Translation Techniques and Pragmatic Shifts in an Indonesian Presidential Press Statement

Abstract

Diplomatic translation must preserve policy content, interpersonal meanings, and institutional reference across languages. This study examines the English translation of an Indonesian presidential press statement delivered at a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of India. It combines a quantitative audit of a 40-unit coding matrix with qualitative source–target comparison, drawing on Molina and Hurtado Albir’s translation techniques and House’s functional-pragmatic perspective. The matrix contains 85 unit–technique assignments: established equivalent accounts for 38.82%, modulation 23.53%, borrowing 14.12%, amplification 12.94%, transposition 7.06%, and reduction 3.53%. These percentages describe assigned coding categories rather than independently validated counts of every translated segment. The examples show conventional diplomatic expressions, retained institutional names, and grammatical restructuring alongside substantive shifts in reference and commitment. In particular, relations become mobility, hope becomes a plan, agreements become opportunities, and certainty becomes an expression of opinion. Some additions also introduce evaluative or policy implications beyond explicit source wording. The findings demonstrate that technique identification and equivalence assessment must be treated separately: an established term or retained name does not validate the surrounding sentence. The study contributes a transparent account of coding distribution and a contextual interpretation of pragmatic shifts in a single Indonesian–English diplomatic text pair. It does not infer translator intentions or measure audience responses.