Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University

Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University Difficulties in translating English Marketing documents into Vietnamese faced by thirdyear Englishmajored students at Thuongmai University

With the rapid development of the market economy and globalization, thelanguage of business is also growing at a brisk speed In this regard, the work oftranslating business documents is becoming a genuine challenge While there exists

a variety of studies on this specific topic, the shortage of research on the struggles intranslation regarding marketing documents remains inherent Hence, this study isconducted to exploring and analyzing the difficulties that aspiring translators have

to face in this particular field The singular subject of this study is the majored third-year students at Thuongmai University Apart from applying twomain research methods which are quantitative and qualitative, this study alsocombines several dimensions such as language, culture, and communication toidentify the challenges of translating documents in the field of marketing for thelanguage pair English-Vietnamese Co-currently, it also aims at suggesting ways forundergraduates to study the subject of translation more effectively as well asprovide the teachers and the university with valuable additional information toenhance their teaching quality and attract more prospective students

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to mysupervisor, Prof Vu Thi Thanh Hoa, for her continuous guidance and motivationduring my study Her immense knowledge and experience are the prerequisites forcompleting my thesis Without her insightful advice and incredible support, thisthesis could not have been completed on schedule

Besides, I would like to express my special thanks to Thuongmai Universityfor allowing me to do research as well as all the teachers of the English faculty fortheir extensive dedication to imparting knowledge The knowledge which I haveattained during my four years of study at Thuongmai University not only providesthe basis for my thesis research process but also equips me with a toolbox ofessential skills to succeed in life

Also, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all the teachers and thestudents who sacrificed their invaluable time answering my interview questions sothat I could collect such quality data for my study

Additionally, I would like to acknowledge all the authors of the books,magazines, and the other materials listed in the reference part Their great ideas andfindings play as vital sources of inspiration for me to reflect and further develop mystudy

Finally, I am indebted to my parents and my family for their love,understanding, and sacrifices for educating and preparing me for my future It istheir continuous support and caring that motivate me to overcome setbacks in life

As the thesis was completed with limited knowledge and restricted implementationtime, shortcomings would be inevitable I would appreciate it if the teachers andthose who read the study could give constructive feedbacks and offer specificrecommendations on how I could perfect it

February 26th, 2021Student

Nguyen Thi Hong Ngoc

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

No Abbreviated words Full phrase

2 ESP English for Specific Purposes

3 EST English for Science and Technology

4 EBE English for Business and Economics

5 EAP English for Academic Purposes

6 ESS English for Social Studies

7 EOP English for Occupational Purposes

8 ESL English as a Second Language

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1 Rationale

Marketing is essentially a key driver of every business According to theAmerican Marketing Association’s definition, it is the activity, set of institutions,and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offeringsthat have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large Nowadays,marketing becomes more essential than ever As the world is constantly changingand awash in new innovative products, services, technologies, business models, and

a sea of newly-established companies, the competition in business has becomefiercer To successfully thrive, sustain and prosper in such an environment,marketing is a powerful tool for companies to generate revenue and profit Goodmarketing practices contribute to raising people’s awareness of a company and itsproducts, attracting and retaining customers, and increasing sales

As a result, the global marketing industry has been witnessing significantgrowth in recent years According to a survey done by the equity research firmRedburn and PwC in 2019, the marketing sector is worth $1.7 trillion worldwide Amarketing degree can compensate one with top-paying jobs in the world Forinstance, a marketing manager has the potential to earn a high average income of

$99,000, £50,000, C$87,000 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada,respectively In Vietnam, marketing is emerging at breakneck speed thanks to theexceptional integration of the country into the global economy While Vietnam’smarketing industry is currently in high demand for labor, it is predicted to continue

to grow in the future Apart from offering prospective career opportunities,marketing also promises the highest-paying jobs The average monthly salary of amarketer in Vietnam ranges from VND 10 million to 20 million

In this respect, translating English marketing documents into Vietnamese plays

a vital part The language of business, however, is never easy to learn, not tomention translation Marketing is dynamic and ever-changing New terms can beformed and used every day, which poses challenges, confusion, and mistakes in thetranslating process, especially for those who are new to translation Students at

Thuongmai University are required to take the translation course at the beginning ofthe first semester in the third year of their study Because of certain culturaldifferences and limited knowledge and hands-on experience, most third-yearstudents may encounter a variety of difficulties when they first approach translation,especially technical translation in terms of marketing documents As a learnermyself, I have an awareness of the importance of translation nowadays and thebottlenecks in the process of translation in this particular field.

For those reasons, I choose to study the “Difficulties in translating EnglishMarketing documents into Vietnamese faced by third-year English-majored students

at Thuongmai University.” This study is carried out in the hope of helping students

to have more effective methods in studying and practicing technical translation, toenhance the quality of their translation, as well as to prepare themselves to pursue acareer in translation in the future

1.2 Previous studies

Research topics on issues “the difficulties of learners in English translation”have been studied by many different researchers around the world in general and inVietnam in particular

be observed by the translators, the translation strategy in translating documents aswell as the importance of the cultural transfer How does the legal translation differfrom the literal one? Is it an easy task to translate specialized texts?

