INTRODUCTION
Statement of the problem
“Translation studies” has been recognized as an interdisciplinary field with
“cultural turn” since the 1980s (Bochner, 1981; Snell-Hornby, 1988; Leppihalme, 1997; Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998; Snell-Hornby, 2006; Bassnett, 2013; Katan, 2014; Munday, 2016) Among the challenges of translating across cultures, translating culture-specific references (hereafter CSRs) is regarded as a tough task (Robinson, 2002)
Accordingly, there has been an emergence of research on CSRs (Kourosh &
Tahmineh, 2010; Qing, 2010; Fahim & Mazaheri 2013; Salehi, 2013; Balaban &
Caclayan, 2014; Bracai, 2015; Mono, Saragih, Nababan & Lubis, 2015; Moradi, Rahbar, & Olfati, 2015; Sasaninejad & Delpazir, 2015; Anari & Sanjarami, 2016;
Farahani & Mokhtari 2016; Mansoor, Khan, Zuhra, Kamran & Arif 2016)
However, the focus of these studies is to describe strategies to translate CSRs To date, there has been a shortage of studies with a view to assessing the translation of CSRs Inadequate translation of CSRs probably results in misinterpretations between authors and target readers Thus, the translation assessment of CSRs deserves attention The role of translation assessment has also been well defined since the 1970s through Holmes‟ map (cited in Toury, 1995, p 10)
Figure 1.1 Holmes‟ map of translation studies (cited in Toury 1995, p 10)
It can be seen that translation criticism is one of the most significant realms in “Applied” branch in translation studies The “Applied” branch of Holmes‟s map is specified below in order to locate the position of translation assessment in the field
Figure 1.2 Applied branch in the Holmes‟ map of translation studies
(cited in Toury 1995, p 10) Translation criticism, which serves as an umbrella term, subsumes revision, editing, review, and evaluation of translation There have been various viewpoints on the evaluation of translation Initially, Toury (1995) indicates that the evaluation of translation includes the marking of student translations and the reviews of published translations Throughout years, the two terms “translation evaluation” and
“translation assessment” tend to be deployed interchangeably (Maier, 2000, p 137;
Rodriguez, 2007, p 5) Since this study focuses on a published translation, the term
“translation assessment” is consistently employed throughout this study The term
“translation evaluation” tends to place a value on a translation in terms of a grade or pass mark in translation pedagogy context (McAlester‟s, 1999, p 169)
To date, translation assessment in Applied branch merits special attention (Wilss, 1996; House, 1997; Nord, 1997; Schọffner, 1997; Al-Quinai, 2000;
Brunette, 2000; Lauscher, 2000; Melis & Hurtado, 2001; Doyle, 2003; Brione, 2007; Mossop, 2007; Colina, 2008; Drugan, 2013; Colina, 2015; House, 2015) It should be noted that translation assessment refers to not only detecting the errors and drawbacks of the translation but also bringing to light the successful aspects of the translation Nonetheless, the domain of translation assessment has still been under-researched (Hoàng Văn Vân, 2006; Lê Hoài Ân, 2006; Vũ Văn Đại, 2012; Lê Hùng Tiến, 2015; Lê Hùng Tiến, 2018), particularly in the context of English- Vietnamese translation
Therefore, this study attempts to assess the Vietnamese translation of English CSRs in a literary text In order to fulfill the aim, the literary text entitled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” (2014) (hereafter HPPS) is selected Firstly, it was written in English by the eminent British novelist J K Rowling with literary talents who is known as “the world‟s first billionaire author” Secondly, this text has become a literary phenomenon since its first publication in 1997 It has been translated into more than 80 languages, and it accommodates a variety of CSRs that are typical of a literary text Thirdly, it was translated into Vietnamese by Lý Lan, a Vietnamese novelist and translator The Vietnamese translation was published by Trẻ Publisher Thus, the selection of this text is relevant for the research aim In the present study, the Vietnamese translation of English CSRs in “HPPS” (2014) is assessed from House‟s functional-pragmatic perspective (2015) After operating House‟s model in the context of English-Vietnamese translation, the theoretical supplementation for such context is drawn out
Due to the aforementioned reasons, the study entitled “English-Vietnamese translation assessment of culture-specific references: A functional-pragmatic perspective” is conducted to fulfill part of the existing gaps in translation assessment of CSRs in the context of English-Vietnamese translation.
Research aim and question
The overarching aim of this study is to assess the English-Vietnamese translation of CSRs in a literary text from the functional-pragmatic perspective of House‟s model (2015) After operating House‟s model in the context of English-Vietnamese translation, the theoretical supplementation for such context is drawn out The theoretical supplementation is of significance since House‟s model is originally developed for the language pair of English-German
In order to fulfill the overarching aim, the English literary text “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” (2014) is chosen for the aforementioned reasons in section 1
The research aim is formulated into the following research question:
To what extent are English culture-specific references in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (2014) and their Vietnamese translations equivalent from the functional-pragmatic perspective?
The thesis attempts to offer the answer to the research question with the focus devoting to the three groups of culture-specific references, namely proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects The rationales for the scope of the study are justified in the following section.
Scope of the study
The present study focuses on assessing the English-Vietnamese translation of the three categories of CSRs at lexical level in a literary text, namely proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects There are several underlying reasons for the choice
Firstly, these categories are thorny problems that translators often confront when translating a literary text Different communities have different systems of proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects Hence, translating these three groups entails translating two cultures, which is an inevitably challenging task for translators
Secondly, these groups tend to be embedded with the underlying attitudes and the pragmatic purposes of literary authors In other words, these groups play a crucial role in revealing authors‟ attitudes and characterizing the protagonists of literary texts, which contributes to the success of literary texts and consequently would merit attention
Thirdly, these groups occur in the chosen literary text at high frequency, which plays a part in the plot development of the narrative The pilot study was conducted with the categories of CSRs in line with CSRs taxonomy proposed by Nida (1964), Klingberg (1986), and Newmark (1988) Among CSRs identified in “HPPS”, proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects become prominent with more than 50 percent in terms of occurence in the text (see Appendix A, B, C)
Focusing on the three groups of CSRs would facilitate the in-depth analysis and assessment.
Contributions of the study
Theoretically, the supplementation for House‟s functional-pragmatic model
(2015) in assessing the English-Vietnamese translation of CSRs is highlighted The supplementation is the extension of House‟s model with the adoption of Attitudinal resources of Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005) The extended supplementation has facilitated the researcher to uncover the author‟s implied attitudes embedded in the CSRs in the literary text to fulfill the assessment purpose
Methodologically, the contribution of the study lies in the textual analysis from the functional-pragmatic perspective triangulated with the interview data of the ST author, the translator, other translators and an expert in the field This method was employed to ensure the adequacy of data collected and the reliability of research findings
Practically, the research findings furnish publishers and translators with the strategies to translate CSRs in a literary text The findings of this study could be relatable to other English literary texts containing proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects sharing similar features described in this study
Concerning proper names, compensation strategy is suggested to compensate for linguistic and cultural differences between English and Vietnamese Besides, the use of TL-oriented translation strategy is recommended in dealing with person reference forms from English to Vietnamese In terms of regional dialects, neutralization serves as a strategy to minimize undesirable side effects
Additionally, compensation strategy is proposed in which neutralization is employed together with the use of colloquialism to reveal the unique traits of the characters.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Culture-specific references
The answer to the research question calls for the review of the key issues, namely culture, CSRs, classifications of CSRs, the three chosen groups of CSRs as well as translation strategies to handle them, which is attempted in the following section
2.1.1 Notion of culture-specific references
From the perspective of the nature of components shaping culture, the notion of “culture” encompasses a wide range of elements, namely habits, customs, traditions, beliefs, feelings, myths, legends, religious elements, geographical elements, and so forth that are shared and accepted in a society (Hall, 1959; Levine
& Adelman, 1993; Katan, 1999; Thrivenia, 2001; Triandis, 2004; Nguyễn Quang, 2008; Jackson, 2014; Katan, 2014)
Accordingly, though different in wording, the theorists (Nord, 1997;
Newmark, 1988; Davies, 2003; Hagfors, 2003; Tirkkonen-Condit, 2004; Gambier, 2007; Baker, 2011) share the same viewpoint that a culture-specific reference is:
“ a social phenomenon of a culture A that is regarded as relevant by the members of this culture and, when compared with a corresponding social phenomenon in a culture B, is found to be specific in culture B ”
(Nord, 1997, p 137) For the sake of terminological consistency, the term “culture-specific references” (Gambier, 2007, p 159) is employed throughout the study There is a link between the notion of “culture” and “culture-specific references” in which
CSRs also cover various aspects of daily life in a community The holistic picture to demonstrate the notions of “culture” as well as CSRs is displayed below:
Figure 2.1.1 Iceberg Model of Culture (adapted from Hall, 1995; Katan, 2014, p 43)
It can be seen from the two above iceberg models that there are two main layers of culture including the surface and the underlying layer The surface layer embraces symbols and cultural artifacts such as language, clothing, architecture, and gestures The underlying layer embraces attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, rituals, and practices The underlying layer contributes to shaping the surface layer Based on the holistic picture of “culture” expressed via the iceberg model, the categories of CSRs, which are classified by several authors (Klingberg, 1986; Newmark, 1988;
- Linguistics (proper names, puns, idioms, etc.)
