308 

 

 

EEJ 11 (2) (2021) 308-317 

 

English Education Journal 
 

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej 

 

The Use of Cultural Filter to Achieve Functional Equivalence in 

English – Indonesian Translation of Dindal’s Chicken Little: The Sky is 

Falling 

 

Angga Karismawati, Issy Yuliasri, Rudi Hartono  

 

Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia 

 

Article Info 

________________ 

Article History: 

Recived 29 December 

2020 

Accepted 20 February 

2021 

Published  20 June 

2021 

 

________________ 

Keywords: 

Children comic, 

cultural filter, 

functional equivalence, 

House’s dimensions  

____________________ 

 

Abstract
 

___________________________________________________________________ 

The study aims to explain the implementation of cultural filter through the 

House’s dimensions (2015), as well as to explain the achievement of functional 

equivalence of children comic Chicken Little: The Sky is Falling. This study 

belongs to a descriptive qualitative study. The research was conducted by 

analyzing the dimensions of directness versus indirectness, orientation towards 

other versus orientation towards self, orientation towards addressees versus 

orientation towards content, implicitness versus explicitness, verbal routines 

versus ad-hoc formulation. The findings reveal that there are 190 cultural filters 

found within the comic. There are 111 from orientation towards addressees 

versus orientation towards content, implicitness versus explicitness is 31, 

directness versus indirectness is 30, verbal routines versus ad-hoc formulation 

are 15, and the last is 3 from orientation towards other versus orientation 

towards self. On the other hand, out of 190, 15 sentences are identified as non-

equivalence. In accordance with the result, the translator successfully applies 

cultural filter in order to reduce the cultural gap between SL and TL. Besides, 

the findings also suggest that cultural filter supports the achievement of 

functional equivalence of the translation. 

 
Correspondence Address:  

Kampus Universitas Negeri Semarang, Kelud, Semarang, 50233, 

Indonesia 

 E-mail: anggakarismawati@gmail.com 

p-ISSN 2087-0108 

e-ISSN 2502-4566
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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INTRODUCTION 

 

As a means of communication, 

translation always deals with languages and 

cultures. It becomes a solution to overcome the 

language gap in communication (Ismail & 

Hartono, 2016). Indeed, they are inseparable as 

they define communication style of people 

around the world. Prasetyo and Nugroho 

(2013) adds that “a language is the cultural and 

personal expression of the speaker so that the 

language influences how the speaker perceives 

the world” (p. 1). 

Translation is the act of rendering the 

language and also negotiating the cultures of SL 

and TL (Bassnett, 2002). However, interpreting 

SL as well as the culture was hard to do 

especially if the target readers are children. The 

lack of understanding about other languages or 

cultures should be the main concern to the 

translator. One of translation projects that 

children can enjoy is comics. Comic seems like 

a simple literary text because of its short 

sentences or phrases, however, it still needs 

consideration for the translator to create the 

same short texts in the TL. Furthermore, the 

translator should bring the same feeling to the 

target readers as if they read the original 

version. Besides translating one language to 

another language, translating comics also deals 

with socio-cultural of two different languages. 

It is strengthened by Hu (2000) who states that 

“translation of fiction is much more 

complicated than the translation of other 

genres, as it deals not only with bilingual, but 

also bi-cultural and bi-social transference” (p. 

1). In addition, Yuliasri (2017) adds that during 

the process of translation, “the translators have 

to manipulate the text to be acceptable by the 

target readers and parents because not all 

aspects of Western culture are acceptable in 

Indonesia” (p. 105). Therefore, “translating 

literary works (prose fiction in particular) is 

more difficult than translating types of non-

literary texts as if translating literature, a 

translator must not only have the ability of 

bilingual but also have insight both socio-

cultural resources and sociocultural goals” 

(Hartono, 2015, p. 186). It is required for the 

translator to acquire not only language systems, 

but also cultural knowledge of two languages. 

In other words, “the role of the translator is 

trying his/her best to overcome any cultural 

problems that may affect the transference of the 

meaning from the SL culture to the TL culture” 

(Kuncoro & Sutopo, 2015, p. 9). 

As the study presents how to deal with 

cultural differences in a translation, House 

(2015, 2016) introduces the concept namely 

cultural filter. “It is capturing socio-cultural 

differences in expectation norms and stylistic 

conventions between the source and target 

linguistic-cultural communities” (House, 2015, 

p. 68). Further, House (2016) also explains that 

“assumptions of cultural difference should be 

carefully examined before any change in the 

source text is undertaken, in order to achieve 

functional equivalence” (p. 82). A translator 

can overcome the cultural differences between 

the source text and target text. By doing so, the 

target readers will not aware of the occurrence 

of source culture at all. Furthermore, a cultural 

filter is closely related to covert translation. 