Another study named “Analysis of Translation Difficulties for the FourthSemester Students of English Department of IKIP Gunungsitoli Year 2013/2014”with the objective of the research is to find out and to describe translationdifficulties for the fourth semester students of English department of IKIP

Gunungsitol The researcher uses two kinds of research instruments that arequestionnaires which consist of a test as the source of content analysis applied as apart of qualitative research method.

And others: “A Linguistic Theory of Translation” by Catford (1965.Oxford University Publishing House, Oxford); "Contemporary TranslationTheories" by Hay Gentzler (1993 Roudledge Publishing House, London & NewYork); “Discourse and the Translator” by Hatim and Mason (1990 LongmanPublishing House, UK); Jakobson's "On Linguistic Aspects of translation" (1959.Article published in The Translation Studies Reader, L Venuti (ed.) Roudledge,London & New York, 1998); "A Textbook of Translation" by Newmark (1988.Prentice Hall Publishing House, London 1988)

1.2.2 Domestic studies

A study named “Difficulties in Learning the Translation of Students majoring

in International Relations” The purpose of the research is to identify and explainthese difficulties, and to provide some methods for students to be good at translatingand have their own experience in the following working process The researcherlimited his research subjects to two students of TA39A and TA39B classes, Englishdepartment, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam

Another research, “A study on the translation of economic terminology”,conducted by Hoang Thi Bay, her MA minor-thesis, has been carried out with thehope of finding out the common, appropriate and preferable ways to make thetranslation of economic terms from English into Vietnamese sound original andnatural The major concern of this paper is to give the answer to the question:

“What are the common translation strategies and procedures used in the translation

of economic terms in the economic textbook “Business Law?” Based on the resultsfrom the study, some suggestions are given, that can be of some use to those whoare responsible for teaching English for economics and translating technicaldocuments, espcially economics texts

Additionally, a MA minor thesis of Pham Thi Minh Chien, “A study onEnglish translation of Vietnamese traditional medicine texts” It aims at clarifyingand discussing some characteristics of VTM texts and then giving suggestions on

strategy and techniques used in translating VTM texts and standardization ofEnglish translation of VTM texts It also analyzes some common mistakes andfigures out the reasons for this present chaotic situation.

There are some previous studies on translation skill of university students Allthese studies show that different aspects of the problem give the reader a moremultidimensional view and to recognize the importance of improving Englishtranslation skill in general and marketing translation skills in particular

1.3 Aims of the study

The study primarily aims at figuring out the difficulties faced by third-yearEnglish-majored students at Thuongmai University when it comes to translatingmarketing documents from English into Vietnamese It also aims at suggestingsome possible resolutions to overcome these challenges, providing good strategiesand procedures so that they can furnish the quality of translation

1.4 Research subjects

This study seeks to answer the following questions:

- What are the attitudes of third-year students on English-Vietnamesetranslation in the field of marketing?

- What are the main difficulties faced by third-year students whentranslating marketing documents for the language pair English-Vietnamese?

- What are some optimal strategies and tactics to help students enhance theirtranslation skills in this particular field?

1.5 Scope of the study

At Thuongmai University, translation is one of the obligatory subjects inthe curriculum of English-majored undergraduates While some of the second-yearstudents can take this course in advance, most third-year students in the Faculty ofEnglish are required to take this course at the beginning of the first semester In thiscourse, they experience translating documents, especially business ones, either fromEnglish into Vietnamese or from Vietnamese into English This thesis, however,solely concentrates on exploring and analyzing the challenges in the process ofEnglish-Vietnamese translation in the field of marketing made by third-year

students at Thuongmai University The study is conducted in the second semester ofthe academic year 2020-2021.

1.6 Research methodology

On basis of scientific research, research methodology is considered a vitalfactor which determines the success of a research paper In today's era ofinformation technology, numerous sources of materials such as books, newspapers,and especially the Internet are of great help To study students’ difficulties inEnglish-Vietnamese marketing translation, this study adopts two research methods:quantitative and qualitative

Regarding the qualitative method, a survey questionnaire for 30 (SỐ LƯỢNG

third-year students was carried out to collect data in a brief period To keep theresults objective, three teachers of English faculty who are in charge of teaching thetranslation course at Thuongmai University were also specially invited to aninterview for this study Besides, test papers were also used to identify commonmistakes in the process of translation

On the other hand, the quantitative method was used to gather the data andanalyze the challenges via statistics and numbers

Altogether, they help determine the common difficulties that third-yearstudents have encountered in the process of translating English marketing materialsinto Vietnamese Comments, remarks, recommendations, and conclusions found inthe study were delivered as a result of the data analysis

1.7 Organization of the study

This study consists of four main chapters as follows:

The first chapter is the Overview of the study, which provides generalinformation about the research It is comprised of seven parts: rationale, previousstudies, aims of the study, research subjects, scope of the study, researchmethodology, and organization of the study

The second chapter is the Literature review This part provides the conceptsrelated to the term “translation”, including some different definitions of different

authors, theories related to the theoretical background, the difficulties in Vietnamese translation in terms of marketing documents, and translation errors.The third chapter is called the Research findings, which provides dataanalysis, results of the study, and further discussion on the results.

