Appraising Romanticism in Autobiographical Text: A Translation Study

This study aims to examine the appraisal of romanticism in autobiographical text from the perspective of translation study. The data were purposely taken from the autobiography of the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, titled Sukarno, An Autobiography as told to Cindy Adams (1965) and its Indonesian translation (2014). The appraisal resources of romanticisms were evaluated by using Martin and White framework (2005) particularly in terms of attitude and graduation while the translation quality was assessed in terms of accuracy, acceptability, and readability (Nababan et al., 2012). This study reveals that appraisal devices contribute significantly to explaining romanticism through linguistic evidence of the attitude and graduation sub-systems. Appraisal theory, which has a great attention in investigating human emotions and feelings, is very appropriate to describe the characteristics of Sukarno's romanticism and its translated version. It serves a primary indicator to assess the translation quality in terms of accuracy, acceptability, and readability.