Reading is one of many ways to get information that people can find from
internet or book. Most internet and book use English so that people must read to
understand the language. For people who cannot understand English at all they
need translation. Translation is the replacements message of the source language
to the target one. This research entitled “Students‟ Difficulty in Translating
Authentic Text”. The objective of this research was to find out what difficulties
students had in translating authentic text, focusing in translating Jakarta Post‟
news article. This research applied survey using a purposive sampling method.
The subject of this research was twenty seven students at the fourth semester of
English Education Department. In collecting the data, the writer asked the
students to translate Jakarta Post news article from English into Indonesian. To
check the students‟ difficulty in translating the news article, four indicators were
used. Those were lexical equivalent, lexical adjustment, grammatical equivalent,
and grammatical adjustment (Larson, 1998: 59). Thus, the writer used a test as the
main instrument in collecting data. The data analysis method was percentage
formula. The result of this research showed that the students‟ difficulty was
considered enough in lexical adjustment and grammatical adjustment, with the
percentage 38% and 35%. Then it is considered low in grammatical equivalent
with the percentage 28%. And it was considered very low in lexical equivalent,
with the percentage 20%. From the view of students‟ frequency, the result showed
that the frequency of the students‟ difficulty on lexical adjustment was 36%, the
students‟ difficulty on grammatical adjustment 31%, the students‟ difficulty on
grammatical equivalence 26%, and the students‟ difficulty on lexical equivalence
6%. For this reason, students did not understand well grammatical adjustment and
lexical adjustment. While, they were good in lexical equivalent and grammatical
equivalent. Finally, it was suggested that the translation teacher to have the
students translate Jakarta Post by practicing lots of lexical adjustment and drilling
grammatical adjustment and do more activities in making translations