Grammatical Errors in French Translation: Case of Indonesian Students

RÉSUMÉ. L’activité de traduction n’est pas une tâche facile, surtout pour les apprenants en langues étrangères. Par conséquent, les erreurs survenues dans le processus de traduction ne peuvent être évitées, notamment les erreurs grammaticales. Cette recherche vise à décrire les erreurs grammaticales commmises dans la traduction d’articles de presse en indonésien traduits en français par des étudiants; et de trouver les erreurs les plus fréquentes. Cette recherche met en oeuvre une méthode de recherche descriptive qualitative. Les données utilisées dans cette recherche ont été extraites de 87 textes d'articles de presse en indonésien traduits en français, effectués par des étudiants du Département de français du septième semestre dans une université à Bandung, en Indonésie. Les résultats de cette étude devraient enrichir les connaissances dans le domaine de l'analyse des erreurs grammaticales sur les résultats de la traduction. ABSTRACT. Translation activity is not an easy activity to do especially by learners of foreign languages. Hence, errors occurred in the translation process cannot be avoided, one of which is errors that occur in grammatical aspects. This study attempts to investigate the errors in the grammatical aspects found in the translation of Indonesian language press articles that had been translated into French by students; and to propound the frequency of errors that were most often done. This research uses a qualitative descriptive research method. The data used in this research were taken from 87 translated-texts from Indonesian language press articles into French conducted by seventh semester students of French Department in one university in Bandung, Indonesia. The results of this research are expected to enrich the knowledge in the field of grammatical error analysis on the results of the translation.


INTRODUCTION
It is undeniable that errors often occur in the translation process. This is due to the difference between the source language vocabularies and sentence structure (SL) with the target language (TL). Additionally, the influence of the first language learned by the learner can be one of the factors that causes errors in translation (Lightbown &Spada 2006, in Jahanshahi andKafipour, 2015, p.244).
Speaking of errors in translation, Catford (1979, in Cachu, 2016 states that there are three types of translation errors that often occur, namely syntax errors, grammatical errors and lexical errors. Syntax error (syntactic errors) is the incompetence of translators in displaying the meaning or message from the source language that is characterized by errors of word order and irregularities in the use of the structure of phrases, clauses and sentences (Erlinda, 2008). Meanwhile grammatical errors are errors related to the grammar of SL such as tenses, the use of prepositions, articles, and incorrect use of plural morphemes (Keshavarz, 1993, in Eftekhar andNouraey, 2013). On the other hand, lexical errors are errors occurred because the learner do not know the right word to use in the context of a sentence, thus the learner uses words that are often used in his or her mother tongue which are then translated into a second language, but the word is not commonly used in the second language (Cachu, 2016).
Some previous researches still show the occurrences of errors in translation process such as, word selection errors (see Popescu, 2013;Wongranu, 2017;and Yousofi, 2014), grammatical errors in the inability to translate prepositions and determinants according to the sentence context (see Abbasi and Karimnia, 2011;Eftekhar and Nourarey, 2013; and Wongranu, 2017), and morphological errors, syntax errors and orthographic errors (see Murad and Khalil, 2015).
One way to analyse errors in translation, including grammatical errors in translated text, is to use surface strategy category. Dulay, Burt, & Krahsen (1982) describes this taxonomic analysis as follows: a. Omission Omission are characterized by the absence of an item that must appear in a well-form utterance. b. Addition Addition error is characterized by the elements that are not supposed to appear in a speech, in which the addition error occurs when learners have started to get to know the rules of the target language. c. Misformation error This error is characterized by inappropriate use of in morphemes form or its structure. d. Misordering error This error is characterized by the inappropriate placement of morphemes or group morphemes in an utterance.
The study of grammatical error analysis in the translation of the Indonesian language into French still receives minor attention. Therefore, this research is relevant to be conducted in order to describe the types of grammatical error contained in translation results and to propound errors that most frequently done. The result of this research has the implication, especially, for strengthening the learning of French grammar and error analysis in translation results in general.