English-The final chapter is the Recommendations and suggestions where someresolutions were presented These suggestions aim to support teachers and students

to adopt effective methods for teaching and learning about technical translation,especially in the marketing field, as well as to enhance the quality of the translateddocuments

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.8 Concepts of translation

2.1.1 Definitions of translation

There exists various approaches to define translation, depending on howlanguage and translation are perceived In that regards, the following definitionshave been selected because of being really typical in some sense

Peter Newmark (1981:7) indicates that "Translation is a craft consisting in theattempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the samemessage and/or statement in another language."

Wills (1982: 3) defines translation is a transfer process which aims at thetransformation of a written SL text into an optimally equivalent TL text, and whichrequires the syntactic, the semantic and the pragmatic understanding and analyticalprocessing of the SL Part of the difficulty in translation arises due to the lexical gapand syntactical, semantic and pragmatic differences between the source languageand the target language, especially between two languages belonging to differentlanguage families Therefore, Wills focuses on not only the process of transferringthe written text but also the optimal equivalence about the syntactic, semantic andpragmatic understanding and analytical processing between source language andtarget language

McGuire (1980: 2) denotes that "Translation involves the rendering of asource language (SL) text into the target language (TL) so as to ensure that (1) thesurface meaning of the two will be approximately similar and (2) the structure ofthe SL will be preserved as closely as possible, but not so closely that the TLstructure will be seriously distorted.” He emphasizes on keeping the closet meaningwhen translating from the SL to TL

In Translation: Applications and Research, Brislin (1976: 1) defines

translation as: "the general term referring to the transfer of thoughts and ideas fromone language (source) to another (target), whether the languages are in written ororal form; whether the languages have established orthographies or do not have

such standardization or whether one or both languages is based on signs, as withsign languages of the deaf."

Roger Thomas Bell (1991) says that translation is the expression in anotherlanguage (target language) of what has been expressed in one language (sourcelanguage), preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences Translation is thereplacement of a presentation of a text in one language by a representation of anequivalent text in a second language He focuses on the expression what has beenexpressed in the written text such as thoughts or feelings of the author thattranslators have to take responsibility to preserve semantic and stylisticequivalencies

According to Wikipedia, translation is claimed: “Translation is the interpreting

of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text,likewise called a translation that communicates the same message in anotherlanguage The text to be translated is called the source text, and the language that it

is to be translated into is called the target language; the final product is sometimescalled the target text.”

From the above definitions, we know that “translation is rendering a writtentext into another language in the way that the author intended the text” (Theory ofinterpreting and translation, Thuongmai University.)

It is clear that the above definitions given by different linguists fromdifferent contexts, share common features of emphasizing the importance of findingclosest equivalence in meaning with similar characteristics to the original by thechoice of appropriate target language’s lexical and grammatical structures Somesorts of transfer from one language to another also insist on the different methods oftranslation which will be taken into consideration in the next part

word order is preserved and the words translated singly by their most commonmeanings, out of context Cultural words are translated literally The main use ofword-for-word translation is either to understand the mechanics of the sourcelanguage or to construe a difficult text as pre – translation process.

2.1.2.2 Literal translation

The SL grammatical constructions are translated to their nearest language(TL) A literal translation sounds like nonsense and has little communicative values.The lexical words are again translated singly, out of context The literal translationused for pre-translation process to identify problems and basis of poetry translationfor poet who does not understand SL

2.1.2.4 Semantic translation

Semantic translation must take more account of the aesthetic value (thebeautiful and natural sound) of the SL text:

 More flexible than faithful translation

 Naturalize a bit while faithful translation is uncompromising (but in order

to achieve aesthetic effect), for instance, it may translate cultural words with neutral

2.1.2.5 Adaptation

Adaptation is used mainly for plays (comedies) and poetry; the themes,characters and plots are usually preserved, the source language culture converted tothe target language culture and the text is rewritten The deplorable practice ofhaving a play or a poem literally translated and then rewritten by an establisheddramatist or poet has produced many poor adaptations, but other adaptations have'rescued' period plays

2.1.2.6 Free translation

Free translation produces the matter without the manner, or the contentwithout the form of the original Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than theoriginal Free translation focuses on the content of the target text rather than theform, which means that the same content is expressed in the target text but withvery different grammatical structures if need be

2.1.2.7 Idiomatic translation

Idiomatic translation reproduces the “message” of the original but tends todistort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms Idiomatictranslation makes use of idioms and colloquialisms that do not exist in the sourcetext

2.1.2.8 Communicative translation

Communicative translation tries to render the exact contextual meaning of theoriginal in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable andcomprehensible to the readership It focuses on factors such as readability andnaturalness This kind of translation used for informative texts

2.1.3 Equivalence in translation

The dictionary defines equivalence as being the same, similar orinterchangeable with something else In translation terms, equivalence is a termused to refer to the nature and extent of the relationships between SL and TL texts

or smaller linguistic units

The problem of equivalence is one of the most important issues in the field

of translating It is a question of finding suitable counterparts in target language forexpressions in the Source language