The present study focuses on assessing the English-Vietnamese translation of the three categories of CSRs in a literary text, namely proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects for the following reasons Firstly, focusing on these three groups facilitates the in-depth analysis and assessment Secondly, these groups are common problems that translators face when dealing with a literary text
Thirdly, these groups are integrally related to the characterization in a literary text
Characterization refers to methods that a literary author employs to reveal a character‟s traits, feelings, and so forth to readers Unarguably, characterization tends to be regarded as deeply significant in literary texts The names, the dialogs, and the thoughts of a character reflect the characters‟ unique traits in a literary text
The dialogs and the thoughts of a character are reflected via the use of person reference forms and regional dialects To some extent, other CSRs, namely fauna, flora, foods, drinks, and measurement units, seem less significant than those related to characterization in a literary text Thus, albeit culturally ingrained, other CSRs such as fauna, flora, foods, drinks, and measurement units are not intended to fall within the scope of the study
In this study, the aim, as well as the scope, is to assess the English- Vietnamese translation of proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects The three categories are significant aspects of language Considering the above iceberg models, these aspects of language stay visible on the surface layer
There exists a deeper layer of culture pertaining to attitudes and values underlying the use of language on the surface Thus, to generate adequate assessment, not only the linguistic surface of the three categories but also a further elaboration for the underlying layer of attitudes is examined in this study The concepts of proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects are reviewed in the following section
A proper name is generally perceived as a name for an individual, a place, or an organization written with all initials capitalized (Oxford Dictionary of English)
English and Vietnamese follow their own naming practices (Wardhaugh, 2006)
Accordingly, proper names are culture-specific references that deserve attention
Naming practices in Vietnamese have its own unique features According to Lương Văn Hy (1990, p 88), naming practices in Vietnamese, influenced by the Confucian monarch, like other categories of names, reinforces the male-oriented kinship He also recapitulates that a personal name in Vietnamese normally includes patronym (surname), middle name, and personal name (first name) In terms of patronym “họ”, “họ” refers to both a patrilineage and a bilateral kindred, and also a patronym Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1975, p 92) shows that the “Nguyễn” patronym tends to be the most commonplace in Vietnam (93%) Other patronyms in their order of popularity are “Trần, Lê, Phan, Phạm, Hoàng, Võ/ Vũ, Đặng, Bùi, Đinh, Trịnh, Hồ, Đỗ” With regard to middle and personal names, a middle name is habitually used as a gender marker While “Thị” is commonly used for females, the Sino- Vietnamese term “Văn” (literature) tends to be a popular male middle name In the sociocultural system of the pre-20th century, the mastery of the Confucian literature was a well-trodden path to power, the dominant use of “Văn” for males reinforced the legitimacy of male power In terms of personal names, male and female names are frequently chosen among the Sino-Vietnamese words for entities in the universe For example, Nguyệt (moon), Phượng (phoenix), Dung (beauty), Tuyết (snow), Thuỷ (water) for female names, and Lâm (forest), Long (dragon), Hùng/
Dũng/ Cường (strength), Sơn (mountain), Hải (ocean), Phong (wind) for male names Generally, naming practices in Vietnam, influenced by the Confucian monarch, underpin the male-oriented kinship (Lương Văn Hy, 1990) Vietnamese names are chosen according to rules that reflect Vietnamese society and culture
Similarly, British naming practices also have its own cultural attributes A personal name in English normally includes a personal name (first name) and a patronym (surname), and middle names tend to be rarely used (Wilson, 1998)
Similar to personal naming in Western Europe, names in Britain were also first influenced by the Roman names The Middle Ages witnessed the advent of the Germanic names, the Anglo-Saxons names, and the Christian names Names in modern times were influenced by religion with the advent of Saints‟ names and Protestantism In recent times, the choice of first names has been freed from the constraints of family and religion In Britain, most people have two given names, although one of them, commonly the middle name, is rarely used Early surnames might be descriptive in four ways (Fowler, 2012) Many surnames originated from a region, such as Calder, Blair, and Waleys Surnames might derive from a craft, namely Mason, Cook, Fowler, Smith, and Gow Surnames might also indicate kinship, the particular relationship being fixed by a prefix (Mac) or a word ending (- son) such as Anderson, Johnson, and Macpherson Surnames might also be from nicknames, namely Grant (Grand) and Meikle In a nutshell, the picture of English and Vietnamese personal names shows that names are not given randomly; they are chosen according to rules that reflect fundamental features of the society and culture concerned
It becomes highly intricate concerning the names that bear contextual meanings within a literary text The previous studies (Aixelá, 1996; Davies, 2003;
Hagfors, 2003; Brondsted & Dollerup, 2004; Fernandes, 2006) underpin that proper names in a literary text might fulfill functions of provoking connotations, carrying metaphorical meanings, displaying characters‟ traits, disclosing the development of the storyline, creating the aesthetic appeal of a literary text, or entertaining the readers Thus, the present study is inclined to focus on the analysis and translation assessment of proper names given to literary characters in a literary text
Translation assessment approaches
In line with the research aim, this section attempts to revisit the translation assessment approaches, the notion of translation, translation equivalence, and translation assessment models developed out of these approaches The approaches are critically reviewed in order to constitute achievements and identify the gaps, which contributes to exploring the model that fits the research aim
“Evaluating the quality of a translation presupposes a theory of translation
Thus different views of translation lead to different concepts of translational quality, and hence different ways of assessing it”
(House, 1997, p 1) Among a diversity of perspectives on how a translation should be assessed, it is generally agreed that there are three major approaches, namely mentalist views, response-based approach, and linguistics-based approach (Phạm Thị Thuỷ, 2013;
House, 2015; Lê Hùng Tiến, 2015; Lê Hùng Tiến, 2018) Mentalist views in TQA, known as the pre-linguistic approach, came into being before the 19 th century In mentalist views, the translation assessment is subjective and intuitive The assessment of a translated text depends on each individual‟s subject opinion Thus, in this study, this approach is not adopted as the theoretical frame because the aim of this study is to provide the evidence-based assessment between the ST and TT
Hence, the two notable approaches of response-based and linguistics-based approach will be discussed below
2.2.1.1 Translation in response-based approach
Until the 1970s, the scholars (Holz-Mọnttọri, 1986, as cited in Snell-Hornby, 2006; Nord, 1997; D‟Hulst, 1997) in Germany introduced the Skopos-related approach, focusing on the purpose of a translation and the responses of the target readers to the translation The term “Skopos” denotes the aim or purpose of a translation (Vermeer, 1989, p 173) According to this approach, any final judgment of translation quality should be grounded on the sample receptors (Nida, 1964)
Although it is reasonable to take into account the response of the target readers to determine the success of a translation, it remains not highly reliable to be merely grounded on the intuition of a group of the target readers to reach the final statement of the translation quality
Furthermore, according to the Skopos theory, the importance of the ST is lower than the TT The status of “equivalence” in this approach is specified in the rules of Reiò and Vermeer (Reiò & Vermeer, 1984) The five rules adhere to the hierarchical order with the Skopos rule predominating: (1) A translation is determined by its Skopos; (2) A TT is an offer of information in a target culture and
TL concerning an offer of information in a source culture and SL; (3) A TT does not initiate an offer of information in a clearly reversible way; (4) A TT must be internally coherent; (5) A TT must be coherent with the ST It is indicative that the fidelity rule is of less significance than intratextual coherence (fourth rule), which are both subordinate to the Skopos (first rule), which reveals the low status of ST and equivalence in translation assessment
There have been criticisms towards Skopos theory that merits attention
Since Skopos theory prioritizes the purpose of the translation and the status of equivalence is lowered in this approach, Skopos theory sounds merely valid for non-literary texts such as news, scientific texts, and tourist information booklets
(Nord, 1997; Schọffer, 1997; Munday, 2016) The researcher shares a similar opinion with this argument because Skopos theory is not strictly concerned with the micro-linguistic features of the ST and the translation of these micro-level features into the TT “Even if the skopos is adequately fulfilled, it may be inadequate at the stylistic or semantic levels of individual segments” (Munday, 2016, p 81)
Linguistic features play a prominent role in literary texts, enabling authors to convey aesthetic values embedded in texts Therefore, the micro-level features of the ST via the ST analysis could not be neglected in literary translation This study aims to assess the distinctive linguistic and cultural features including proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects in a literary text; thus, Skopos theory seems less appropriate for the research aim
2.2.1.2 Translation in linguistics-based approach
Rather earlier than the response-based approach, the linguistically oriented approach in TQA emerged in the 1950s Whilst the concept of equivalence has not been prioritized by Holz-Mọnttọri (1986), Vermeer (1989, 2000) and Snell-Hornby
(1988, 2006), equivalence has been widely advocated by Nida (1964), Catford
(1965), Nida (1975), Kade (1968 as cited in Baker and Saldanha, 2009), Wilss
(1982, 1996), Koller (1979), Pym (2010), House (1997, 2015) In contrast to the response-based approach, equivalence plays a paramount role in the linguistics- based approach
Developing out of the linguistic approach, the researcher adopts a similar standpoint with House (2015, p 23) that:
“Translation is the replacement of a text in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the target language.”
