Translation Neutrality Questioned: Politic and Diplomacy: A Case of Text of Timor Leste (Dis) Integration to Indonesia

Abstract

Sensitive text or text in such sensitive domain as religion, law, politic, diplomacy, etc. is always risky to translate.  Different interpretation of text in this domain takes a big role in distorting the meaning of the original content of the text. The process of translation in general, on the one hand, involves two or more languages which have different features, different culture, and different development. Translation, on the other hand, is rewriting of the original text within the original language. All rewritings work with the contents and the form of the language. The viewpoint or the angle from which domain the translator sees the text is another factor that influence the neutrality of translation. The V-plat theory of Newmark may need more extension to find the next more neutral translation so that lost and gain could be maximally eliminated if not terminated in terms of neutrality. The way the translators try to transfer the meaning of certain words as precise as possible to meet the original text and to describe the condition beyond the text to satisfy interested parties may be proposed with some modification.