The quality of google translates vietnamese translations of the english personifications in la fontaines fables

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY THÁI THỊ THANH MINH THE QUALITY OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE'S VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONS OF THE ENGLISH PERSONIFICATIONS IN LA FONTAINE'S FABLES Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Lê Nhân Thành, Ph.D Binh Dinh, 2021 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHON THÁI THỊ THANH MINH CHẤT LƯỢNG DỊCH CỦA GOOGLE TRANSLATE KHI NHÂN HĨA TRONG CÁC TRUYỆN NGỤ NGƠN CỦA LA FONTAINE KHI DỊCH SANG TIẾNG VIỆT Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Giáo viên hướng dẫn: TS Lê Nhân Thành Bình Định, 2021 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I, at this moment, declare this study is entirely my work carried out at Quy Nhơn University for the degree of Master of Arts in English Language and that it has not been submitted for a degree at any other Institution Where other sources of information are used, they are acknowledged Binh Dinh, 2021 Thai Thi Thanh Minh ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, it is a pleasure to express my sincere gratitude to many people who made this thesis possible I wish to give my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my profound advisor, Ph.D Lê Nhân Thành, for his continuous support and encouragement Without his help, I would not complete this thesis Throughout my thesis-writing period, he encouraged me whenever I encountered problems with careful and inspiring advice, good teaching, and exciting ideas His extensive knowledge of Google Translate has given me valuable experience in conducting the study Especially in the data analysis, thanks to his helpful tutorials and recommendations, I had overcome the difficulties of the figure process and software In short, it is an honor for me to be instructed by Ph.D Lê Nhân Thành, who never accepted less than my best efforts I would like to thank all professors at Quy Nhơn University, especially professors and staff in the Foreign Language Administration, who always their best to make all thesis procedures as convenient to students as possible Finally, my beloved family deserves a special mention for their unconditional love and support throughout the research study To all of them, I dedicate this thesis Bình Định, 2021 iii ABSTRACT This thesis is conducted to investigate the quality of Google Translate's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications in La Fontaine's fables The data are the personifications in La Fontaine's fables and their Vietnamese equivalents in GT's translations The classification of personifications presented by Nguyễn Thế Truyền (2001) and the categorization of translation errors suggested by Farrús et al (2011) are used as the conceptual frameworks for this study This study is carried out (i) to identify and classify the personifications in La Fontaine's fables, (ii) to identify and classify the translation errors in GT's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications, and (iii) to evaluate GT's translation quality in translating the English personifications into Vietnamese in terms of translation errors The results of the data analysis show that all three types of personifications are present in the fables The Activities and Characteristics personifications account for the most significant number The results also indicate that three out of five translation error types are found, and Semantic errors account for the highest rate of the errors committed by Google Translate Lexical errors rank second The third rank is Syntactic error Google Translate does not commit any Morphological and Orthographic errors The findings suggest that much care should be taken when using Google Translate to translate English personifications into Vietnamese Some suggestions and implications are proposed for EFL teachers and learners majoring in translation, human translators, and researchers interested in the related fields Keywords: Google Translate, personifications, translation errors, Translation Quality Assessment, Vietnamese iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ABBREVIATIONS viii LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES ix CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ix 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aim and Objectives 1.2.1 Aim 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 Research Questions 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 Structure of the thesis CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Theoretical background 2.1.1 Personifications 2.1.2 Translation theory 10 2.1.3 Machine Translation 21 2.2 Previous studies 26 2.3 Jean de la Fontaine's life and works 29 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 36 3.1 Research Method 36 v 3.2 Data collection 37 3.3 Data analysis 38 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 43 4.1 Types of personifications 43 4.1.1 Verbal personifications 43 4.1.2 Naming