Two points could be drawn from House‟s definition in relation to the aim of this study Firstly, “pragmatics” is integral to fulfill the aim of assessing the English-Vietnamese translation of the three types of CSRs, namely proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects in a literary text because “pragmatics” studies the use of language in contexts (Richards, Platt & Weber, 1985; Nguyễn Đức Dân, 1998; Đỗ Hữu Châu, 2002; Nguyễn Thiện Giáp, 2004; Đỗ Thị Kim Liên, 2005; Võ Đại Quang, 2005; Green, 2012; Leech, 2016) In this study, the meanings of CSRs are construed in their specific contexts; therefore, they should be approached from the pragmatic perspective For example, it is requisite to examine the context in order to identify the Vietnamese equivalent for the “I-you” dyad in English
Secondly, it is “meaning” that should be preserved during translating across cultures The concept of “equivalence” links to the preservation of “meaning” across two different lingua-cultures The three aspects of “meaning” relevant to translation are the semantic, pragmatic, and textual aspects The semantic aspect of meaning denotes the relationship of linguistic units or symbols to their referents in some possible world Regarding the pragmatic aspect of meaning , “pragmatics is about meaning in speech situations” (House, 2015, p 22) Other academics (Richards, Platt & Weber, 1985; Green, 2012; Leech, 2016) also agree that pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication or the study of intended meaning Therefore, pragmatic aspect is integral in TQA because translation deals with language in use Concerning the textual aspect of meaning proposed by House (2015), a text is any stretch of language in which the individual components relate to one another and form a coherent whole; hence, a text is a linkage of sentences into a larger unit
On that account, the approach of House (2015) to equivalence tends to be relevant for the research aim in which equivalence should be the preservation of meaning across two different lingua-cultures It is stressed that translation involves the transferring of “meaning” in contexts across cultures, rather than dealing with isolated words without contexts
TQA could be systematized into the following areas, including (1) quantitative or qualitative which is based on statistical measurements, questionnaires, interviews from target readers, and so forth; (2) formative (measuring progress and giving feedback in translator training context); (3) summative (measuring the results of learning in translator training context); (4) non-comparative (studying merely the translation text); and (5) comparative (studying both ST and TT)
House’s functional-pragmatic model
The operation of House‟s model (1997, 2015) starts from the notion of text which is clarified as follows:
Translation is always the substitution of one text, written or spoken, for another, and above all a special relationship between languages and cultures
(Peeters as cited in Sidiropoulou, 2005)
A text is “any meaningful stretch of language” (Derewianka, 1990, p 17) or
“a piece of language in use, language that is functional” (Halliday & Hasan, 1985, p 10) Though divergent in wording, most authors share a similar viewpoint with House (2015) that a text is any stretch of language in which individual components relate to one another and form a coherent whole “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” (2014) is a text according to these definitions
In order to explore the function of a text, “textual profile” should be examined as the outcome of the linguistic-pragmatic analysis of the text in its context of situation Martin and Rose (2008) adopt a same stance with House in terms of text in context They place the text in the heart of their model and locate the text in its “context of situation” that allows a determination of its register realized by Field, Tenor, and Mode Locating the text in its “context of culture” means identifying how text achieves its social purposes via the genre description of the text The correlation between text, register, and genre is illustrated in the following figure:
Figure 2.3 Three levels of text analysis (adapted from Martin & Rose, 2008, p 17) The above figure illustrates the relationship between text, context of situation and context of culture realized through the analysis of register and genre In the following section, the notions of “context of situation” and “context of culture” will be defined
2.3.1.2 Context of situation and context of culture
As explained in section 1.2.1 “Text”, texts are different because of their different purposes Texts also differ according to the particular situation in which they are being used Butt, Fahey, Spinks, and Yallop (2012) pinpoint that language always takes place in a context Hence, the terms “context of situation” and “context of culture” are clarified in relation to House‟s model (2015) as follows
The two terms were coined by Malinowski (1923, 1938) Context of situation denotes the environment, time, and place in which a word, a phrase, a sentence or discourse occurs, and the relationship between the participants Context of culture refers to the meanings and assumptions shared among a community, the culturally evolved expectations of ways of behaving and getting things done
Genre Register variables Text‟s functions
(Hammond et al., 1992, p 2) Firth (1957) and Hymes (1967) also affirm that linguistics is the study of meaning and that meaning cannot be divorced from contexts In other words, contexts and text should not be viewed as discrete entities
The relationship between language and its contexts is illustrated in the following figure:
Figure 2.4 Relation between language and social context
It is justifiable that language can only be fully understood when these two aspects are fully understood by the interlocutors As an illustration, depending on the “context of situation” and “context of culture”, a person named Nguyễn Thị A could be called as “cô, chị, ả, mụ 1 , and so forth” in Vietnamese The selection of
“cô, chị, ả, mụ” closely rests on the specific social role relationship, the social attitude, and the level of intimacy Accordingly, the translator, as a mediator between cultures, has to select, from among all the potential meanings available, the one that is relevant to the actual situation and the culture he or she is dealing with
1 Lương Văn Hy (1990, p.173) lists the use of “chị, cô” by using the kinship notations F (father), M(mother),
S (son), D (daughter), B (Brother), Z (sister), H (husband), W (wife), + (senior), - (junior): chị: +Z, F+ZD, F+BD, M+ZD, M+BD, FM+ZDD, FM+ZSD, FM+BDD, FM+BSD, FF+Z DD, FF+ZSD,
FF+BDD, FF+BSD, MM+ZDD, MM+ZSD, MM+BDD, MM+BSD, MF+ZDD, MF+ZSD, MF+BDD, MF+ZSD cô: F-Z, [F+Z,] FF-BD, [FF+BD, FF-ZD, FF+ZD, FM-ZD, FM+ZD, FM-BD, FM+BD] ; [M-Z, MM-
BD, MM-ZD, MF-BD, MF-ZD]
“Chị”, “cô” can also be used between non-related people outside the family network to convey solidarity
“Ả, mụ” tend to provoke negative connotations in Vietnamese
Context of culture Context of situation
In short, the aforementioned clarification of a text, the context of situation and context of culture leads to the House‟s adoption of theories underlying her model
2.3.1.3 Function of text and function of language
Translation deals with texts and language embedded in texts; therefore, both the notion of text and language embedded in texts need clarifying Hence, this section distinguishes “function of text” and “function of language”
The function of a text refers to “the use that a text has in the particular context of situation” (Lyons, 1969, p 434)
Concerning the function of language, the functional viewpoint to language in line with House‟s functional-pragmatic perspective is adopted in this study because people use language in different situations for different purposes To explain the functional approach to language, Derewianka (1990, p 3) pinpoints that:
A functional approach to language looks at how language enables us to do things, to share information, to inquire, to express attitudes, […] It is concerned with how people use a real language for real purposes At the heart of a functional model of language is an emphasis on meaning and on how language is involved in the construction of meaning…
Concerning functional approach to language, Halliday (1973) proposes three meta-functions, including the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual functions of language First, language has the representational function that allows us to encode meanings of experience (experiential meanings) Second, language has the interpersonal function that allows us to encode meanings of attitudes, interaction, and relationships (interpersonal meanings) Third, language has the textual function: we use it to organize our experiential and interpersonal meanings into a coherent whole, so it allows us to encode meanings of text development (textual meaning)
From House‟s perspective, the two functions, namely ideational and interpersonal functions, are “comparable to the notion of language used in the other approaches” House (1997, p 32) refers Halliday‟s textual function to the “internal organization of linguistic items” that fulfills the other functions Each text is a “self- contained instance of language” and should perform its functions such as ideational and interpersonal with one being dominant (House, 1997, p 35) House (2016, p
77) explains that “the linguistic correlates of the situational dimensions are the means with which the textual function is realized, and the textual function is the result of a linguistic-pragmatic analysis along the dimensions with each dimension contributing to the two functional components, the ideational and the interpersonal”
Therefore, House (1977, p 37) states that her model “adopts Halliday‟s terms ideational and interpersonal functional components”
House‟s model (2015) operates on three levels, including Language/ text;
Register (Field, Tenor, Mode), Genre and Function of an individual text House employs Hallidayan terms “Field, Tenor, Mode” for Register analysis and Genre
The model is operationalized as follows:
Participant relationship + Author’s provenance + Social relationship + Social attitude + Participation
Previous studies on translation assessment of culture-specific references 52
The following table represents a review of previous studies related to CSRs in general as well as the three groups of CSRs, namely proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects in particular As articulated in the scope of this study, these three categories of CSRs at the lexical level in a literary text are selected The review of previous studies facilitates the detection of the research gaps that this study attempts to fill in The review of previous studies related to CSRs in general as well as the three groups of CSRs is delineated as follows:
Table 2.2.1 Review of previous studies on CSRs
Author Research problem Research aim Context Methodology Key findings
Davis (2003) The treatment of culture- specific references in translations of the Harry Potter books
Identify translation strategies adopted by various translators and consider their effectiveness in dealing with particular problems
SL: English TL: French, German, Chinese
Descriptive (1) A compromise involving a mixture of translation strategies (2) it may sometimes be helpful to adopt a macro perspective which looks at CSRs in terms of their joint contribution to the development of the whole text
Inggs (2003) From Harry to Garri:
Strategies for the Transfer of Culture and Ideology in Russian Translations of Two English fiction stories
Identify translation strategies in dealing with cultural items in two fiction stories
Descriptive The translators are shown not to have attempted to situate the stories in a Russian context
Culture-Specific Items in the Ancient Chinese Official System
Identify translation strategies and consider their effectiveness in dealing with cultural items
SL: Chinese TL: English Descriptive & comparative Three common strategies used: Linguistic translation, naturalization and absolute universalization
(2010) A comparative analysis of culture-specific items in two English translation of Savushun
Identify translation strategies in dealing with cultural items SL: English
TL: Persian Descriptive & comparative Neither of the translators used a single strategy in rendering culture-specific items and both had different trends towards using conservative and substitutive strategies
(2012) Translation of Culture- specific items from English into Lithuanian: the Case of Joanne Harris‟s Novel
Analyze translation strategies for Culture-specific items SL: English
Qualitative the strategy of localization has been used most often
A comparative study of Translation Strategies applied in Dealing with Culture-Specific Items of Romance novels before and after the Islamic Revolution of Iran
Identify translation strategies for Culture-specific items before and after the Islamic Revolution of Iran
Conservative and substitution are used
Salehi Strategies applied by Native Identify strategies applied by SL: English Qualitative Absolute universalization is frequently
(2013) and Non-Native Translators to transfer Persian Culture- Specific Items: A case study on an Iranian novel
Native and Non-Native Translators to transfer Persian Culture-Specific Items
TL: Persian used (deleted foreign connotation and choose a neutral reference)
Common cultural Turkish words in Albanian and Greek languages
Discuss common cultural Turkish words in Albanian and Greek languages
Foreignization in Translating Culture-specific references
Identify translation strategies in dealing with CSRs SL: English
TL: Arabic Descriptive Combination of Domestication and
Domesticating Harry: An analysis of the Indonesian Translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone
Identify translation techniques and consider their effectiveness in translating culture-specific items in Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone
Descriptive - a more domesticating approach is used
- translator‟s choice to foreignize or domesticate may be constrained by external circumstances such as publisher‟s protocols, the norms and the mores of the target culture
Culture-Specific Concepts Identify translation strategies in dealing with Culture-specific Concepts
