A study on common errors committed by the fourth year english students at hung vuong university in translating business letters

HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY FACULITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ĐO THI THANH HANG A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS COMMITTED BY THE FOURTH YEAR ENGLISH STUDENTS AT HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY IN TRANSLATING BUSINESS LETTERS B.A GRADUATION PAPER Field: English Teaching Methodology Phu Tho, 2018 TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÙNG VƯƠNG KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ ĐỖ THỊ THANH HẰNG A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS COMMITTED BY THE FOURTH YEAR ENGLISH STUDENTS AT HUNG VUONG UNIVERSITY IN TRANSLATING BUSINESS LETTERS Nghiên cứu số lỗi thường gặp dịch thư thương mại sinh viên năm tư Trường Đại Học Hùng Vương B.A GRADUATION PAPER Field: English Teaching Methodology Supervisor: Ngo Thi Thanh Huyen, M.A Phu Tho, 2018 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This graduation paper is my final important task on the way of obtaining my bachelor degree It would not have been completed without the guidance and the support of many people At this moment of accomplishment, it is my pleasant task to express my sincere thanks to all of them First and foremost, I would like to express my endless thanks and gratefulness to my supervisor Ngo Thi Thanh Huyen M.A for her precious advice, detailed comments, valuable suggestions and enthusiastic guidance corrections from the planning stage to the completion of my thesis Without her continual encouragement and useful documents, her careful reading and critical comments, my paper would be far from finished I am obliging to all my teachers in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hung Vuong University, who inspired me and gave me good knowledge of English for writing this graduation paper It would be a shortcoming if I not mention here all my friends, especially all members of K12 English Pedagogy for their unceasing encouragement, care and help during this hard time Last but not least, I would like to dedicate my concluding words to my dear family for supporting me devotedly both material and spiritual throughout my thesis-writing period Phu Tho, 2018 Do Thi Thanh Hang ii ABSTRACT The study aims to find out some common errors in terms of linguistics committed by the fourth-year English students at Hung Vuong University when translating business letters from Vietnamese into English It is also used to discover the possible causes of these errors as well as some suggested solutions to this situation With the study, the author hopes to make a small contribution to teaching/learning business letters effectively, which may help students improve their translation skill, avoid the linguistic errors, and help the teachers find the most appropriate way in teaching business letters translation The study consists of three parts Part I, the introduction, states the rationale, aims, setting, scope, significance, design, questions and methods of the research Part II, the development, is divided into three chapters Chapter reviews theoretical background relating to translation, translation studies, translation methods, translation errors, business letters, significance and types of business letters Chapter presents the instrumentation, data collection and data analysis Chapter summarizes major findings and discussions Part III, the conclusion, summarize major findings points out some limitations and gives some suggestions for further study iii LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS NO Table Page Table 2.1 Classification of errors in terms of linguistics in translation test 37 Table 3.1 The errors in terms of linguistics in student‟s translation test 40 Table 3.2 Some cases of terminology error committed by the students in translation test 47 Table 3.3 The students‟ opinion towards learning style as a cause of the errors in business letters translation 56 Table 3.4 The students‟ opinion towards teaching and learning conditions as the causes of the errors in business letters translation 57 NO Chart Page Chart 3.1 The students‟ linguistic errors in translation test (%) 48 49 Chart 3.2 The students‟ attitude towards the importance of business letters translation (%) Chart 3.3 The students‟ attitude towards learning business 50 letters translation (%) Chart 3.4 The students‟ attitude towards learning business 51 letters translation as a part of translation course (%) Chart 3.5 The students‟ attitude towards being a business letters 52 translator in future (%) Chart 3.6 The students‟ attitude towards kinds of translation in 53 business letters translation (%) Chart 3.7 The students‟ attitude towards some common errors in 54 terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation (%) Chart 3.8 The students‟ attitude towards the possible causes for 55 the errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation (%) iv LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS e1: error of the use of articles e2: error of capitalization e3: error of preposition e4: error of punctuation e5: error of spelling e6: error of using correct grammar e7: error of tense e8: error of terminology SC: source culture SL: source language SLC: source language culture ST: source text TC: target culture TL: target