METHOD
The subjects of this research were 87 texts translated from Indonesian press articles into French with tourism and cultural themes obtained from tempo.co in its editor's pick column. The data were taken from 29 students of seventh semester at French Department in one university in Bandung, Indonesia.
The selection of study participants was carried out by purposive sampling: only those who had passed DELF B1 and had passed the initiation à la traduction course. On the other hand, the object of this research was the characteristic of grammatical errors found in those 87 press articles that have been translated.
In this research, the researcher conducted a process of data analysis based on the theory stated by Miles and Huberman (1994) consisting of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing or verification. The following process are: 1. Data reduction, in this process the researcher sorts and classifies the data obtained in accordance with the types of grammatical errors proposed by Dulay et al (1982) with reference to the grammatical aspects stated by Delatour, Jennepin, Léon-Dufour & Teyssier (2004); 2. Data display, after reducing the data, the researcher described the results of the study in a rich and in-depth manner based on the type of errors and its grammatical aspects; 3. Conclusion drawing or verification, the next step is drawing conclusions which can answer the problems that has been analysed previously.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
From a total of 87 translated press articles, there is a grammatical error in the omission category (27,5%), addition category (13,1%), misformation category (55,3%) and misordering (4%). The following table is a list of types of grammatical error and its frequency of occurrence: Based on the table above, the result of error from 3 texts shows that the error mostly comes from grammatical misformation aspect for as much as 67 times. This is due to the majority of students cannot determine the appropriate tenses with a certain context in a sentence. In addition, the least error mostly done by students is misordering on the grammatical aspect such as adverbe which only appears 3 times. In this case, students misplaced the adverbe. The further explanation of the errors found is as follow:

Omission
Based on the data analysis from a total of 87 translation texts conducted by students, the omission aspect appeared 86 times or equivalent to 27,5% which was divided into three parts, namely, omission les articles, préposition de lieu and accords. Below are the explanation about the errors;

Omission: "les articles"
One of the errors of omission contained in the press articles translated by students is the elimination of determinants in the form of article défini, here are the examples of the error from the first translation text: The translation from the data above has a grammatical error classified as omission. The supposed translation is "Le gouvernement de Bengkulu commence à développer le tourisme sportif ". So, it can be seen that the respondent made a disappearance on the article défini, namely "le". "Le" is an article défini used for nouns with genre masculin/singulier. According to its function, article défini is used for nouns that are certain in terms of form, type, number, color, etc. (see Delatour, et al., 2004). From the sentence above, the tourisme sportif phrase is certain and the type is clear which is tourism with the type of sport, therefore the translator should have added the word le in front of the tourisme sportif phrase. The selection of the article is based on the genre of the word tourisme which belongs to the noun masculin.
However, the loss of the article défini in the form of "le" in the translation does not affect the meaning, but it is not appropriate when being viewed from a grammatical perspective.
Similar errors also occur in the second translation, the following is the quotation of the data: The same error is the omission of the article défini, namely the word le, which also occurs in the third text that is translated: The loss of the article défini in the form of "le" in the translation above does not affect the meaning, but it is not appropriate when being viewed from grammatical perspectives.

Omission: "Préposition de lieu"
Another error of omission found in the first students' translation is the removal of préposistion de lieu (omission of preposition place), here is an example of this error: The translation from data above shows grammatical errors which belong to omission. The translation should have been "..... l'un d'eux pour le sport d'aviron au lac «Danau Dendam Tak Sudah», à Bengkulu". Then it can be seen that the respondent did the disappearance in préposition de lieu namely "à". Preposition "à" is one of the préposition de lieu used to indicate the location of a place.
Whereas à itself is used to state the location, one of them is the name of a city (see Delatour, et al., 2004). Therefore, preposition à should have been placed in front of the city's name which is translated as à Bengkulu.
Similar errors also occur in the third translation, the following is the quotation of the data:
[Selon Prakash, le festival culturel qui se tiendra Ø Yogyakarta pendant une semaine inclure un certains nombre de programmes importants, comme le séminaire de la promotion du tourisme d' Inde-Indonésie.] With the loss of the préposition de lieu on the translated sentences above, it does not affect the meaning of the sentence because the reader still understands that the lake is located in Bengkulu (data 03-OMS1) and the festival is in Yogyakarta (data 23 -OMS1). But the sentence is not really appropriate when being viewed from a grammatical perspective. While the result of the second translation did not find any errors of this type.

Omission: "les accords"
The type of omission error also occurs in les accords or adjustments to sentences that have pluriel/plural nouns, such as those found in the following data: The translation from data above shows grammatical errors which belong to omission. The translation should have been "Le gouvernement prévoit de fournir plus facilités du sport pour toutes les déstinations touristiques".
In the translated sentence above, the respondent did not add accord in the form of letters -s as a sign that the word is pluriel/plural and did not add adjustments to the phrase destination touristiques. In French, a noun undergoes adjustments by adding letters -s as plural, and adjectives are also adjusted according to the genre of nouns (masculin et féminin) and the number (singulier/pluriel), generally being added suffix -s for the word masculin/pluriel objects, while the suffix -es is used for féminin/pluriel (see Delatour, et.al, 2004, p.38). Of course, this can affect the meaning of sentences because nouns namely déstination are supposed to be plural but are translated singly.
The error in the loss of the accord on pluriel/plural nouns also occurs in the second and third translations, the following is the quotation of the data: In the translation above, respondents did not add accord in the form of -s as a sign that the word is pluriel/plural. This, of course, can affect the meaning of sentences because the nouns are supposed to be plural but are translated singly.