Descriptive Various translation strategies are suggested
Translation strategies of cultural words in Animal Farm into Indonesian
Identify translation strategies in dealing with cultural words SL: English
Descriptive, qualitative Various translation strategies: addition, reduction, transposition, synonymy, cultural adaptation, deletion
Culture-Specific Items from Persian into English
Identify the most frequent strategy used to translate Culture-Specific Items
Qualitative Pragmatic explicitation is most frequently used
The comparative analysis of Culture-Specific Items in Translation of the Novel
“Spartacus” from English into Persian
Identify the strategy used to translate Culture-Specific Items SL: English
TL: Persian Descriptive, comparative TL-oriented translation strategy is used
Anari, Application of Baker‟s Identify the most frequent strategy SL: English Qualitative Various translation strategies
An analysis of Cultural Specific Items in English Translation of Hedayat‟s
“Blind Owl” based on Domestication and Foreignization Dichotomy
Identify translation strategies in dealing with CSRs SL: English
TL: Persian Qualitative Simplification and naturalization were the two strategies mostly used by the translator
A descriptive study of culture-related terms in translation of Harry Potter Novel from English to Urdu language
Identify translation strategies in translating cultural related terms SL: English
TL: Urdu Descriptive qualitative Localization and transformation are predominantly used
The translation into Vietnamese of culture- specific items in the novel
Identify the most frequently used translation strategies in translating cultural related terms
Preservation is most frequently used with proper names
PREVIOUS STUDIES ON PROPER NAMES AS A CATEGORY OF “CULTURE-SPECIFIC REFERENCE”
Bantas (2010) Names, nicknames, and titles in translation Analyze meanings embedded in names, nicknames, and titles in Text:
English Descriptive translators are pledged to give the reader of translations what the author intended for the reader of the original, Nilsen &
Naming tropes and schemes in J.K Rowling‟s Harry Potter‟s Book
Discuss Rowling‟s rhetorical artistry in the names she created
Descriptive Rhetorical devices in the names created by the author
Proper names and Culture- specific items in the Arabic Translation of Harry Potter
Investigate the transfer of proper names and references to food in the Arabic translation of the first three Harry Potter volumes
SL: English TL: Arabic Descriptive Predominant translation strategy: simplification Foreignization is involved; domestication is virtually absent
Samuel (2010) Translating African Proper names in literary texts Analyze proper names in Yoruba culture and the translation of African names in three African texts
SL: African (names) TL: French
Descriptive The study allows a foreign reader to have an insight into the African world-view and the socio-cultural values of African names
Dollerup The names in Harry Potter Discuss the translation of some of the names in Harry Potter books SL: English
TL: Danish, Descriptive Predominant translation strategy: non-translation of names
Mythic and Occultist Naming Strategies in Harry Potter
Analyze the meanings of names in seven Harry Potter novels Descriptive The names complement the characterization, guide the narrative; constitute metaphorical cues to story Manini (2014) Meaningful literary names:
Their Forms and Functions, and their Translation
Identify technical problems of translating proper nouns
Descriptive Compensation strategy is suggested in translating meaningful literary proper names
The translation of Proper Names from English to Lithuanian in “Steve Jobs” by W Isaacson
Identify translation strategy for proper names in S Jobs‟ biography SL: English
Descriptive The strategies of localization, preservation, transformation and creation are frequently used
(2017) Rendering literary proper names in another language:
The works of Flann O‟Brien as a case in point
Analyze meanings of proper names in literary texts SL: English
Descriptive The names in O‟Brien‟s work bear some connotative aspects and meanings
PREVIOUS STUDIES ON TRANSLATION OF DIALECTS AS A CATEGORY OF “CULTURE-SPECIFIC REFERENCES”
American Vernacular English into German: The problem of “Jim” in Mark Twain‟s Huckleberry Finn
Discuss Strategies for translating dialects in Huckleberry Finn SL: English
TL: German Descriptive There are always tensions and trade-offs for the translators in translating dialects
(2012) Strategies for translating dialects and slang with references to Shaw‟s Pygmalion and Bond‟s Saved
Discuss Strategies for translating dialects and slang with references to Shaw‟s Pygmalion and Bond‟s Saved
5 strategies: dialect compilation, pseudo dialect translation, parallel dialect translation, dialect localization, standardization
Rosa (2012) Translating place: linguistic variation in translation Discuss problems involved in the translation of dialects Descriptive Rendering ST dialect by TL standard has the disadvantage of losing the special effect, while rendering dialect by dialect runs the risk of unintended effect Leppihalme
The two faces of standardization
Discuss the choice of standardization in dealing with dialects
Descriptive Standardization can lead to loss of the linguistic identity of the work It suggests that Standardization is not only necessarily readers may be more interested in other aspects of the TT
J.K Rowling‟s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer‟s Stone
Identify the functions, meanings of dialects in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer‟s Stone
Descriptive The manner in which Hagrid‟s speech draws upon stereotypes of a more rural culture of the U.K in order to negatively characterize him as “dumb”; the author employs this diversity to make him lovable due to the appearance of innocence Szymanska
(2017) The treatment of geographical dialect in literary translation from the perspective of relevance theory
Discuss problems involved in the translation of literary works that apply linguistic varieties, especially geographical dialects
Descriptive Geographical dialects serve as communicative clue; Neutralization is used to avoid side effects; Compensation strategy is discussed
PREVIOUS STUDIES ON PERSON REFERENCE FORMS AS A CATEGORY OF “CULTURE-SPECIFIC REFERENCES”
(1984) “Brother” and “Uncle”: An analysis of rules, structural contradictions, and meaning in Vietnamese kinship
Analyze the meanings of Vietnamese kinship Vietnamese Descriptive The study provides an insightful account into meanings and use of Vietnamese kinship
Thuyết (1988) Vài nhận xét về từ xưng hô trong tiếng Việt (Several remarks on person reference forms in
Provide several remarks on Vietnamese person reference forms Vietnamese Descriptive The study provides an insightful and comprehensive account into Vietnamese system of person reference
(1990) Discursive practices and linguistic meanings The Vietnamese system of person reference
Investigate insights into Vietnamese system of person reference
Vietnamese Descriptive The study provides an insightful and comprehensive account into Vietnamese system of person reference
Chiến (1992) Từ xưng hô trong tiếng Việt
(Person reference forms in Vietnamese)
Investigate Vietnamese system of person reference Vietnamese Descriptive Several features of Vietnamese system of person reference are provided
(1996) Xưng hô trong gia đình người Việt (Person reference forms in Vietnamese families)
Investigate Vietnamese addressing forms in family Vietnamese Descriptive Several features of Vietnamese addressing forms in family are provided
Mai Xuân Huy Các cung bậc của giao tiếp Investigate addressing forms of Vietnamese Descriptive Several features of addressing forms of
(Degrees in communication of Vietnamese spouses)
Ly Kha (1998) Thử tìm hiểu về danh từ thân tộc của tiếng Việt (Investigation into kinship terms in Vietnamese)
Investigate Vietnamese kinship terms Vietnamese Descriptive Several features of Vietnamese kinship terms are provided
(2002) Từ chỉ quan hệ thân tộc trong tri nhận của người Anh và người Việt (Kinship terms in the cognition of the English and Vietnamese)
Investigate Vietnamese kinship terms Vietnamese;
English Descriptive Features of Vietnamese kinship terms are provided
Terms of Address and Reference
(2018) Subjectivity and objectivity in Vietnamese and English person reference formss
Expression of subjectivity and objectivity in Vietnamese and English person reference forms are analyzed
English Descriptive T-V diagram of addressing dyads in languages is discussed Expression of subjectivity and-objectivity in Vietnamese and English person reference formss are analyzed
Three points emerge from from the review of previous studies considered above
Firstly, there has been a growing number of studies on CSRs (see the aforementioned Table 2.2.1) Nonetheless, these studies have attempted to describe strategies in translating CSRs Among previous studies, there has been a relative scarcity of studies with a view to assessing the translation of CSRs Inadequate translation of CSRs probably results in misinterpretations among the target readers, leading to the breakdown of interaction between the author and the target readers
Therefore, the contribution of this study lies in the focus on translation assessment of CSRs
Secondly, the present study makes a contribution in assessing the translation of CSRs in the context of English-Vietnamese language pair It can be seen from the above Table 2.2.1 that previous studies have been conducted with various language pairs of English-German, English-French, English-Spanish, English-Arabic, English-Persian, and so forth Little evidence has been obtained in the context of English-Vietnamese translation Thus, this study contributes to offering evidence on the translation assessment of CSRs in English-Vietnamese context
Thirdly, it can be seen from Table 2.2.1 that the qualitative analysis is primarily adopted in previous studies to describe the strategies to translate CSRs Qualitative analysis with the descriptive and interpretive nature is generally considered a valid approach to describe the meanings of CSRs and describe strategies to translate CSRs However, the descriptive and comparative procedures are hardly mentioned in these previous studies Therefore, this study attempts to specify the procedures of describing and comparing as well as the descriptive and comparative units in line with the qualitative analysis in dealing with CSRs The description of procedures aids the researcher to guarantee the reliability of the study, which would pave the way for future replication
In order to fulfill the aim of translation assessment of CSRs, previous studies on TQA models are reviewed, leading to the contributions of this study that fill in the research gaps
2.4.2 Previous studies on translation assessment
From response-based approaches, there have been attempts to assess the quality of the translations, particularly the quality of the translations from Skopos theory A notable study could be found in Coillie and Verschueren (2014) in exploring the translation of character names from a functional perspective Recent efforts could also be seen in the studies (Askari, Shahnazari, & Akbari, 2014; Bing, 2014; Wei & Zhu, 2015; Hassanvandi, Askari, Alishavandi, & Ladani, 2016) that concentrate on challenging the two prominent paradigms in children‟s literature, namely equivalence and purpose paradigm via the Skopos theory perspective
Nonetheless, a huge gap in the aforementioned previous studies is that almost no studies fully address all aspects of Skopos theory including the purpose of translation, the reception of the target readers, and so forth The reception of the target readers on translation is regarded as the pivotal point in assessing the quality of a translation; nonetheless, almost no studies manage to measure the reception of the target readers towards the translation Moreover, it remains not highly reliable to be grounded merely on the intuition of a certain group of readers to reach the final statement on the quality of a translation
From the functional-pragmatic perspective, there has been an emergence of studies in the world (Jiang, 2010; Nazhand & MohebbiPur, 2011; Tabrizi, Chalak &
Taheroun 2013; Daniel, 2014; Ehsani & Zohrabi, 2014; Shakernia, 2014;
Alikademi, 2015; Hasan, 2015; Rahmanian, 2015; Zekri & Shahsavar, 2016;
Kargarzadeh & Paziresh, 2017) and in Vietnam, particularly master theses on TQA of literary texts applying House‟s model (1997), including Lê Mỹ Hạnh (2009), Đặng Thị Phượng (2013), Cao Huyền Trang (2014), and Phạm Thị Thuỷ (2015)
The review of previous studies adopting House‟s model is provided in the following table
Table 2.2.2 Review of previous studies on TQA
Author Research problem Method Findings
(2009) A corpus-based approach within Julian
House‟s model for translation quality assessment
Corpus-based Corpora offers an invaluable basis for TQA Jiang (2010) Quality assessment for the translation of Descriptive The research has shown through museum texts: application of a systemic functional model Contrastive analysis the redesign of the assessment procedure for the model Nazhand &
Pur (2011) The application of House‟s model to
William Faulker‟s “The Sound and the Fury” and its Persian translation by Saleh Hosseini
Descriptive Comparative Translation errors were identified
Assessing translation of advertising text (English-Persian) based on House‟s functional-pragmatic model of TQA
Assessing the quality of the Persian translation of Kite Runner based on House‟s (2014) Functional Pragmatic Model
Corpus-based The type of translation is overt
(2014) A study of House‟s model of translation quality assessment on the short story and its translated text
Comparative The type of translation for short stories is covert
Assessing the quality of Persian translation of Orwell‟s Nineteen Eighty Four based on House‟s model: Overt- Covert distinction
Descriptive Comparative Translation errors were detected; mismatches showed cultural filter was applied; the TT did not fulfill the criteria to be an overt translation
(2014) Applying Julian‟s House TQA model
(1997) on a Humorous Text: A case Study of the Simpsons
