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The translations between mathematical representation is one of the representation processes that plays an important role in mathematics learning. During the process of representation translation involves the activity of unpacking the source. Activities in unpacking the source greatly determine the smoothness of the translation process. This study aimed to examine the activity of students in unpacking the source during the translation process of verbal to the graph representations. This research was a qualitative descriptive study. This study involved twenty students of mathematics education program. The purposive sampling was used to get the subject of study. The data were collected through the think-aloud test. The test focuses on the translation problem of verbal representations to the graph. Students took the test while verbalizing what they thought (think-aloud). Then, the researchers conducted interviews based on results of students’ written answer results. The results showed that the activities of students in unpacking the source are reading the questions carefully, drawing the scheme of the verbal situation, identifying the things that are known, identifying the things that are asked, interpreting information and identifying new information. Schemes facilitate students in unpacking the source. The success in unpacking the source support the next steps in solving the representation translation problem. The results of this research can be used as consideration to minimize the difficulties of students in unpacking the source when performing translation of verbal to the graph representation. This research is also limited to the representation translation from verbal to graph representation, has not examined the other representation such as verbal to symbolic or otherwise. So, those problem can be examined in the next research.

Translation, Representation, Verbal, Graph, Unpack