“Covert translations are not culture-specific but 

rather of potentially equal concern for members 

of different cultures” (Baumgarten et al., 2004, 

p. 84). Therefore, it is obvious that the idea of 

covert translation supports cultural filter which 

is done by addressing the target culture 

audience to achieve functional equivalence. 

Achieving equivalence is important to 

overcome cultural differences (Lovihandrie et 

al., 2018, p. 210). It is strengthened by Sari and 

Yuliasri (2017) who state that “the translation 

process is needed to obtain a high quality of 

translation in target language or at least equal 

with the source language” (p. 103).” 

“Equivalence refers to a strategy that 

describes the same situation by using 

completely different stylistic or structural 

methods for producing equivalent texts” (Vinay 

& Dalbernet, 2000, p. 52). Meanwhile, in 

connection with the theory of cultural filter, 

functional equivalence arises as one of the 

indicators of the strategy. Dynamic equivalence 

or functional equivalence is firstly introduced 



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310 

 

by Nida (1964). Nida (1964) further explains 

that “the relationship between receptor and 

message should be substantially the same as 

that which existed between the original 

receptors and the message” (p. 159). 

“Functional equivalent focuses on producing 

"the closest natural equivalent" of the source 

language message and aims at eliciting 

"substantially the same response" between 

source text readers and target text readers” 

(Yinhua, 2011, p. 1255). Indeed, naturalness is 

one of the keys to achieve equivalence so that a 

translation product can be accepted by readers. 

Besides, finding the closest meaning is also 

important to avoid non-equivalent meaning in 

translation work (Wijayanti & Mirahayuni, 

2014). 

There have been several researchers 

writing about related studies. Most of the 

previous studies talked about how the translator 

deals with cultural filters during the process of 

translation. They were Baumgarten, House, 

and Probst (2004), House (2006), Tempel and 

Thije (2010), Luonua (2013), and Yang and 

Yen (2017). They brought cultural filter as their 

main focus of study in order to expose the result 

of cultural adjustment between Source Text and 

Target Text. Tempel and Thije (2010) 

particularly discussed the question of whether 

House's theory on a cultural filter can be 

applied to the study of the appreciation of 

multilingual audio tours.  

Furthermore, Yuliasri and Hartono 

(2014), Windawati (2015), Xu (2015), 

Sudirman (2016), Alfaori (2017), Rupiah and 

Hartono (2017), Afifah, Hartono, and Yuliasri 

(2018), and Oktaviani, Hartono, and Sutopo 

(2018) revealed the translation strategies and 

methods of the texts and how they result in the 

equivalence level. Besides equivalence, a 

translation product could result in non-

equivalence with some possible reasons. 

Therefore, it triggered some researchers to 

investigate it from a certain level by identifying 

and explaining the strategies how to deal with 

it. Mujiyanto (2011), for instance, argued that 

translation problems occur due to the 

differences in the grammatical features between 

the two languages. Later, he investigated 

formal nonequivalence that appears in the 

translation of behavioral clauses. 

Since the study took a children's comic as 

the object, the researcher found out Bongco 

(2013) as well as Altenberg and Owen (2015) 

talking about the problems of comic translation 

as well as the strategies or procedures to 

overcome those matters. Yuliasri (2016) 

conducted research about humorous utterances 

in Donald Duck comics. Humor sometimes 

poses a problem for a translator as it portrays 

different cultures between SL and TL. 

Meanwhile, some researchers like McAllister, 

Sewell, and Gordon (2001), Hidayat and 

Zpalanzani (2011), Koponen (2014), and 

Weissbrod and Kohn (2015) also found out the 

ideology, wordplay, translation strategies, and 

techniques used in comics. 

Finally, this study also deals with 

cultural differences between two languages by 

referring to each characteristic of language. 

What makes it different lies in House's theory 

as a guideline to compare the implementation 

of cultural differences. In the end, the 

translator’s choice regarding the ideology and 

the causes of non-equivalence is also presented 

to answer the questions of the study. 