Descriptive Comparative The application of House‟s model on a case study has highlighted its suitability for its use on a humorous text
(2015) The application of House‟s model on
“Langman‟s Medical Embryology” and its Persian translation
- 3 raters were asked to assess the translation
The type of translation for scientific texts is covert
(2015) The evaluation of the quality of Persian translation of Emily Dickinson‟s Poems based on TQA model of Julian House
Comparative Translation errors were detected
However, most of the overt errors were made intentionally by the translators House‟s model is not wholly appropriate for assessing quality of English poetry into Persian
(2016) A translation quality assessment of the
English translation of the Hilali Epic Descriptive
Comparative The translation fails to achieve equivalence of function
Quality assessment of Persian translation of English pharmaceutical leaflets based on House‟s model
Comparative Corpus-based Translation errors and mismatches were detected;
Different from previous studies adopting House‟s model (1997), this study adopts House‟s model (2015) As an example, Phạm Thị Thuỷ (2015) applied the revised model in 1997 with the combination of Crystal and Davy (1969) and systemic functional theory by Halliday (1973) However, House‟s model has been revised during nearly 20 years via the Hamburg project “Covert Translation” In her updated version (2015), House stipulates specific modifications as justified in section 2.3.2 based on extensive work in Hamburg project Besides, it should be noted that translation assessment refers to not only detecting the errors but also bringing to light the successful aspects of the translation Additionally, these previous studies tend to pilot House‟s model (1997) In this study, among a number of examined models in the literature, House‟s model (2015) is closer to the researcher aim After operating House‟s model in the context of English- Vietnamese translation, the theoretical supplementation for this context is drawn out
Concerning the methodology of previous studies adopting House‟s model, it can be seen from Table 2.2.2 that studies adopting House‟s model in TQA have primarily employed qualitative descriptive method in line with textual analysis (Jiang, 2010; Nazhand & MohebbiPur, 2011; Tabrizi, Chalak & Taheroun 2013;
Ehsani & Zohrabi, 2014; Shakernia, 2014; Alikademi, 2015; Hasan, 2015;
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The nature of descriptive research is to describe, explain, and interpret conditions of the present “what is” (Thyer, 1993; Vaus, 2001) The purpose of descriptive research is to investigate a phenomenon that is occurring at a specific place and time It stands to reason that descriptive research fits the aim of this study that is to describe the extent of equivalence between English CSRs and their Vietnamese translation in a literary text
On that account, the descriptive research design is adopted in the present study for the following reasons First, descriptive analysis is employed to describe the in- depth meanings and functions of CSRs in the ST and TT Second, descriptive analysis is to answer the initial research question that is to describe the extent of equivalence between ST and TT to reach the statements on the quality of the translation
In relation to descriptive design, cross-sectional design is adopted in order to capture a cross-sectional view, a snapshot of the translation quality between the CSRs in the English literary text “HPPS” (2014) and its Vietnamese translation
“Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ” (2016) According to Rasinger as cited in Littoseliti (2010), while cross-sectional designs obtain a snapshot of the status quo through collecting a relatively large amount of data at one point in time, longitudinal studies enable the researcher to observe any changes in variables through the repeated collection of data over a long period of time This study does not attempt to observe any changes in variables that may occur over time; therefore, the longitudinal design seems less suitable for the research purpose.
Research methods
In this study, qualitative analysis is adopted in order to answer the research question The rationales for the choice are justified below:
In line with the philosophical view of interpretivism (Williams &
Chesterman, 2002; Saldanha & O‟Brien, 2014; Bryman, 2015), the qualitative approach is adopted in this study for the following reasons In this study, the phenomenon under investigation is the groups of CSRs (proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects) in a literary text and the extent of equivalence between CSRs in the ST and TT There is no manipulation during the research process, and the research findings are presented in the form of descriptive textual data Qualitative research is concerned with uncontrolled observation, descriptive, “rich”, and “deep” data and valid in gaining the context-bounded and naturalistic information to make sense of complex situations (Cook & Reichardt, 1979; Isaac & Michael, 1981; Eisenhardt, 1989; Bullock, Little & Millham, 1992;
Glense & Peshkin, 1992; Hammersley, 1995; Creswell, 2003; Duff, 2006; Dửrnyei, 2007; Matthews & Ross, 2010; Silverman, 2011) It is emphasized that qualitative research describes social phenomena that occur naturally without any attempt to manipulate the situation under study as in experimental quantitative research; therefore, qualitative research fulfills the aim of the present study
In line with qualitative analysis, descriptive steps are adopted in this study
Firstly, descriptive steps are employed to describe the functions (meanings) of proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects in the chosen literary text In order to describe the functions of these CSRs, the procedures of describing co-texts and contexts are applied The functions of these CSRs are realized in their situational and cultural contexts As a reminder, “co-text” means the linguistic environment of a word, in which it refers to the relationship between words, phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs The clarification of “context of situation” and “context of culture” is fully provided in section 2.3.1.2 Secondly, descriptive steps are employed to describe the similarities and differences between the functions of CSRs in the ST and TT from House‟s functional-pragmatic adapted model (2015)
As stated in the scope of this study, the units of description are lexical items in the chosen literary text This study focuses on the meanings of CSRs activated in the contexts and their contributions in terms of meaning to the whole text effect
Thus, the researcher does not compare a single source item with its target single item but describes and compares them in their situational and cultural contexts
The descriptive procedures in line with the theoretical framework (see Figure 2.7) are narrated below:
- Step 1: Describe the ST function + Analyze Field, Tenor, Mode (describe the functions/ meanings of the CSRs in their context of situation)
+ Describe Genre of the ST (describe the functions/ meanings of the CSRs in their context of culture)
+ Describe the function of the ST in which the functions of CSRs contribute to the function of the entire text
- Step 2: A similar procedure is conducted to describe the TT function + Analyze Field, Tenor, Mode (describe the functions/ meanings of the CSRs in their context of situation)
+ Describe Genre of the ST (describe the functions/ meanings of the CSRs in their context of culture)
+ Describe the function of the ST in which the functions of CSRs contribute to the function of the entire text
- Step 3: Comparison The functions of source CSRs (in relation to the overall function of the ST function) are compared with the functions of target CSRs (in relation to the overall function of the TT function) to figure out similarities and differences in order to reach the quality statement of the translation
Last but not least, the questions might be raised regarding the adoption of the quantitative approach to back up the findings gained from the qualitative approach
Quantitative research is primarily concerned with measurable and quantifiable facts involving numerical data analyzed through statistical methods In this study, quantitative numbers are present in terms of the frequency of translation strategies adopted by the translator Via examining the predominant translation strategies to achieve functional equivalent from the functional-pragmatic perspective of House
(2015), the research findings yield practical suggestions in terms of translation strategies in dealing with CSRs for translators and publishers As previously justified, qualitative analysis is employed to reach the statement of translation quality, which fulfills the overarching aim of the study The focus of the present study is to gain insights into the meanings, functions of CSRs as well as the English-Vietnamese translation assessment of CSRs in the chosen literary text
Although quantitative inquiry obtains objective measurement and acquires replicable data that is generalizable to other contexts, it is decontextualized and unsuited to gain in-depth information about the phenomenon (Brannen, 2005)
Hence, it is the qualitative analysis that serves as the primary approach of the present study to address the initial research question, statistical numbers serve as a secondary tool
Along with descriptive steps in qualitative analysis, comparative analysis serves as a critical phase to compare the functions of source CSRs (in relation to the overall function of the ST function) and the functions of target CSRs (in relation to the overall function of the TT function) in order to generate the quality statement of the translation Thus, the comparative method used in this study shall be explained in this section
In linguistics, the comparative method serves as a technique for studying the development and change of languages by conducting a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor in order to extrapolate back to infer the properties of that ancestor (Durie & Ross, 1996; Nguyễn Thiện Giáp, 2015)
In a broader sense, a comparison is to search for similarities and differences
The value of comparison relies on the comparison of things that can be compared It means that the units compared should be of the same order of magnitude, of relatively equal value, or of the same class or order in some way For example, it would be fruitless to compare the system of proper names in Britain and the person reference forms in Vietnam
Taking this important point into account, the CSRs in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” (2014) serve as the base lexical items for comparison In other words, English serves as the source language (SL) in this study Vietnamese and CSRs in the TT “Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ” (2016) serve as the target language (TL) in this study Similar to descriptive units, the units of comparison in this study are proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects at the lexical level in the ST and TT The descriptive and comparative procedures have been provided in the previous section of 3.2.1
Last but not least, after descriptive and comparative analysis, the final crucial procedure in this study is interpretive as qualitative data analysis is often heavy on interpretation (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007) The analysis and comparison of the ST and TT in this study include the researcher‟s interpretive explanations.
Analytical framework of the study
Among the frameworks reviewed in the literature and the discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of House‟s model in section 2.3.3, House‟s model (2015) is closer to the research aim because it has been proved to be applicable to translation assessment of various text types including literary texts The model embraces both the micro and macro level of language embedded in the text, the analysis of the text in its situational and cultural contexts through register analysis and genre description Besides, the model integrates cultural filter as a means of capturing socio-cultural differences in expectation norms and stylistic conventions between the source and the target linguistics-cultural communities
However, since this study aims to assess the English-Vietnamese translation of the three groups of CSRs in a literary text, one concern arises about the status of CSRs (proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects) in the present operation of House‟s model to fit the research aim As the three groups are language embedded in the chosen text, it is essential to locate the text and language embedded in the text within the situational and cultural contexts The context of situation is realized via register analysis of Field, Tenor, and Mode The context of culture is realized via genre description Therefore, the status of these CSRs with layers of situational context and cultural context would be highlighted to fit the research aim
Besides, translation is a process of reconstructing meaning from the source to the target culture; thus, the status of cultural filter in the operation of House‟s model in line with Figure 2.7 would be elucidated in the analytical framework
In addition, although House did specify the steps in her TQA process, the status of both ST and TT should be demonstrated in the entire translation process
As House‟s states, translation is the replacement of a text in the SL by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the TL Equivalence serves as the relationship between the ST and TT Therefore, the analytical framework of the study reflects such ST-TT relationship in the translation process
Finally, granted that the chosen CSRs in the text are embedded with the author‟s attitudes, Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005) are incorporated into House‟s model in order to describe and uncover the author‟s attitudes embedded in CSRs in texts Considering every reason, House‟s functional- pragmatic model, adapted and extended with Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory (see Figure 2.7), is proposed to fit the research aim of this study No redundant presentation of Figure 2.7 is provided in this part in order to avoid repetition.
