The Readability of the Indonesian Translation of English Storybook's Lexis: A Perspective from the Adults Vs. Children Readers

Children's storybook translation requires special attention to the linguistic aspects due to the cognitive development and prior literacy of the target readers. This study aimed to explore how the types of lexis—congruent and incongruent—in the children's storybook translation influences the readability of the text viewed by the dual perspectives; they were adults and children's readers. This research was a case study that employed a qualitative paradigm to explore how the lexis used in translated text affected the readability of the text by incorporating Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the primary analytical framework, focusing on the translation of lexis from English to Indonesian. This study revealed that the SFL framework could be employed as an approach to investigate the linguistic aspect of the children's storybook translation through the lexicon. By the symbolization process that resulted in congruent and incongruent lexis, this study showed that the children's storybook translator had attempted to reduce the number of incongruent lexis distribution from ST into TT (from 384 to 252). The shifting of incongruent lexis into congruent lexis made the lexis more explicit and concrete in the meaning-making. The integration of SFL with a dual perspective readability assessment contributes an innovation and insights to conduct future relevant research in the translation studies. This study also reinforces the importance of the role of children's literature translators to own not only the linguistic competence but also the developmental sensitivity in translating text to be semantically accurate and cognitively accessible.