 

METHODS 

 

The study uses descriptive qualitative in 

which the results are presented in form of 

analysis. “Qualitative data analysis involves 

organizing, accounting for and explaining the 

data; in short, making sense of data in terms of 

the participants’ definitions of the situation, 

noting patterns, themes, categories and 

regularities” (Cohen et al., 2007, p. 461). In the 

beginning, the transcriptions of both versions 

and back translation were made to support the 

analysis. Those transcriptions were afterward 

used to identify cultural filters through five 

dimensions of House. They are cultural filters 

in terms of directness, orientation towards self 

versus orientation towards other, orientation 

towards content versus orientation towards 

addressee, explicitness, and ad-hoc formulation 



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311 

 

versus verbal routines. Each dimension were 

continued to be identified in its functional 

equivalence according to Nida (1964). The 

sentences which did not achieve functional 

equivalence belonged to the non-equivalent 

data. The researcher revealed the causes and 

finally, they were tabulated in the table. After 

getting to know the amount of each dimension, 

the researcher took some data samples to 

analyze and get a deeper understanding. 

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 

 

This part discusses the results of the 

research and give the detail explanation about 

the findings. 

 

Cultural Filter in Terms of Directness 

The first dimension proposed by House 

was directness and indirectness. There were 

two transformations, namely the 

transformation of indirectness to directness and 

the transformation of directness to indirectness. 

The amount of cultural filter of indirectness to 

directness was 20, while the amount of another 

transformation was 10.  Furthermore, the 

phrases or dialogues found in this dimension 

achieved functional equivalence according to 

Nida’s theory. The example is given below. 

(1) a. Chicken Little:I figure, hey, you could give 

me some pointers! 

      b. Chicken Little:  Mungkin Ayah bisa memberiku 

tips! (Maybe you could give me tips!) 

According to the example above, the 

English version (1a) showed that it used 

indirectness strategy, while in translation 

version it used directness, by omitting the 

phrase ‘I figure'. The translator thought that it 

was not necessary to translate since the context 

and the message was clear enough for readers. 

It showed that the speaker preferred to express 

utterances indirectly rather than directly. It was 

suitable with House, as she found out that 

English tended to speak indirectly. On the 

contrary, Indonesians like to hide their emotion 

in order to avoid offensiveness (Geertz, 1973). 

It resembles that Indonesian actually 

communicates indirectly. The statement is the 

opposite of the result in which the translator 

mostly used a direct communication style. It 

was not a problematic one because House 

(2015) stated that “cultural filter non-

objectively and consequently undertook 

changes on the situational dimensions” (p. 59). 

On the contrary, the example below 

shows the cultural filter in terms of directness to 

indirectness. 

(2) a. Chicken Little: Everybody, I’m 

telling the truth, Dad! I’m not making 

this up! You gotta believe me this time! 

      b. Chicken Little: Aku bicara yang 

sebenarnya! Ayah! Aku tidak berbohong! Kali 

ini percayalah, Ayah! (I’m telling the truth! 

Dad! I’m not lying! Believe me for this 

time, Dad!) 

The sentence belonged to this kind of 

orientation due to the differences of culture in 

terms of politeness in each country. The notion 

is called honorific terms, in which a word or a 

title can determine respect, politeness, and 

social level (Nordquist, 2020). English speakers 

are accustomed to directly referring the 

interlocutors regardless of the status. It is 

opposite to Indonesians which always pay 

attention to the status of the addressee. Besides, 

Eastern families usually keep their politeness as 

a habit to respect older people (Puspakirana & 

Setiawan, 2014). Therefore, instead of 

translating ‘kamu’ in datum (2b), the translator 

preferred using honorific terms by saying 

‘Ayah’ to show the politeness of Chicken Little 

to his father. To sum up, the translation 

eventually reached the functional equivalent 

even though there was a gap in culture. 

 

Cultural Filter in Terms of Orientation 

towards Self versus Orientation towards 

Other 

The second dimension was orientation 

towards self to orientation towards other. Both 

transformations are realized by the use of 

pronoun. On the one hand, orientation towards 

self is identified by pronoun 'I' and 'we' which 

https://www.thoughtco.com/politeness-strategies-conversation-1691516


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312 

 

refer to the first person in the dialog. On the 

other hand, orientation towards other is 

identified by the third person in the dialog, like 

'you', 'he', 'she', 'they', and 'it/this/that/there'. 