Data collection procedures
As stated, qualitative linguistic-textual analysis from the functional-pragmatic perspective serves as the primary research tool in the present study Additionally, interview transcripts of the ST author and the translator are employed as a secondary research tool in order to strengthen the qualitative assessment of the researcher about the translation quality of CSRs
Figure 3.1 Data collection procedures of the study
To begin with, the text “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” republished in 2014 by Bloomsbury in the U.K was selected as the source text
Phase 1 •Select the ST and TT
Phase 2 •Collect the CSRs in the ST and TT
•Collect the interview scripts of the author and translator
•Interview two translators and an expert in the field
Linguistic- textual analysis from House’s functional- pragmatic adapted framework
(ST) The first novel in the Harry Potter series was chosen because it introduces to the proper names, the relationships, and the unique traits of the characters The author of the novel is J.K Rowling who is a renowned British novelist This literary text is relevant to the research aim for these reasons: (1) it has been a literary phenomenon since its publication (2) it was originally written in English and published in Britain; (3) its translation was published in Vietnam; (4) it presents rich CSRs to the British culture
It might be argued that although J.K Rowling is a great storyteller, studying Harry Potter as a work of literature probably turns the literary world upside-down due to the lack of subtlety Concerning the literary merits of the “HPPS”, Whited
(2002) explains that any books that will be deemed “literary works” should reflect something about the values of the age and society that produce them They should use language in a way that captures readers‟ attention to language itself and to how language reflects culture and cultural values They should have some roots in genres or subgenres of literarure and folklore Accordingly, the “HPPS” fulfills the fundamental criteria to be categorized as a literary work Inggs (2003, p 286) assures that the “HPPS” has a “strong cultural and ideological content […] firmly rooted in an English context” In the same direction with (Inggs, 2003), Suljie
(2013, p 68) reaffirms that “it is not only the plot and the adventure that the children are attracted by, but also the attitudes, values, cultural assumptions, and ideologies which make grounds to form the children today into the adults of tomorrow” To argue for the literary merits of the Harry Potter novel, authors (Randall & Colorado, 2001; Rodriguez, 2003; Nilsen & Nilsen, 2009) claim that one reason that Harry Potter series have such appeal to a worldwide audience is Rowling‟s rhetorical artistry and a treasury of literary techniques as illustrated by how much meaning she can pack into the few short sounds needed to create a name
The aforementioned explanations help to justify the selection of the “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” as a literary text in this study
In the second place, the text “Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ” republished by Trẻ Publishing House in 2016 was selected as the target text (TT) The selection of the most recently published text is grounded on the assumption that this text has been proofread and edited prior to its publication in order to minimize translation problems The translator is Lý Lan who is a novelist, poet, and translator in Vietnam The description of the ST and TT is provided as follows:
Table 3.1 Description of the Source Text and Target Text
Title of the text “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s
Stone” “Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ”
- reprinted in 2014 - first published in 2000
Publisher Bloomsbury in the U.K Trẻ Publishing House in Vietnam
Number of pages - 17 chapters in 332 pages - 17 chapters in 341 pages
- a British novelist under the pen names J
- Lý Lan (born in 1957 in Vietnam)
- a novelist, poet, and translator in Vietnam
Hardcover of the published text used in this study
3.4.2 Phase 2: Culture-specific references collection
After selecting the ST and TT, CSRs (proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects) were collected from both ST and TT
Content analysis was adopted in this phase to select CSRs in the ST and TT
According to Krippendorff (2012, p 12), “recognizing meanings is the reason that researchers engage in content analysis rather than in some other kind of investigate method” Thus, content analysis was adopted in this study in order to identify the proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects in the ST and TT Key steps in employing content analysis to collect CSRs were narrated as follows in line with Holsti (1968), Patton (2002), and Wilkinson and Bermingham (2003)
As stated in the scope of this study, the researcher focuses on identifying concepts related to proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects The concepts of proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects are defined in the subsequent steps in relation to the Literature Review
It is significant to be specific about the concepts that are to be coded
According to Wilkinson and Birmingham (2003), the concept definitions provide words with closely similar meanings to be included The concept definitions for the coding frame are provided in accordance with definitions proposed in the Literature Review in section 2.1.2 - Proper names, 2.1.3 - Person reference forms, and 2.1.4 - Regional dialects
- Code for the frequency of concepts
Once the researcher has selected the concepts for coding, coding for frequency is the subsequent step Coding for mere incidence in the chosen literary text would be counted once only, no matter how many times a CSR occurs in the text; thus, this approach probably gives a limited perspective on the text
Conversely, coding for the frequency of the CSR possibly constitutes a stronger indication of its significance in the text As evidence, the proper name “Hermione” in the ST occurs throughout 108 pages of the whole novel, which furnishes the clues about its roles in the text Therefore, coding for the frequency of CSRs was chosen in this study
According to Wilkinson and Bermingham (2003), the coding rules prevent words from being incorrectly sorted The coding rules for the three groups of CSRs in this study are formulated as follows:
Label Definitions To recognize the concept
Differentiation Example perceived as a name for an individual person, a place, or an organization written with all initials capitalized (This study focuses on the names of persons) capital letter -identify a person
-individualize a unique entity (e.g., Mary, Tom, John) as distinguished from common nouns that refer to the class of entities (city, person, trees)
This study focuses on “I-you” dyads
- I-you dyads (the focus of this study)
GD Regional dialects denote language varieties classified geographically (Baker, 2018)
- West Country (the focus of this study)
The identification of the character‟s dialect was based on the comparison between non-standard marks present in character‟s speech and Trudgill‟s (1999) study of English dialects
- Trawl through the source and target text
The reading step through the entire ST and TT was conducted to identify and collect the three groups of CSRs in the ST and TT Afterwards, reading and rereading were implemented in order to guarantee that the data sets of CSRs were adequately collected
- Code the data in the source and target text
There are categories coded in this study: Proper names; Person reference forms; Regional dialects All the data coded and categorized were put into Microsoft Excel files (see Appendix A, B, and C) The focus of this study is the Vietnamese translation of English CSRs in the “HPPS”; thus, the equivalents were located in the TT and developed in a table of CSRs with columns, including order number, source English text as well as the page in the ST, target Vietnamese text, and the page in TT Following this, translation strategies adopted by the translator were identified based on the spectrum of overt – covert translation in line with House‟s model (2015) as presented in the Literature Review
- Interview scripts of ST author
Data analysis
Two data sets were obtained from the data collection
The primary data source The secondary data source
(1) ST - “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” (2014)
(2) TT - “Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ”
(3) Proper names in ST: 146 proper names Proper names in TT: 146 proper names (see Appendix A)
(35 loaded names among these 146 proper names in the ST and TT) (see Appendix A)
(4) Person reference forms in ST: 75 dyads of “I-you” (see Appendix B) Person reference forms in TT: 75 dyads of Vietnamese translation of “I-you” (see Appendix B)
(5) Regional dialects: 532 words of dialectal features (see Appendix C)
(1) interview transcripts the ST author: roughly 23,000 words in transcription
(2) interview transcripts the ST translator: roughly 13,000 words in transcription
(3) minutes of interviewing translators and an expert in the field: roughly 15,500 words in transcription
Figure 3.3 Data of the study The following section reports on the analysis of each data set
After collecting the three groups of CSRs, the qualitative analysis, in line with the analytical framework - House‟s adapted model (2015) (see Figure 2.7), was conducted with the three groups The operation of the framework is provided in full details in section 2.3.4 Descriptive and comparative steps were implemented
Qualitative data analysis is frequently heavy on interpretation; thus, the subsequently essential step is interpretive In addition to the analysis and comparison of ST and TT, interpretive explanations were also generated in this study The details of the descriptive and comparative steps were narrated in section 3.3.1 No redundant presentation of the descriptive and comparative steps is provided in this part in order to avoid repetition
3.5.2 Analysis of the interview data
In this study, the two sub-types of interview data were collected, including
(1) interview scripts of the ST author and the ST translator and (2) interviews of two other translators and an expert in the field The interview recordings of two translators and the expert were transcribed and translated into English for the purpose of the study Thematic analysis method was employed to analyze this set of data Braun and Clark (2006) note that thematic analysis could be regarded as a fundamental method that “offer a more accessible form of analysis, particularly for those early in a qualitative research career” In this study, the phases of analyzing interview data based on the guidelines of Braun and Clark (2006) are demonstrated as follows:
Firstly, the researcher printed the transcripts, read them many times and jotted down several initial ideas
Subsequently, the initial codes were formulated Coding is a process of marking chunks of texts according to themes, ideas or categories and naming them with certain code labels so that textual data could be organized in a manageable way In this study, manual coding was employed in order to facilitate the researcher‟s reflection on the data In this step, the researcher re-read the transcripts of each interview to identify, underlined words, phrases, sentences and coded them
Next, the identified codes and their corresponding extracts on the transcripts were highlighted and added in a file in the computer
Then, the subsequent step is searching for themes In this step, the identified codes in the previous step were sorted into themes The analytical framework, as well as the Literature Review, was employed to search for themes in relation to the research question In relation to the overarching aim of this study, the themes identified were “subject matter of the text”, “author‟s provenance”, “author‟s attitudes”, “social role relationship” and so forth
Afterwards, the themes were refined by naming them with appropriate labels based on the analytical framework and the literature, from which the patterns of findings could depict the whole story The analysis of each theme of the interview data was put in triangulation with textual analysis from the functional-pragmatic perspective
A sample of themes and supporting codes is provided as follows:
Table 3.3 Potential themes and supporting codes from the interview data
Main variables in line with the analytical framework
Themes Sub-themes Extracts Interview transcript
Semantic meaning of proper names
Author of “HPPS”: I‟m big on names - I like names, generally You have to be really careful giving me your name if it's an unusual one, because you will turn up in book six Erm - I - I collect - some of them are invented;
Voldemort is an invented name, Malfoy is an invented name, Quidditch is invented, erm - but I also collect them, from all kinds of places: maps, street names, people I meet, old books, old saints, erm - Mrs Norris, people will have recognised, comes from Jane Austen Erm - Dumbledore is an old
English word meaning bumblebee Because Albus Dumbledore is very fond of music, I always imagined him as sort of humming to himself a lot
Int.A.02 qqnames Meanings of proper names
Tenor Author‟s provenance (temporal, geographical provenance)
Author of “HPPS”: Hagrid‟s sort of West-country - yokel - which is where I grew up - the part of Britain where I grew up, I didn't grow up in Scotland,
I grew up on the border with Wales
Author of “HPPS”: Yeah Er – We‟ve all met him - he is a bully of the most refined type in that, unlike Dudley, Harry‟s cousin, who‟s a physical bully, but really not - not bright enough to access all your weak points,
Draco is a - he is a snob, he‟s a bigot and he is a bully, and as I said, in the most refined sense - he knows exactly what will hurt people
Int.A.02 qqauattitude Author‟s attitudes towards
“Draco Malfoy” Author of “HPPS”: Snape is the - er - very sadistic teacher loosely based on a teacher I myself had, I have to say Erm I think it Children are very aware - and we we're kidding ourselves if we don‟t think that they are - that teachers do sometimes abuse their power and this particular teacher /does/ abuse his power He is not a - he is not a particularly pleasant person at all ……
Int.A.02 qqauattitude Author‟s attitudes towards
Author of “HPPS”: Hagrid‟s sort of West-country - yokel - which is where I grew up - the part of Britain where I grew up, I didn‟t grow up in Scotland,
I grew up on the border with Wales So Hagrid's kind of 'Yes Harry
Int.A.02 qqauattitude Author‟s attitudes towards always put on to sound stupid Hagrid /isn‟t/ stupid, but he‟s got that kind of very country - you know, way of speaking
Interviewer: And how about Minerva McGonagall?