Addition
Based on the analysis of data from a total of 87 translation texts conducted by students, this addition appears 35 times or equivalent to 13,1% which is divided into three parts, namely the addition les accords, the use of two words which meaning is the same and the use of two auxiliaire. The following is an explanation of these errors:

Addition: "les accords"
One of the additional errors that occur in the translation is the addition of the accord (adjustment) which actually does not need to be done, in the data below the respondent added accord in the form of letters -s as plural markers on nouns that should have been translated singly, here is the quote of the data: The translation from data above has a grammatical error that is classified as addition. The supposed translation is "Le gouvernement organise aussi régulièrement la compétition de Triathlon '. In the sentence above there is an additional error in the form of adding letters -s behind the word compétition which is a féminin/singulier noun.
Adjustments in adding letters -s are only done for pluriel/plural nouns (see Delatour, et.al, 2004), when actually in this sentence the noun compétition is singulier/singular. This is indicated by the use of article défini namely the word "la" which is placed in front of the word compétition. Therefore, the respondent should have not added the letter -s to the word compétition. This addition can affect the meaning of the sentence because the compétition meant by the sentence above is only one, which is the Triathlon sports competition. Errors in adding an accord to singulier/singular nouns also occur in the second and third translations, the following is the quotation of the data: However, the addition on those sentences could change their meaning because the singular nouns are translated as plural.

Addition of words that have same meaning
Another addition error found in the translation is respondent adding two words that have same meaning in one sentence, as seen in the following data: The translation from 116-ADD1 data above has a grammatical error that is classified as addition. The supposed translation is 'Le gouvernement organise aussi régulièrement la compétition de Triathlon'. In the translated sentence above, the respondent used two adverbe that have the same meaning in one sentence, namely, aussi (also) dan également (also).
The same error is also found in the third text translation. The following is the excerpt of the data: The two additional adverbe in translated sentences above do not alter the sentences' meaning, but they are not appropriate from grammatical aspect because of redundancy.

Addition: "Auxiliaire"
Another addition error found in the translation is respondent adding two auxiliaire in one passive sentence, as seen in the following data: The translation result of data above contain grammatical error classified as a type of addition error. The correct translation is "L'événement dont le titre est «à partir de Yogyakarta pour le monde» sera suivi par quelques publique figures...". The sentence is passive. Passive sentence structure in French consists of sujet + auxiliaire être (indicatif) + participe passé + accord (Artha, 2015). In the sentence is être in infinitif form (a verb that is not conjugated), this means that the word être is not an element of passive sentence, because what is needed is être that has been conjugated according to the tense of the sentence, so that the word would be sera. That is why respondent should have omitted the word être in the sentence.
Error of adding two auxiliaire être in translated sentences above does not alter the sentences' meaning because readers can still understand that those sentences are passive, but are not appropriate from grammatical aspect.

Misformation
According to data analysis of total 87 text translations done by students, misformation occured 173 times or equivalent to 55,3%, making it the most common error made by students in translation. According to frequency table of grammatical errors, this error is divided into six parts, namely, misformation les articles, adjectif démonstratif, préposition de lieu, error in choosing auxiliaire, error in choosing tense, and error in sentence form. The following is the explanation of said errors:

Misformation: "les articles"
This error is mostly made by respondent in choosing article appropriate for verb genre. The following is the error data: Translation of data above contains grammatical error classified as misformation. The correct translation is "le développement du tourisme sportif apportera plus de valeur pour l'industrie touristique". From the translation above, the respondent made a mistake in choosing article défini that is "la". However, when viewed from the rule, the word "la" is one of article défini that are used for nouns with genre féminin/singulier (Chollet & Robert, 2009). While the word développement is a noun with genre masculin/sigulier, that is why article défini used is "le".
The same error also occurs in the second and third text's translations, as in the following data: [Selon Prakash, le festival culturel qui se tiendra pendant une semaine à Yogyakarta inclure des programmes importants, comme la séminaire de promotion du tourisme d' Inde-Indonésie.] In translated sentences above, the word développement (data 68-MFO2) and the word séminaire (data 79-MFO3) are nom/masculin/singulier, that is why article défini used is supposed to be le. The error does not alter the meaning of the sentence, but is incorrect from grammatical aspect.