According to it, only 3 data were showing the 

cultural filter of orientation towards self to 

orientation towards other. Moreover, all of 

them were found to reach functional 

equivalent. By contrast, no data was showing 

the cultural filter of orientation towards other to 

orientation towards self. The findings turned 

out that some dialogs had a transformation 

from other to other instead. It was not a big 

matter since both author and translator might 

have preferences to adjust and cope with each 

dialog. 

(3) a. Buck Cluck: Okay, thank you for talking 

to me! I’ll take care of my son!  

    b. Buck Cluck: Oke, terima kasih telah 

menjelaskannya. Akan kuurus anakku. 

(Okay, thank you for explaining it. I’ll 

take care of my son.) 

It was obvious that in datum (3a), the 

original version used object pronoun ‘me’ to 

emphasize the statement. However, it was not 

translated as the way it was. The TT in (3b) 

omitted pronoun ’me’ and opted it into 

‘menjelaskannya’ which focusing only pronoun 

‘it’. It reflects Indonesian culture as people will 

put family as the first priority rather than 

individuals (Communicaid, n.d). In the dialog, 

it seemed clear enough that the teacher only 

talked to Mr. Cluck so that the readers would 

still understand the translation. Besides, having 

suffix ‘nya' is common in Indonesian at the end 

of the word. Nevertheless, both versions have 

correlated meaning regarding context of 

function and situation, so it could be concluded 

that they achieved functional equivalent. 

 

Cultural Filter in Terms of Orientation 

towards Content versus Orientation towards 

Addressee 

The third dimension proposed by House 

was orientation towards content versus 

orientation towards addressee. The dimension 

is used when both the author and the translator 

opt to focus on the content and message or 

emphasizing the addressees. According to the 

findings, there were 111 data found using this 

dimension. The researcher identified 24 data 

using the transformation of orientation towards 

content to orientation towards addressee and 

all of them have achieved functional 

equivalence. The second transformation is 

orientation towards addressee to orientation 

towards content. Unlike the previous one, this 

transformation got a lot of data, which was 87. 

However, not all data have fulfilled functional 

equivalence as 3 data were found to have non-

equivalence. The following is the example of 

the transformation of orientation towards 

content versus orientation towards addressee. 

(5) a. A mommy: Yes, it is the crazy little 

chicken! You’re so smart. Let’s not make 

eye contact!  

(5) b. Ibu:     Benar! Ayam kecil yang gila. Kamu 

sangat cerdas. Jangan lihat dia. (Right! The 

crazy chicken little. You’re so smart. 

Don’t see him!) 

In the English version, it was clear that 

the one the mummy and her son were talking 

was Chicken Little. She said 'it is the crazy little 

chicken' when Chicken Little was passing. In 

the next utterance, the mummy did not 

mention his name again since they knew that it 

referred to Chicken Little. Instead, she 

emphasized the talk by giving a command to 

her son not to make eye contact with Chicken 

Little. Meanwhile, in the Indonesian version, 

the pronoun 'him' was there to make sure that 

Chicken Little was being talked and the readers 

got their understanding. To conclude, nothing 

was confusing to understand both versions 

because the context of function and situation 

was suitable with each other. Therefore, datum 

5 was classified as functional equivalence. 

  (6) a. Teacher: Time out! We need the nurse! 

(6) b. Guru: Stop! Panggil perawat! (Stop! 

Call the nurse!) 

Datum 6 belonged to the transformation 

of orientation towards addressee to orientation 



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towards content Here, the English version 

clearly focused on the use of pronoun 'we'. 

Therefore, the sentence was considered as a 

statement since it referred to the addressee. 

Instead of using literal meaning translation, the 

translator focused on the content by neglecting 

the pronoun. Finally, it created an imperative 

meaning which was more understandable for 

children. Despite the missing pronoun in TT, 

the translation version could achieve functional 

equivalence since it presented the similarity of 

context of function and situation with the 

original one. 

 

Cultural Filter in Terms of Explicitness 

versus Implicitness 

The fourth cultural filter revealed in this 

study was cultural filter in terms of explicitness 

and implicitness. It was gotten that 31 data 

were using the fourth dimension. The 

transformation from explicitness to implicitness 

had 17 occurrences while the transformation 

from implicitness to explicitness had 14 

occurrences. On the other hand, there were 9 

data found regarding non-equivalent. 

 (7) a. Commentator: There’s excitement in 

the air, ladies and gentlemen… it’s been 

two decades since Oakey Oaks has 

beaten long time rivals, Spud Taters… 

(7) b. Komentator: Semua bergembira, para 

penonton... sudah dua dekade berlalu sejak 

Oakey Oaks mengalahkan musuh 

bebuyutannya, Spud Valley Taters... 