Author of “HPPS”: Very clipped, and very, very - quite upper - class and very brisk - like a governess
Int.A.02 qqauattitude Author‟s attitudes towards
“Hagrid” Social role relation ship
Interviewer: Erm - I read the first book at camp with a friend and - er - how is Malfoy such strongly against him in the first book?
Author of “HPPS”: Yeah - why is - why is Malfoy - why does he like - dislike Harry so much in the first book?
Author of “HPPS”: Well! If you notice, the very first time that Malfoy meets Harry and knows it is Harry he makes an effort to be his friend - he does actually want to be associated with Harry because he knows it will be - it will be cool to turn up at the school being Harry Potter's friend, because Harry is so famous Well, Harry rebuffs him because Malfoy has been so rude about Hagrid and about Ron, who Harry likes so much, and it's at that point that Malfoy turns against him, because Malfoy is - er - yet again this is so frustrating; I can‟t tell you everything I could tell you because it would ruin future books for you, but Malfoy comes from a family who has strong associations with - er - with Dark magic, as you know - and you‟re going to find out more about that in book four, so - erm - Malfoy is kind of - he wanted to be Harry's friend, Harry didn‟t want him as a friend, and tu- and that made him bitter
Int.A.02 qqrelation Relationship, social attitude between Harry and Draco Malfoy
Author of “HPPS”: He is flanked by two friends, they work far better as a team than apart, though Harry tends to be the one who has to shoulder the most of the burden - he is the true hero in that sense, Hermione, who is really the brain of the outfit, and Ron, who is also a very brave character, I mean, I deeply admire bravery in all forms
Int.A.02 qqrelation Relationship, social attitude between Harry, Ron and Hermione
Genre Interviewer: What inspires you to write these great books?
Author of “HPPS”: These particular great books were as I say inspired I had a lot of this material already and I‟d never used it in a novel and didn‟t think I ever would be able to Things like all the Quidditch teams in Britain and all the different magical beasts and creatures
Int.A.04 qqgenre Genre of fiction
Trustworthiness
In this study, the researcher performs the role of the translation assessor, the data collector, the data analyst, the data interpreter, and the reporter of the research findings throughout the research process The presence of the researcher is unavoidable in qualitative research, and the researcher is an instrument in qualitative research (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Richards, 2005; Dửrnyei, 2007;
Richards & Morse, 2012; Holliday, 2016) Qualitative research is highly interpretive; thus, the research outcome is the product of the researcher‟s interpretation of the data in the long run, and the interpretations of the researcher are always “filtered through the lenses of language, gender, social class, race and ethnicity” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p 25) Due to these reasons, it is essential to report information about the researcher, including experience, training, and perspective in the field (Patton, 2002, p 566) In this section, a professional account of the researcher is provided, which is to raise the awareness about the possible bias and how such bias could be minimized during the research process
Table 3.2.4 Background information of the researcher
Be a lecturer at a foreign language university;
Have been teaching translation to students majoring in English Linguistics at a university since 2013 The teaching subjects involve translation, advanced translation, and translation theory;
Earned B.A degree with High Distinction and M.A degree in English Linguistics;
Conducted B.A thesis related to translation assessment in 2013;
Conducted M.A thesis related to translation assessment in 2015;
Work as a freelance translator since 2013
Participated in conferences about linguistics and translation;
Published research articles about translation in blind-review journals;
One might argue that the researcher probably influences the interpretations on the Vietnamese translation quality of English CSRs to some extent However, in qualitative inquiry, the truth is relative (Richards & Morse, 2002), and “there is no single interpretive truth” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p 30) In qualitative research,
“transferability”, “dependability”, and “confirmability” (Lincohn & Guba, 1985, p
290), which will be presented in relation to this study in the following sections
Credibility depends on the evidence of long-term exposure to the context being studied and the adequacy of data collection Firstly, the primary data sources in this study are English and Vietnamese CSRs (proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects) in ST and TT The literary text was selected based on four criteria according to the scope of the study Subsequently, six steps, adapted from Wilkinson and Birmingham (2003), were conducted so as to guarantee the adequacy of the chosen types of CSRs collected
Secondly, triangulation was adopted to verify the adequacy of data collection and the accuracy of research findings Secondary data sources included interview transcripts of the ST author, interview transcripts of the translator, interviews of translators and an expert in the field Interview data, which served as a source of reference, were used to triangulate with the linguistic-textual analysis from the functional-pragmatic perspective Besides, two validators were recruited to cross- validate and make comments on data collection procedures and research findings to bring “different perspectives and epistemological assumptions” (Rothbauer, 2008, p 892) During the data collection process, this cross-checking strategy enabled the researcher to rigorously select CSRs and avoid the researcher‟s subjectivity in interpreting the findings and arriving at the conclusion The information of the two validators is provided as follows:
- Possess 15 experiences of working as a lecturer at Translation and Interpreting Division at a foreign language university
- Earn B.A degree Translation and Interpreting major at a foreign language university in 2005
- Be a Ph.D student majoring in English Linguistics Her Ph.D dissertation is related to cultural studies, cross-cultural pragmatics
- Possess 10 experiences of working as a foreign language university
Transferability means the ability to generalize the findings Transferability is also related to the rich description and interpretation that make a particular case relevant to those in similar situations Firstly, this study tends to be particularity (Stake, 1995) rather than generalizability because it focuses on English CSRs in a specific text At the beginning of this study, a description of the culture and language of Britain and Vietnam was provided Subsequently, a detailed justification of language and culture in the text “HPPS” (2014) was presented, which shows the particularity of the cultural British richness in the ST Secondly, in order to assure the particularity or relatability of the study, the rationales for selecting this literary text were stated with four criteria to suit the research aim
Thirdly, the selection of CSRs in the ST-TT texts was grounded on the coding rules and steps Hence, the research findings of this study could be relatable to other English literary texts sharing similar features described in the present study
Dependability is similar to reliability (Lincohn & Guba, 1985) If a study and its results are reliable, it means that the same results would be obtained if the study were to be replicated by other researchers adopting the similar method In this study, the detailed methodological description was delineated, including the research design, data collection procedures, and data analysis in order to allow the present study to be repeated Moreover, triangulation was adopted to ensure the reliability of this study Interview transcripts of the ST author, interview transcripts of the translator, interviews of translators and an expert in the field were employed in order to triangulate with the qualitative assessment from functional-pragmatic perspective Also, two validators were invited to cross-validate and make comments on data collection procedures and research findings Therefore, the corresponding results would be obtained if the study were replicated
Confirmability means the degree to which research findings could be confirmed by others through the detailed description of the data collection procedure, data categorizing, and data analysis (Lincohn & Guba, 1985) In this study, data collection procedures were narrated in details with four primary phases
The phases include selecting source text and target text, selecting the three groups of CSRs in texts, collecting interview transcripts of the ST author and the translator, and interviewing other translators and an expert in the field Within each phase, criteria and sub-steps were specified in the section of data collection procedures
The Appendices of the raw data of CSRs in ST and TT, the interview transcripts of the ST author and the translator, two other translators and an expert are delivered at the end of this thesis for evidence.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Proper names …
This section offers the answer to the research question in terms of proper names: “To what extent are English CSRs in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s
Stone” (2014) and their Vietnamese translations equivalent from the functional- pragmatic perspective of House (2015)?”
