Translation Techniques and Quality of Bilingual Public Signs in Medan

Abstract

Public signs have a functional and pragmatic function in multilingual cities; however, there is still a dearth of research on both the translation techniques and translation quality of Indonesian-English public signs outside Java and Bali, especially in Medan. In this study, 250 Indonesian-English translation units were analyzed from public signs located in transportation facilities, heritage/tourism, commerce/retailing, and governmental/public services in Medan from August to September 2026. The coding of translation techniques was done following Molina and Albir’s (2002) classification, whereas the translation quality assessment utilized Nababan et al.’s (2012) framework by two independent raters, where interrater agreement was calculated based on Cohen’s Kappa. The most common primary techniques found in the data set were Transposition (25.6%), Literal Translation (23.6%), and Established Equivalent (18.4%). In terms of translation quality, as judged by two independent raters against the Nababan et al. (2012) rubric rather than through an empirical comprehension test with target-language readers, the translations can be considered of generally high quality (M=2.76/3.00; 72.4% were high). The interrater reliability of Accuracy and Readability was found to be fair, and that of Acceptability as slight, a limitation that tempers the strength of the quality claims, particularly regarding translation naturalness. Techniques focused on literal and conventional equivalence showed higher quality ratings than those focused on reductive and highly interpretive ones.