personifications 44 4.1.3 Activities and Characteristics personifications 44 4.2 Translation errors made by Google Translate 45 4.2.1 Morphological errors 46 4.2.2 Orthographic errors 46 4.2.3 Syntactic errors 47 4.2.4 Lexical errors 49 4.2.5 Semantic errors 54 4.2.6 No errors 57 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS 62 5.1 Summary of the findings 62 5.2 Limitations of the study 63 5.3 Implications 64 5.3.1 Implications for EFL teachers and students of translation 64 5.3.2 Implications for translators 64 5.3.3 Implications for future researchers 65 REFERENCES 66 APPENDIX viii ABBREVIATIONS CAP Characteristic & Activities personifications GT Google Translate L1 Language L2 Language LEX Lexical translation errors MOR Morphological translation errors MT Machine Translation NOE No translation errors NP Naming personifications ORT Orthographic translation errors p Page Pp Pages SEM Semantic translation errors SMT Statistical machine translation ST Source Text SYN Syntactic translation errors TQA Translation Quality Assessment TT Target Text VB Verbal personifications ix LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Sample data preparation 38 Table 3.2 Sample of translation errors analysis 39 Table 3.3 Analyzing and comparison types of errors 40 Table 4.1 The identified personifications 43 Table 4.2 Types of errors 46 Table 4.3 The number of the Syntactic errors 47 Table 4.4 The number of the Lexical errors 49 Table 4.5 The number of the Semantic errors 55 Table 4.6 The number of occurrences of no translation errors 57 Table 4.7 The statistics of translation errors committed by GT 59 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 The dynamics of translation 11 Figure 2.2 The Translation process 12 Figure 2.3 Translation approach 14 Figure 2.4 Farrús et al.'s 2011 classification translation errors 21 Figure 2.5 The Vauquois Triangle 24 Figure 2.6 Timeline of Machine Translation Evolution 24 Figure 2.7 Languages supported by Goole Translate 26 Figure 4.1 Occurrences of translation errors according to personification types 60 59 Activities and Characteristics personification is "prepared." GT correctly translated the personifications in this line into Vietnamese The occurrences of three types of translation errors (Lexical, Syntactic, and Semantic errors) are unequally distributed in three groups of Verbal, Naming, and Activities and Characteristics personifications, as shown in Table 4.7 Table 4.7 The statistics of translation errors committed by GT Verbal Naming Activities and personification personifications Characteristics s Total personifications 0 0 0% 0% 0% 0% 0 0 0% 0% 0% 0% 11 17 3.26% 1.62% 8.94% 13.82% 11 12 23 0% 8.94% 9.76% 18.69% 33 47 83 errors 2.43% 26.83% 38.22% 67.47% Total 46 70 123 5.69 37.39 56.92 100 Morphological errors Orthographic errors Syntactic errors Lexical errors Semantic Tablhe Th11 The numb of translation error These figures are graphically presented in the bar chart below 60 50 47 45 Verbal personifications 40 33 35 30 Naming personifications 25 20 15 11 12 11 10 0 0 0 Activities & Characteristic personifications Figure 10: The Occurrences of translation Figure 4.1 Occurrences of translation errors according to personification types According to Table 4.7, GT did not make any Morphological and Orthographic errors in this study Syntactic errors account for a small rate of GT's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications in La Fontaine's fables Lexical errors appeared more frequently Remarkably, GT's Semantic errors in this research take up to two-third of the Vietnamese translations of the English personifications From the findings above, it can be stated that Activities and Characteristics personifications have caused the most problems for GT in translation Therefore, GT's translation was lowest when it translated this kind of personification 61 This chapter presented GT's translation errors in the Vietnamese translations of the English personifications The next chapter summarizes the main findings in Chapter and the implications of the results 62 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter summarizes the study's main findings and addresses the implications for different stakeholders Simultaneously, this chapter also puts forwards the limitations of the study 5.1 Summary of the findings Personification is a rhetorical device that is used to assign human beings' characteristics, features, qualities, and actions to animals and unanimated objects Personification makes texts, especially poems, more interesting, lively and keeps the reader's attention In this study, the researcher's primary aim is to investigate GT's quality when translating the English personifications in La Fontaine's fables into Vietnamese The data were collected, identified, and analyzed in terms of three types of personifications: Naming, Verbal, and Activities and Characteristics personifications As mentioned in Chapter I, the study was conducted to answer three questions: (1) What are the English personifications in La Fontaine's fables? (2) What translation errors does