Journal of English Language Teaching, Literatures, Applied Linguistics
Vol. 3 No. 2 (2025): December

Contrastive Analysis Of Idiom Translation: Literal vs. DeepL in Adele’s Song “Someone Like You” Into Indonesian

Manullang, Yuni Maria (Unknown)
Damanik, Masta Artani (Unknown)
Simbolon, Diane Sarima Lestari (Unknown)
Gea, Sarah Nasrani (Unknown)
Sagala, Poster (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
20 Dec 2025

Abstract

This study investigates the challenges and strategies involved in translating English idioms into Indonesian, with a particular focus on Adele's song "Someone Like You." The research employs a qualitative descriptive approach and utilizes contrastive analysis, with a focus on three quality indicators: accuracy, naturalness, and acceptability. The findings indicate that literal translation can result in statements that are either uncomfortable or incomprehensible in the target language, thereby leading to a loss of the intended meaning of the idiom. In contrast, the neural machine translation of DeepL demonstrated a significantly higher success rate, achieving an accuracy of 93.33% across the analyzed idioms. In comparison, the literal translation exhibited a substantially lower accuracy of 42.22%. This exemplifies the idiomatic fluency and contextual awareness of DeepL; nevertheless, human interaction remains imperative to preserve the emotional depth and cultural subtlety of literary texts. This research underscores the potential for a symbiotic relationship between technology and human aptitude, particularly in artistic domains such as music, where the translation of idioms can be particularly salient. Subsequent research endeavors may involve a more extensive investigation of idiom translation across genres and languages, with the objective of promoting the development of emotionally intelligent machine translation tools.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jeltlal

Publisher

Subject

Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media

Description

Focus Journal of English Language Teaching, Litterature and Applied Linguistics focuses on research related to English Language Pedagogy, TEFL English Teaching, English for Specific Purposes (ESP), ELT Materials Development and Evaluation, English Language Testing and Assessment, Linguistics, ...