Misformation: "adjectif démonstratif"
This error means the respondent was mistaken in choosing pronoun appropriate for genre of mentioned noun, as in the following data:

The respondent should have translated it into cette région.
The same errors also occur in the second and third text's translation data, as follows: Translation of data above contains grammatical error classified as misformation (salah formasi). The correct translation is "…Lely Puspita Wati, la Secretaire du Comité de cet événement lors de la conférence de presse au grand place de Yogya, jeudi le 13 décembre 2018". In he translation above, respondent made a mistake in choosing appropriate adjectif démonstratif. The word "ce" is an adjectif démonstratif (pronoun this or that) that is used for masculin/singulier noun (Artha, 2015).
The word événement is a masculin/singulier noun, but because the beginning of said noun is a vowel, adjectif démonstratif used is "cet" (Artha, 2015). The respondent should have translated it into cet événement.
Similar error also occurs in the third text's translation. The following is the excerpt of the data: The error in choosing adjectif démonstratif in translation above does not alter the meaning, but are incorrect when viewed from grammatical aspect.

Misformation: "préposition de lieu"
Respondents made mistake in choosing preposition of place appropriate for its genre, as the following data: The translation of data above contains grammatical error classified as misformation. The correct translation is "nous voudrions que Bengkulu devienne un région sportif en Indonésie" dit-il.". From the translation above, respondent made a mistake in choosing préposition de lieu that is the word "au" as the preposition in front of a country.
Yet from the function, preposition "au" is one of préposition de lieu that is used to indicate location and destination in the form of place name with genre masculin (Chollet & Robert, 2009). Meanwhile, the place in question in sentence above is a country, namely, Indonésie, which is noun with genre féminin.
That is why the correct preposition is supposed to be "en" that is used to suggest the name of a country with genre féminin and begins with a vowel (see Chollet & Robert, 2009).
The exact same error also found in the third text's translation, as the following data: The error in choosing preposition does not alter the meaning of the sentence, because reader can still understand which location meant in question; that is in Indonesia/in India. Yet, the sentence is incorrect when viewed from grammatical aspect.

Misinformation: "auxiliaire"
In this case, the respondent made errors by choosing an incorrect auxiliaire that does not fit the context and subject of the sentence, as seen in the following data

Data 51-MFO1 Wisata Olahraga Dilirik Bengkulu untuk Dongkrak Kunjungan Turis. [Le tourisme du sport a vu par Bengkulu pour augmenter les visiteurs.]
There is a grammatical error in the translation results of the data above that belongs to misformation. The supposed translation is "Le tourisme du sport est vu par Bengkulu pour augmenter les visiteurs.". The sentence above is passive sentence, but the respondent did not translate it correctly because the auxiliaire used is the conjugation of the word avoir, meanwhile the structure of passive sentences in French consists of sujet + auxiliaire être + participe passé + accord (see Artha, 2015). Therefore, the respondent should have changed the verb to est vu, which does not need an accord as the noun described, le tourism, belongs to the noun with the genre masculin/singulier.
The same error is also found in the results of the second text translation as in the following data: The incorrect selection of auxiliaire in the above sentences could, of course, change the meaning of the sentence into an active sentence in the form of past tense because the respondent used the auxiliaire avoir + participe passé which is the sentence structure of passé composé (see Artha, 2015).

Misformation of Tenses
This type of error is in the form of choosing the time conjugation that doesn't match the context of sentence as it could be seen in the following data Data 11-MFO1 Pemerintah Provinsi Bengkulu mulai mengembangkan wisata olahraga untuk meningkatkan kunjungan turis ke wilayah itu, sekaligus mendongkrak perekonomian warga dan pendapatan asli daerah.
[Le gouvernement de la province de Bengkulu a commencé à developper le tourisme sportif pour augmenter la visite du touriste à cette région, en stimulant l'économie des citoyens et la production d'origine de cette région.] The translation results from data 11-MFO1 contains grammatical errors that belong to misformation. The translation supposed to be "le gouvernement de province de Bengkulu commence à développer le tourisme sportif...". In this sentence, the respondent used a past-participle (passé composé), and if it seen from its function, passé composé is used to express past events (see in Artha, 2015, andCholet andRobert, 2004) whereas the sentence states the event that is happening now or at this current time. Therefore, the conjugation is supposed to be the conjugation present, which its function is to state actual events that occur at the present time and to state habitual actions (see in Artha, 2015, andCholet andRobert 2004).
The same errors are also found in the translations of the second and third text, as in the following data: The incorrect selection of time conjugation in the translated sentences above could affect the meaning of the sentence as the reader could assume that the incident has occurred even though the event is actual or occurring at the present time.