(Everybody’s happy, ladies and 

gentlemen… it’s been two decades 

since Oakey Oaks has beaten their long 

time rivals, Spud Taters…) 

It was stated ‘There’s excitement in the 

air, ladies and gentlemen’. If it was translated 

literally, the meaning of the expression would 

sound unusual for children. Thus, the translator 

attempted to find how to express joy in general. 

The phrase ‘Semua bergembira, para penonton’ 

was suitable and more common in Indonesian. 

Regardless the transformation, both Source 

Text and Target Text fulfilled the functional 

equivalence. 

The opposite of explicitness to 

implicitness was indeed the cultural filter of 

implicitness to explicitness. Here, the ST or the 

author of the comic preferred to uttered 

sentences generally. In other word, the 

sentences were not clearly or directly stated. 

(8)a.Chicken Little: But… but… 

bigaccorflevelfla… bigaccorflevelfla 

(8)b. Chicken Little: Tapi... tapi... belb bla 

belb bla... belb bla belb bla... (But…  but… 

bigaccorflevelfla… bigaccorflevelfla) 

The dialog occurred when the journalists 

asked him about how he mistook a stop sign for 

an acorn. It made Chicken Little nervous and 

confused to respond. Therefore, he seemed 

stuttering and reflected by random talks like 

'bigaccorflevelfla’. In fact, such thing was 

identified as implicitness since children would 

wonder what the dialog talked about. It took 

effort for them to guess the meaning. Hence, the 

translator changed it into a more familiar way 

to express someone who was in a confusing 

situation. To sum up, this datum was 

categorized as non-equivalent because the 

original text was not appropriate with the 

context of situation and function as well. 

The result is different with House, as 

English native speakers prefer to communicate 

implicitly. It is affected by the culture where 

they tend to be introverted regarding their 

personal issues. Moreover, they will keep their 

personal life and stuff toward society. Thus, it 

is common if they choose not to express things 

clearly. On the other hand, the translator who 

was Indonesian carried out the version relating 

with Indonesian communication style. They 

like to express explicitly because everybody has 

the rights to speak up. It is similar to German 

in which “they tend to be very explicit and 

focusing on the content of a message rather 

than on the addressee” (Watzky, 2013, p. 70). 

At last, there is no fixed communication style 

as the speakers needed to adjust the target 

readers in order to convey the messages clearly.  

 



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Cultural Filter in Terms of Ad-hoc 

Formulation versus Verbal Routines 

The fifth dimension discussed in this 

study was orientation towards verbal routines 

versus ad-hoc formulation. The transformation 

of verbal routines to ad-hoc formulation 

appeared 9 times. However, one of them was 

found as non-equivalent. On the other hand, 

the transformation of ad-hoc formulation to 

verbal routines obtained 6 utterances and three 

of them could not also reach functional 

equivalent. 

Cultural filter of verbal routines to ad-

hoc formulation occurred when the author 

preferred to use daily language which was more 

common to a kind of figurative language in the 

dialog. Meanwhile, the translator opted for 

specific terms in Indonesian. 

(9) a. Abby Mallard: Now that’s closure! 

(9) b. Abby Mallard: Itulah hati ke hati 

(That’s heart to heart!) 

Datum (9a) belonged to verbal routine as 

the phrase was common and familiar in our 

daily life. However, the meaning on datum (9b) 

was inappropriate because there was no 

correlation between the original and translation 

version. ‘Closure’ meant ‘penutupan’ yet it was 

translated in form of figurative language ‘hati 

ke hati’. It was because the translator could not 

find the closest meaning over the original 

version. To solve it, (s)he looked into the 

context to make a relatable meaning. The 

situation showed that Chicken Little was on fire 

to return the alien kid back and suddenly kissed 

Abby. Abby felt so glad about it and said the 

phrase. It actually created misunderstanding 

since ‘closure’ could indicate that Chicken 

Little was leaving his place, but the translator 

interpreted it as Abby’s feeling after being 

kissed by him. Hence, it was categorized as one 

of non-equivalent translations in this 

transformation since the context of situation of 

both versions were not the same. Probably the 

failure of translating figurative language 

occurred because of some reasons. Hartono 

(2012) reveals that a translator has difficulties 

every time s(he) translates literary works, such 

as the inability to understand complex 

sentences and find the closest natural 

equivalence regarding the cultural differences. 