GT make when it translates the English personifications into Vietnamese? And (3) How well does GT translate the English personifications into Vietnamese in terms of translation errors? Three types of personifications are present in the study Activities and Characteristics appear in many of the translation errors, accounting for 54.02% Naming personifications rank second with 41.38% Verbal personifications account for the lowest rate (4.60%.) There are three types of errors that occur in this study's data Vietnamese does not have affixes, so GT's translations not have any Morphological errors in this study's data Orthographic errors are not 63 committed by GT, either Syntactic errors rank first, with 11 errors (13.82%) Lexical errors rank second (18.69%) Semantic errors account for 67.47%, the highest rate of errors These types of errors make the meaning of the sentences confusing and even misunderstanding to readers The occurrences of three types of errors are unequally distributed in three groups of personifications Semantic, Syntactic errors appeared in GT‘s of three groups of personifications Lexical errors were made in the Vietnamese translations of Naming and Activities and Characteristics personifications only Orthographic and Morphological errors are not committed by GT This finding indicates that GT has more trouble when dealing with Naming and Activities and Characteristics personifications In brief, the findings sufficiently answer the research questions, and the aim of the study is fulfilled 5.2 Limitations of the study Great efforts were made to complete this study However, this study unavoidably has some limitations due to the limited time, scope, and experience in doing research Firstly, due to the limited time, the study has analyzed the quality of GT's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications in la Fontaine's fables only Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized to personifications in other text genres Secondly, due to the small size of the data source, a total of 174 personifications and 123 translation errors were identified These numbers may be insufficient to offer an accurate and comprehensive assessment of GT's quality in translating English personifications into Vietnamese 64 5.3 Implications This thesis analyzes the translation errors in GT's translations of the English personifications Expectantly, the thesis findings will have significant implications for English educators and learners and those in GT's translations quality 5.3.1 Implications for EFL teachers and students of translation This study examined the errors committed by GT when it translated personifications found in fables written in English to Vietnamese The results indicate the strengths and weaknesses of GT in translating different types of personifications First, the study results suggest that the GT had more difficulties translating the Activities and Characteristics personifications than the Naming and Verbal ones Second, the study results can be used as a recommendation for EFL teachers and students to recognize the errors made by GT GT made syntactic errors with 17 errors (13.82%), lexical errors with 23 errors (18.70% for both sub-types), and 83 Semantic errors, the highest rate (67.48%) of all the errors committed by GT And this is the GT's weak point when translating English personifications into Vietnamese ones Nevertheless, the GT's strong point is that GT did not commit any Morphological and Orthographic errors In summary, these findings are beneficial to EFL teachers who should ask their students to pay more attention to GT's translation of personifications Students should be aware of Semantic translation errors 5.3.2 Implications for translators GT, an automatic MT, transports advantages and disadvantages for translators GT is an excellent tool in that it helps people understand the general content of a text written in an unfamiliar foreign language However, GT also 65 has its limitations Among the other 174 personifications, GT committed 123 errors in which Semantic errors achieved the highest frequency In other words, translators should not use GT as a supportive tool when translating personifications because this study shows many errors in the translation process 5.3.3 Implications for future researchers Based on the results of the study, some suggestions for further research are as follows This study examined the quality of GT's 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Google Translate's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications in La Fontaine's fables The data are the personifications in La Fontaine's fables and their Vietnamese equivalents in. .. in La Fontaine's fables, - to identify and classify the errors in GT's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications, and - to evaluate GT's translation quality in translating the English. .. English personifications into Vietnamese in terms of translation errors? 1.4 Scope of the study This study investigates the quality of GT's Vietnamese translations of the English personifications in