Misformation Form of Sentences
In this case, the respondent made a translating mistake by turning a passive sentence into an active sentence, as found in the following data:
[L'événement du «Jogja Menari», suivra par des milliers de danseurs....] The translation results above have grammatical errors that could also be classified into misformation in which the respondent translated sentences that should have been passive sentences, but were translated into active sentences. The translation should have been "L'événement du «Jogja Menari», sera suivi par des milliers de danseurs..". In this sentence, the respondent translated a passive sentence into an active sentence with futur simple tense. It is known that passive sentences in French consist of sujet + auxiliaire être (indicatif) + participe passé + accord (see Artha, 2015). In this case, the auxiliaire être is conjugated according to the time used in the sentence. The sentence used is in the form of futur simple tense that matches its future simple function, which is used to express activities that would be done in the future, but the time when it would be done is still uncertain (see Delatour, et.al, 2004). Hence, if it is converted into a passive sentence, the auxiliaire être is used as a future simple form, namely sera suivi.
Similar errors are also seen in the third translation text, as in the following data: The error in translating passive into active sentence in the translated sentence above would change the meaning of the sentence as well.

Misordering
Based on the analysis of data, from a total of 87 translated texts conducted by the students, misordering appeared 13 times or equivalent to 4% which was divided into two parts namely misordering les adverbes and adjectif qualicatif. Thus, the two misodering would be explained further below.

Misordering: "les Adverbes"
In this type of error, the respondent was placing adverb in the wrong position as in the following data: The results of the translation from data 09-MOR1 contain grammatical errors which belong to the misordering. The supposed translation is "le gouvernement organise régulièrement le concours de Triathlon International". In this sentence, there are two errors found in the form of incorrect wording, namely organise (verbe) dan régulièrement (adverbe). In line with its function, Adverbe should have been placed behind the verb to explain the verb mentioned (see Artha, 2015). These errors do not affect the meaning of the sentence since the reader could still understand the meaning of the sentence, but the sentence is not grammatically correct. In the the second and third translated texts, this type of errors does not exist.

Misordering: "les Adjectifs qualicatifs"
This type of error was mostly done by the respondents; in which they place adjectives in front of nouns as shown in the following data: The translation result from data 36-MOR1 has grammatical errors that also belong to the misordering. The translation should have been "....va donner le plus valeur pour l'industrie touristique et économique de Bengkulu". In the translated sentence above, there is an error in the form of word misordering namely touristique (adjectif) and industrie (noun). Adjectif is supposed to be placed before a noun, as it is in accordance with its function which is to explain the nature of the noun described (see Delatour, et al., 2004).
Similar errors are also found in the results of the third translated text, as it is seen in the following data: The errors in the translated sentence above are in the form of misplacing the adjective, and does not affect the meaning of the sentence because the reader can still understand the meaning of the sentence, but again, it is not grammatically correct.

CONCLUSION
From the results of this research, it is found that the most frequent grammatical error occurred in the translation process is on the 'time aspect' with the frequency of 64 times from 313 total mistakes. Those errors were caused by the students' tendency in doing misformation as they were not able to choose which tense that fits with the context of the sentence. According to the data analysis, the majority of the students directly translated sentences into the present form without determining the tenses used in those sentences. Consequently, it would likely affect the meaning of the sentences.
The lowest number of errors goes to one of the grammatical aspect: adverbe. It only appeared four times from 313 total errors. The errors occurred due to misordering, in which the students were not able to place adverbe on the right place that created grammatically incorrect sentences. Although the students put adverbe in front of verbs, that does not affect the meaning of the sentences, it is still grammatically incorrect.
The results of this study are expected to provide comprehensive insight and information on the phenomenon of translation errors in terms of the grammatical aspects, especially from Indonesian into French. This research is also expected to be helpful for evaluation material for French grammar learning courses to provide exercises on grammatical applications more often. As for learning in translation, it is expected to provide training in translating various types of texts from Indonesian into French or vice versa. In addition, this research could be used as an evaluation material for students to further enhance the knowledge and application of French grammar, especially in the translation process.
Nevertheless, this study still has limitations since it does not examine further through other research instruments such as questionnaires and / or interviews in order to further explore the causes of grammatical errors committed by the students. Hence, the future researchers are expected to be able to