language TLC: target language culture TT: target text T1: the lecturer T2: the lecturer v TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Previous studies 1.2.1 In the world 1.2.2 In Vietnam 1.3 Research gap 1.4 Purpose of the study 1.5 Research questions 1.6 Setting 1.7 The significance of the research 1.8 The scope of the research 1.9 Design of the research: PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An overview on translation 1.1.1 The concept of translation 1.1.2 Translation methods 12 1.1.3 Translation errors 18 1.2 An overview on business letters 22 1.2.1 The definition of business letters 22 1.2.2 Kinds of business letters 23 1.2.3 Features of a good business letters 28 1.3 Summary 35 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 36 2.1 Participants 36 2.2 Methodology 36 vi 2.3 Data collection instruments 36 2.3.1 Test 37 2.3.2 Questionnaires 37 2.3 The research procedure 38 CHAPTER 3: MAJOR FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 39 3.1 The result from translation test 39 3.2 The result from questionnaires 49 3.2.1 The students‟ attitude and interest toward Vietnamese – English business letters translation 49 3.2.2 Some common errors in terms of linguistics that the students committed when translating business letters from Vietnamese into English 53 3.2.3 The causes of student‟s errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation 55 3.4 Conclusion 58 PART III: CONCLUSION 59 Summary 59 Limitations 59 Implications 60 Suggestions for the further study 60 REFERENCES 61 PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.1 Rationale Nowadays, English is used in a majority of countries in the world, as it is one of the most important languages for international communication It has become a compulsory subject in many schools, colleges and universities In the context of globalization, demands on learning about and accessing to business letters by organizations in different countries have been rapidly increasing In addition, the modern evolution of business becomes more and more necessary and in order to satisfy this trend, the business letter has become increasingly important Whether a mail order business is carried on or not, the letter is no less important Goods are bought, collections made, complaints adjusted, instructions given, business policies and selling campaigns outlined in the business letters Realizing the important role of business letters, Vietnamese students have been studying hard to deal with English business letter effectively Moreover, due to the internationalization trend of the world economy, companies not only trade in their countries but also expand their commerce to other countries In order to keep in touch with their partners, the best way is to write business letters English is their first choice because it has become more and more popular in global business In the process of studying translation at Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hung Vuong University, the author found that business translation based the existing rules among languages is very essential Here, the role of linguistics is very important in explaining cases without any equivalents And also, it is impossible to explain all issues of translation in linguistic aspects but to base on professional foundations in the field of business Thus, it is necessary to take into account linguistic viewpoints as well as those of business categories in the translations of business letters and business related materials Translation in general and translation business letters in particular are common job of student‟s majority in English linguistics after their graduation They work in companies which professionally run by the operations related to translating business letters However, they encounter many difficulties when translating them In class, they usually get stuck in troubles with translating letter, expressing as well as finding materials, so they cannot get good mark Translating business letters requires not only thorough understanding of linguistic aspects and corresponding subjects but also logic thinking to ensure deep understanding of characteristics and nature of business language They have not got them yet Thus, it is necessary to make the difficulties clear and suggest some strategies for translating such kind of letters During the previous four years, my friends and I have had chances to study English thoroughly in terms of language practice (i.e listening, speaking, etc.) as well as language theory (i.e grammar, lexicology, discourse analysis and so on) I would say that English for Business is the subject we are interested in most since it teaches us some essential jobs such as writing memos, lists, reports, especially letters that are very helpful if we work for an import - export company in the future From those reasons above mentioned, I decided to conduct the study called: “A study on common errors committed by the fourth year English students at Hung Vuong University in translating business letters” as my graduation paper It is hoped that this paper will be a good reference for those studying and working in business translation and those with certain knowledge of English language, who are interested in business translation to serve their own business, especially the fourth-year English linguistic students 1.2 Previous studies 1.2.1 In the world ShuLan (2012) conducted the research: “On