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The Correlation between the Vocabulary Mastery and Translation Ability of the Eleventh-Grade Students of SMA Negeri 11 Palembang I. INTRODUCTION I.1 Background I choose the title “The Correlation between the Vocabulary Mastery and Translation Ability of the Eleventh-Grade Students of SMA Negeri 11 Palembang” because I want to investigate the correlation between vocabulary mastery and translation ability. Like we know, Language is a means of communication. Without language, it is difficult for people to communicate with others. Through language, we can express our idea, feeling or intention to others (Brown, 1987: 5). And the 2004 English Curriculum states that the main objectives of teaching English in schools is to enable the students to use English for communication, either orally or in writing. To achieve the objective, one of the language components which should be mastered is vocabulary. Vocabularies are the basic components in expressing, grasping and understanding an idea. So, without adequate vocabulary, we will get difficulties in communicating with others. The students with large vocabulary mastery will become good in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Like Cameron (2001: 94) states that vocabulary has been seen as a major resource for language use. Besides vocabulary, translation is one of the skills that should be learned and developed by students because of the spread of communication, especially in English. The need for information and knowledge motivate people to learn from many sources. This fact could be one of the serious problems for people who want to get more data, information and knowledge from those English books. Kavaliauskien (2002: 5) states in her research that learners’ difficulties in writing, reading and translation are caused by either limited vocabulary or its inappropriate usage. So, based on the description above, the writer is interested in conducting a research entitled “The Correlation between Vocabulary Mastery and Translation Ability of the Eleventh-Grade Students of SMA Negeri 11 Palembang”