 (10) a. Chicken Little: Good people of 

Oakey Oaks… though at times it may 

feel like the sky is falling around you… 

never give up, for every day is a new 

day! 

(10) b. Chicken Little:  Penduduk Oakey Oaks 

yang baik... meskipun kadang keadaan 

sangat sulit... jangan menyerah. Setiap hari 

adalah hari baru! (Good people of Oakey 

Oaks… though sometimes the situation 

is very difficult… don’t give up. Every 

day is a new day!) 

According to a datum (10a), it could be 

seen that the author used figurative language 

within the phrase 'the sky is falling around you' 

to express the hard times people had one day. 

Meanwhile, in Indonesian version it was stated 

with 'keadaan sangat sulit'. Here the translator 

made an appropriate translation which would 

be easily understood by the readers. Indeed, 

both original and translation versions reached 

the functional equivalent since the Target Text 

resembled the figurative language used in the 

Source Text though it was in non-figurative 

language form. 

 

Functional Equivalence 

After identifying the cultural filter by 

using five dimensions, the last stage to answer 

the research question in this study was 

identifying functional equivalence proposed by 

Nida (1964). A datum belongs to functional 

equivalence when the original version and 

translation have the similarity in terms of 

context of situation as well as context of 

function. 

As the requirement was determined, it 

was not a hard thing to identify which datum 

did not achieve functional equivalence or rather 

non-equivalence. There were 215 cultural filters 

found in the comic.  However, out of 215 data, 

there were 15 dialogues which identified as 



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non-functional equivalence. They occurred 

only in dimension orientation towards content 

versus orientation towards addressee, 

explicitness versus implicitness, and ad-hoc 

formulation versus verbal routines. The causes 

of non-equivalence were mostly because of the 

translator's misunderstanding about the 

context, therefore it made a different point of 

view between the author and translator. 

According to the analysis, the cultural 

filter of orientation towards content versus 

orientation towards addressee showed 3 data 

that belonged as non-equivalent. The translator 

misinterpreted the ST that in the end, the 

translation had different function. Moreover, 

the translation seemed unrelated to the 

preceding and subsequent dialog. Therefore, 

the situation told in the comic was quite 

confusing because of its irrelevance. 

The next dimension which was found to 

have non-equivalent was orientation towards 

explicitness versus orientation towards 

implicitness. This sort of cultural filter obtained 

9 data. One of them happened because the 

translation was irrelevant to the original 

version. The exact translation of the English 

version should be 'dimana semangatnya disini’, 

on the other hand, it was written with ‘ada apa 

ini’ in the Indonesian version. Therefore, the 

datum belonged to non-equivalent since the 

context of situation of both versions were 

different. 

In the dimension ad-hoc formulation 

versus verbal routines, there found 3 utterances 

identified as non-equivalence. It probably 

happened because of the misunderstanding in 

translating figurative languages. The phrase 

‘where’s your head’ which probably meant 

‘dimana pikiranmu’ was translated into 

‘bagaimana, sih’. In fact, it would definitely 

confuse the readers as it did not describe the 

situation at that time. Although the translator 

was able to adjust with the situation in the 

comic, still both versions had different context 

of function. The original version was intended 

to ask something, while the translation was 

likely showing annoyed expression. 

 

CONCLUSIONS 

 

To sum up, the study of cultural filter of 

children comic Chicken Little: The Sky is Falling 

obtained five dimensions, they were orientation 

towards directness versus indirectness, 

orientation towards self versus other, 

orientation towards addressee versus content, 

orientation towards explicitness versus 

implicitness, and orientation towards ad-hoc 

formulation versus verbal routines. The result 

showed that out of 88 culturally filtered data, 

there were 190 data found using those 

dimensions. Following the results, it could be 

concluded that the translation of comic Chicken 

Little: The Sky is Falling successfully applied 

cultural filter in most of its dialogues. It 

portrayed that the translator attempted to adjust 

the Source Language with many cultural 

differences inside to be similar with the Target 

Language.  

Along with the discussion, it led to 

another identification in which the translator 

used covert translation. As it was explained 

previously, covert translation focused on the 

Target Language during the translation 

process. It is the type of translation which do 

not depend on the Source Language to make 

another version of text. 

In addition, the result of cultural filter 

analysis showed that most of the translations 

were successfully achieved functional 

equivalence. As the theory stated, one could 

fulfill functional equivalence as long as the 

translation created similar context of situation 

and function with the original one. 

 

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Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison K. (2007). 

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