strategies were classified using Trosborg’s framework and politeness strategies using Brown and Levinson’s framework. The researcher examined pragmatic realization and accuracy; five child readers contributed readability judgments; and three child psychologists assessed psychological-educational acceptability using a three-point instrument adapted from Nababan et al. The results comprised 63 accurate (82.89%), 12 less accurate (15.79%), and 1 inaccurate translation (1.32%); 54 high-readability (71.05%), 19 moderate-readability (25.00%), and 3 low-readability translations (3.95%); and 45 acceptable (59.21%), 25 less acceptable (32.89%), and 6 unacceptable translations (7.89%). Qualitative analysis showed that a translation could preserve propositional content while weakening or strengthening complaint force, changing interpersonal meaning, or introducing vocabulary that was less familiar to child readers. The three quality dimensions therefore did not always align. Translating complaints in children’s literature requires the preservation of pragmatic meaning together with comprehensible and developmentally appropriate language.
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