the Text Conjunction and Its Translation in English Business Letters” This paper studied on the definition, position and classification of conjunction According to the functional 50 Question 2: Is learning business letters translation difficult for you? With the same purpose, question was designed to ask students if learning business letters translation is difficult to them or not The data is presented in the following column chart 60.00% 56.60% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 33.30% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 3.50% 6.60% 0.00% Very easy Easy Neither difficult nor easy Difficult Very difficult Student's attitude Chart 3.3 The students’ attitude towards learning business letters translation (%) The above figure showed that learning business letters translation was a challenge to most students In detail, 56,6% students (17 students) could not like to deal with translating business letters documents Similarly, there was 33,3% (10 students) who shared “very difficult” opinion It was only 6,6% (2 students) of giving neutral answer Only one student chose the answer that learning business letters translation is easy There was no choice of the “very easy” answer Question 3: Do you like learning business letters translation as a part of translation course? Similarly, to get information about the students‟ attitude and interest toward business letters translation, question was designed to ask students if they like learning business letters translation as a part of translation course or 51 not The information collected is shown in the following pie chart 2,4% 2,4% 26,6% 17,7% Extremely like Like Neither like nor dislike 53,3% Dislike Extremely dislike Chart 3.4 The students’ attitude towards learning business letters translation as a part of translation course (%) The figures in chart 3.1 indicate the students‟ opinion about their attitude towards business letters translation as a part of translation course It is considered that more than half of the students are not excited to deal with business letters translation task There is only student (2,4%) said that she/he is interested in learning business letters translation The “extremely like” answer holds the same number In contrast, up to 16 students (53,3%) who not like learning translating business letters Moreover, the “extremely dislike” choice accounts for 26,6% (8 students) The remaining number shares that students neither like nor dislike learning business letters translation Question 4: Would you like to become a business translator in future? Question was designed to ask students if they would like to be a business letters translator in the future or not The information collected is shown in the following line chart 52 60.00% 50.00% 49,2% 40.00% Students' attitude 30.00% 25% 19,2% 20.00% 10.00% 6,6% 0% 0.00% Extremely like Like Neither like nor dislike Dislike Extremely dislike Chart 3.5 The students’ attitude towards being a business letters translator in future (%) Basing on the above chart, the students obviously have different angles about the future job There were only students who think that business letters translator was perfect for them Otherwise, there was up to 49,2% students who prefered find another job rather being a business letters translator Similarly, 25% students share the “extremely dislike” choice Meanwhile, 19,2% students keep the neutral stand and no one said that they extremely like to be a legal translator Question 5: In your opinion, what kind of translation is more difficult to you in translating business letters? In order to collect the students‟ attitude towards kinds of translation in business letters translation, question was designed to ask students that English – Vietnamese translation or Vietnamese – English translation is more difficult to them The information collected is performed in the following doughnut chart 53 16,6% English - Vietnamese translation Vietnamese - English translation 83,4% Chart 3.6 The students’ attitude towards kinds of translation in business letters translation (%) The statistical data showed the students‟ outlook towards kind of text that was more difficult to them in translating business letters There were only students (16,6%) said that English – Vietnamese translation is difficult, may be by comparing with Vietnamese – English translation, 25 students (83,4%) realized that the second type of translation text is more difficult to them than the first one It reflected the students‟ real situation that helps the author absolutely research about Vietnamese – English business letters 3.2.2 Some common errors in terms of linguistics that the students committed when translating business letters from Vietnamese into English Question 6: The levels of difficulties expectedly mentioned in translation of the business correspondence With the purpose of collecting data about common errors in terms of linguistics that the students may commit in translating business letters from Vietnamese into English, question was designed to ask students what kinds of errors that they have committed The information collected is presented in the following line chart 54 40.00% 36,6% 35.00% 30.00% 23,3% 25.00% 20.00% 11,9% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 12,3% 5,8% 0.00% Student's opinion 3,4% 3,4% 3,3% Chart 3.7 The students’ attitude towards some common errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation (%) The above chart presents the students‟ outlook towards some common errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation The highest percent belongs to “Terminology” with 36,6% (11 students) The numbers of students circles “The use of articles” were students (23,3%) Comparing with “Preposition” choice, it was higher than 3,4% The remaining errors such as “Capitalization”, “Punctuation”, “Spelling”, “Using correct grammar” and “Tense” have similar numbers of student‟s choice without significant differences The result from question was totally compatible with the result from the translation test Errors in terminology always hold the highest percent Other grammatical errors like the use of articles, preposition, using correct grammar, account medium percent It obviously showed that students know what errors they usually commit This was the reason to discover why they made these errors 55 3.2.3 The causes of student’s errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation Question 7: In your opinion, what are the possible causes for errors in terms of linguistics in business letters translation? In order to collect information about the possible causes for the errors in terms of linguistics that students committed, question was designed to ask students if learning style and teaching and learning conditions are main causes or not The information collected is shown in the following chart 33,3% Learning style Teaching and learning conditions 66,6% Chart 3.8 The students’ attitude towards the possible causes for the errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation (%) The collected data showed that the numbers of students who considered the learning style as the possible cause for the errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation was almost equal with another one “teaching and learning conditions” There were 20 students (66,6%) agree that learning style is one of the causes make them get troubles in dealing with these errors The other cause remains 33,3% (10 students) 56 Question 8: In learning style, what causes lead to the mentioned-above errors of business letters translation that match with you? Question was designed to ask students what were the main causes for the above errors in students‟ learning style The data collected is presented in the following table Table 3.3 The students’ opinion towards learning style as a cause of the errors in business letters translation Opinions Answer Number Percentage (%) 19 63,4% 26,6% C You not work effectively in groups 10% Total 30 100% A You learn translation of business letters at class only B You not consult other business letters (both English and Vietnamese) or experts for business letters but depend only on textbooks and teachers The above table presents the students‟ opinion towards learning style as a cause of the errors in business letters translation There were up to 63,4% students who share that they learn business letters translation at class only The number of students depend only on textbooks and teachers account for 26,6% The causes of working in group ineffectively cover a small part with 10% (3 students) As clearly seen, most students spend time on translating business letters at class only, this was the reason why they were weak at grammar, vocabulary, writing skill, and terminology Therefore, the errors in terms of linguistics were inevitable 57 Question 9: In teaching and learning conditions, what causes lead to the mentioned-above errors of business letters translation that match with you? Question was designed to ask students what were the main causes for the above errors in teaching and learning conditions The data collected is presented in the following table Table 3.4 The students’ opinion towards teaching and learning conditions as the causes of the errors in business letters translation Opinions A Materials are boring and out of date Answer Number Percentage (%) 20% 30% 15 50% 30 100% B You have never given the opportunity to go to available workshops at the department for experience and observation C The department has never organized a meeting with participation of business letters translators to help you consult practical experience Total Up to 50% students agreed that they have never been taken part in any meeting with the attendance of experienced business letters translators which can help them exchange experiences mutually Another part is 30% that those have not been gone to available workshops at the department for experience and observation The number of the cause “Materials are boring and out of date” only accounted for 20% Generally, most students were clearly lacking practical experiences in business letters translation 58 3.4 Conclusion In this chapter, a combination of quantitative method via two instruments, namely translation test, questionnaire, helped reveal interesting points of similarities and disparities in order to triangulate and produce most profound and reliable information Outstanding outcomes could be summarized as follows: Common errors made by 4th year students Regarding linguistic errors, quantitative indicated that terminology posed the biggest challenges to students When analyzing questionnaires, terminology received the highest percentage of 24% , proving that all students agreed terminology posed a real aching obstacle among them Similarly, translation test revealed that there were 90 cases of terminology errors among total 325 errors Besides, it was all agreed by the instruments that grammatical aspects, including articles, punctuations, prepositions, using correct grammar students needed being worked on more by students The possible causes that lead to these errors are mainly students‟ learning style, and teaching and learning conditions Most students either learn business letters translation at class only or lack practical experiences 59 PART III: CONCLUSION Summary The study focuses on researching common errors committed by the fourth-year English students in translating business letters from Vietnamese into English The research was conducted at Foreign Languages Department, Hung Vuong University With the help from 30 students in K12 English Pedagogy, two research instruments (test and questionnaire) were used to find out common errors in terms of linguistics in Vietnamese – English business letters translation According to this basis, some proposals were suggested in order to overcome these errors In this study, the author presented literature review of translation, translation studies, translation methods, translation errors, business letters translation and its significance, types and characteristics The author researched and summarized common errors as: the use of articles, capitalization, preposition, punctuation, spelling, using correct grammar, tense, and terminology Then, the data was collected and analyzed in details The result showed that how much the errors that students made On that ground, some proposals were suggested to deal with these errors The suggestions were separated into students‟ part and lecturers‟ part that including the way to improve students‟ grammar and writing skill as well as supplement knowledge about the business letters Limitations After finishing the study, the author realized some limitations as following Firstly, the scope of the study was quite narrow when the study focuses on 30 students in K12 English Pedagogy only The author has not expanded the research on more participants yet Therefore, the result of the study cannot be generalized to a larger population of all students of English in Foreign Language Department Secondly, the study just used one test in order to find out the linguistic 60 errors Therefore, the result may reflect a part of the reality only Implications From the findings of the study, some implications were initiated as follows: 1- Provide useful knowledge for all of English learners to get better understanding about translation in general and business letters translation in particular 2- Provide examples about the errors in terms of linguistics in translating business letters from Vietnamese into English 3- Introduce the solutions to surmount these errors in order to get better translation for the students Suggestions for the further study Through research procedure, the author also offers some suggestions for the future study as following The study should carry out the experiment method on the suggested proposals in order to assess the degree of success of the proposals Inspire of the narrow scope and undervalue coverage, the research on theory matters, solving literature matters, opinions, research methods of business letters translation should be extended into different classes in order to make a great contribution to build solid foundation for students 61 REFERENCES In Vietnam Do Minh Hoang (2012), “The study of the characteristics of business English and functional theories on its translation” Hai Phong University, Vietnam Duong Thuy Trang and Tran Van Tuan (2011), “A Review of Business English Translation” Ha Noi University, Vietnam Ha Anh Tu (2017), “Common errors committed by the fourth-year English linguistics students in translating legal documents into English” Hung Vuong University, Phu Tho, Vietnam Nguyen Trong Dan (1997), “A study on some difficulties of translating business correspondence” Vietnam National University, Vietnam In the world Andreea Rosalia Olteanu (2012), Errors and difficulties in translating economic texts, Editura Sfântul Ierarh 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HCM city: NXB TPHCM ShuLan (2012), “On the Text Conjunction and Its Translation in English Business Letters” Snell-Hornby, M (1988), Translation Studies: An integrated Approach, Amsterdam and Philadelphia Wang, B (2009), Translating publicity texts in the light of the Skopos theory: Problems and suggestions, Translation journal XieYongqiu (2013), “A Brief Analysis on the Translation Skills of Business Correspondence “ http://zbook.vn/default.aspx Retrieved on March 10, 2018 http://www.zeepedia.com/ Retrieved on March 3, 2018 https://condolencemessages.net/ Retrieved on April 20, 2018 https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia Retrieved on April 4, 2018 64 ... the translations of business letters and business related materials 2 Translation in general and translation business letters in particular are common job of student‟s majority in English linguistics... forth The second categorization of Newmark was logical and appropriate to evaluate the quality of translations in general, especially the translations of undergraduates as they were at the early... arrives at a mutual conclusion that translation errors should be classified into three main types including pragmatic translation errors, cultural translation errors and linguistic translation