The findings show that the 35 proper names of main characters carry ideational and interpersonal functions, contributing to the function of the whole text In other words, these names carry contextual meanings relevant to the entire story embedded in the text The non-translation 3 strategy is adopted in dealing with these names in the TT, which entails “Partially functional equivalence” in comparison to those in the ST
Figure 4.1 Frequency of strategies adopted by the translator in translating proper names in “HPPS”
Examples of proper names in the ST and TT are provided as follows:
1 Draco Malfoy Draco Malfoy 6 Ravenclaw Ravenclaw
5 Fang Fang 10 Phyllida (Spore) Phyllida (Spore)
The translation assessment of proper names is provided in the following sections
As a reminder, “semantically loaded names” display the traits of the characters and offer the readers hints about the destiny of the characters In this section, the translation assessment of typical names of protagonists is provided The exhaustive list of proper names is made in Appendix A
CASE 1: PROPER NAME - “DRACO MALFOY”
The text covers subject matters of boarding school life, mysteries, and adventures set in both real-life Britain and an unreal wizarding world The author constructs the narrative of the protagonist Harry Potter, a wizard studying at the school of wizards
A number of names serve as a vehicle to construct a world about mysterious adventures, contributing to the FIELD of the text Among characters, Draco Malfoy is one of the Harry‟s enemies at the wizarding school In the author‟s interview
(1999), she reveals that “Malfoy” means “bad faith” (Int.A.02)
Author‟s geographical, temporal and social provenance: In the author‟s interview
(1999), she recounts that she created the name “Draco Malfoy” (Int.A.02) “Draco” is rooted in Latin that means “dragon” Within “Malfoy”, “mal” is an English prefix that provokes negative connotation Several instances are “malnutrition”,
“maltreat”, “malpractice”, “malevolent”, “malignant”, or “malfeasance” Regarding
“foy” in “Malfoy”, “foy” means “faith” in French In line with this analysis, the author also discloses that “Malfoy” means “bad faith” (Int.A.02)
Social role relationship: symmetrical between the author and the readers The author is J K Rowling who is a British novelist Her book is primarily for 9-12 year-old British children (Wyler, 2003), but it would also appeal to adolescents and adults
Author‟s attitude: As justified, Attitudinal resources of Appraisal Theory are adopted in order to explore the ST author‟s attitudes towards the name “Draco”-
“dragon” embedded in the name Draco Malfoy
Table 4.2.1 Author‟s attitudes embedded in “dragon”
Affect Judgment Appreciation outlawed dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks‟
- propriety dangerous It‟s hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we're keeping dragons in the back garden-anyway, you can‟t tame dragons, it‟s dangerous
So now they had something else to worry about: what might happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut
- reaction worry - insecurity illegal - valuation not exactly pretty It wasn’t exactly pretty; Harry thought it looked like a crumpled, black umbrella Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body, it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes It sneezed A couple of sparks flew out of its snout
- reaction skinny - reaction bulging - reaction horrible “I'm not going to be able to hold a quill for a week I tell you, that dragon‟s the most horrible animal I‟ve ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit When it bit me he told me off for frightening it
- reaction illegal I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week
Trouble is, they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon
- valuation bad Norbert had been bad enough
The result of this analysis is in line with the previous studies on the cultural meaning of “dragon” in Western culture in which “dragon” provokes negative connotation (Lê Nguyên Cẩn, Nguyễn Thị Huế, Lê Phong Tuyết, 2000; Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 2001; Trần Ngọc Thêm, Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ, 2011; Phan Nguyễn Quỳnh Anh,
The analysis also shows that there is a tied bond between a character‟s proper name and the traits of the character in this literary text As evidenced, an analysis of the ST author‟s attitudes towards the personality of Draco Malfoy via Attitudinal resources ofAppraisal Theory is shown as follows:
Table 4.2.2 Author‟s attitudes towards “Draco Malfoy” character
1 pale “Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking “And my name‟s Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”
3 boastful ST: Malfoy certainly did talk about flying a lot
He complained loudly about first years never getting on the house Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories that always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters
4 jealous Then he‟d realized that nobody found this funny, because they were all so impressed at the way Harry had managed to stay on his bucking broomstick So Malfoy, jealous and angry, had gone back to taunting Harry about having no proper family
It can be seen that the author takes a negative attitude towards Draco Malfoy
This finding is in congruence with the author‟s statement in her interview in which
“Draco is a - he is a snob, he‟s a bigot and he is a bully, and as I said, in the most refined sense - he knows exactly what will hurt people” (Int.A.02).Therefore, the analysis of the case “Draco Malfoy” shows that this name in the “HPPS” performs the functions of displaying the traits of the character and carrying cultural connotation
MODE: written to be read GENRE: The ST belongs to the literary genre of fiction In the “HPPS”, there exists an imaginary world in combination with the daily world in Britain The story features a picture of fantastic creatures with a myriad of imaginary locations as well as extraordinary entities Witches and wizards are key components in the storyline; the protagonist Harry Potter, his companions, and his foes are all witches and wizards with magical powers
The communicative purposes of the ST are to entertain, to inform, and to educate the readers (Suljie, 2013) The entertainment purpose is fulfilled by the adventures of characters Further, the readers are informed about the practices in the community of wizards It is also possible to persuade the readers to adhere to certain ideologies and attitudes presented by the author Accordingly, the proper names contribute to the genre of the entire text
STATEMENT OF ST FUNCTION: Regarding ideational function, this name
“Draco Malfoy” contributes to developing the mystery theme of the text since
“Draco” is an imaginary animal in Western culture In terms of interpersonal function, the author‟s attitude is expressed via the name “Draco Malfoy” that evokes negative connotation
COMPARISON BETWEEN ST AND TT
Table 4.2.3 Comparison between ST and TT in translating the name “Draco Malfoy”
Source Text profile Target Text profile
Field Subject matter mythology Field Subject matter mythology Tenor Author‟s provenance
- marked on the dimension of language; the name “Draco Malfoy” is rooted in Latin
Author‟Stance negative attitudes embedded in the name “Draco Malfoy”
Translator‟s Stance the name “Draco Malfoy”: non- translated
Social role relationship symmetrical Social role relationship symmetrical
Social attitude informal Social attitude informal participation complex Participation complex
Mode written to be read Mode written to be read
Genre a fictional text to entertain, to inform, and to educate the readers
Genre a fictional text to entertain the readers; the non-translation of the name might partially lose the ST author‟s underlying attitudes towards the character
Person reference forms
Another challenge in translating the Harry Potter novel into Vietnamese is that it contains more than one form for “I-you” dyad to express the dynamic interpersonal relations among characters In line with the overarching aim of the present study, this section aims to address the research question in terms of person reference forms: “To what extent are English culture-specific references in “Harry
Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” (2014) and their Vietnamese translations equivalent from the functional-pragmatic perspective of House (2015)?”
4.2.1 Findings of English-Vietnamese translation assessment of person reference forms
The Vietnamese translation of “I-you” dyads in the ST is demonstrated in the following table
Table 4.9 Vietnamese translation of “I-you” dyads in “HPPS”
Person reference forms used between characters
Relationship types of person reference forms in
I-you Mr Dursley - Mrs Dursley anh - em Dynamic relationship-
Type III to express solidarity and humbleness between husband and wife
Dumbledore - Professor McGonagall tôi - bà Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality and formality between two professors
Professor Albus Dumbledore tôi - ông Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality and formality between two professors
I-you Harry - The snake tao - mày Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality and solidarity in informal situations I-you Harry - Uncle Vernon con - dượng Dynamic relationship-
Type II to express solidarity and humbleness between a nephew and his uncle in the family
I-you Hagrid - Harry ta - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of younger age to express solidarity I-you Hagrid - Harry bác - con Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Harry - Hagrid con - bác Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Harry - Dedalus Diggle cháu - bác Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Harry - Professor
McGonagall con - cô Dynamic relationship-
Type I to address a person of higher social status to express both solidarity and respect
I-you Harry - Ron tôi - bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality
I-you Harry - Ron tôi - bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality
I-you Harry - Hermione tôi - bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality
Dumbledore con - thầy Dynamic relationship-
Type I to address a person of higher social status to express both solidarity and respect
I-you Harry - Professor Quirrell con - thầy Dynamic relationship-
Type I to address a person of higher social status to express both solidarity and respect
I-you Harry - Ron & Hermione tôi - mấy bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality
I-you Harry - Ron & Hermione tôi - các bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality
I-you Harry - Ron & Hermione mình - mấy bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality I-you Hermione - (Harry & Ron) tôi - mấy bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality I-you Hermione - (Harry & Ron) tôi - mấy ngài
Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality
I-you Hermione - Ron tôi - bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality
I-you Hermione - Ron tôi - bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality
I-you Hermione - Ron mình - bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality I-you Uncle Vernon - Hagrid tôi - ngài Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality, formality, and insolidarity I-you Hagrid - Harry ta - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of younger age to express solidarity I-you Hagrid - Uncle Vernon ta - mi Horizontal relationship-Type I to express anger and hostility
I-you Hagrid - Uncle Vernon ta - ông Horizontal relationship-Type II to express insolidarity
Hermione ta - tụi bay Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity I-you Hagrid - Harry, Ron,
Hermione ta - các cháu Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express subtleness, respect and/or solidarity
Hermione bác - các cháu Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Hagrid - Filch tôi - thầy Dynamic relationship-
Type I to address a person of higher social status to express both solidarity and respect
I-you Hagrid - Bane ta - chú mày Horizontal relationship-Type I to express solidarity and informality
I-you Mr Ollivander - Hagrid tôi - anh Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality, formality, and insolidarity I-you Draco Malfoy - Harry tao - mày Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, anger, and hostility I-you Draco Malfoy - Neville tao - mày Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, anger, and hostility
I-you Ron - Harry mình - bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality
I-you Ron - Draco tao - mày Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, anger, and hostility
I-you Ron - Hermione&Harry tôi - mấy bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality I-you Ron - Hermione&Harry mình - mấy bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality I-you Professor McGonagall -
Hagrid tôi - bác Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality and formality I-you Professor McGonagall - students ta - các con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity I-you Professor Dumbledore - ta - các con Dynamic relationship- to address a person of lower social
I-you Professor Snape - Harry ta - trò Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity I-you Professor McGonagall -
Hermione ta - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity
Harry cô - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity
Neville, Harry, Hermione ta - bọn bây to express anger between the professor and her students I-you Professor Dumbledore -
Harry ta - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity I-you Professor Dumbledore -
Harry thầy - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity I-you Professor Quirrell - Harry ta - con Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity
Professor Snape tôi - anh Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality, formality, and insolidarity I-you Sorting Hat - Students ta - mi Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality I-you Ron - Nearly Headless
Nick cháu - ông Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Harry - Snape con - thầy Dynamic relationship-
Type I to address a person of higher social status to express respect I-you George - Harry anh - em Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Wood - Harry anh - em Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Neville - Harry mình - bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality
I-you Neville - Harry mình - bồ Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality
Harry/Ron/Hermione tui - các bạn Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality I-you Firenze - Harry em - anh Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Neville - Malfoy tao - mày Horizontal relationship-Type I to express equality, solidarity, and informality
I-you Madam Hooch - students tôi - các trò Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity I-you Filch - Harry, Hermione,
Neville, Malfoy ta - các trò Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express solidarity
I-you Bane - Hagrid tôi - bác Horizontal relationship-Type II to express relative equality, formality, and insolidarity I-you Firenze - Bane em - anh Circular relationship kinship terms are used in social settings to express intimacy I-you Peeves - Mr.Baron con - ngài Dynamic relationship-
Type II to address a person of lower social status to express subtleness, respect and/or solidarity
(The relationship type is in line with the categorization of Nguyễn Quang, 2018) There are three major findings from the analysis of I-you” dyads and their Vietnamese translation from the functional-pragmatic perspective Firstly, the above Vietnamese translations of the “I-you” dyad are functionally equivalent to the ST in accordance with the situational and cultural contexts The sole “I-you”dyad has been translated into more than 50 variants in Vietnamese in diverse situational contexts Secondly, “I-you” dyad is not only translated into Vietnamese personal nouns are used in translating “I-you” dyad from English to Vietnamese, such as
“con-thầy; con-cô; ta-con; bác-các cháu; anh-em; em-anh” Thirdly, (TL-oriented) covert translation strategy is adopted in dealing with “I-you” dyad, which is illustrated in the following figure Via covert translation strategy, the translator
“anchors a reference firmly” in Vietnamese culture
Figure 4.2 Frequency of strategies adopted by the translator in translating person reference forms in “HPPS”
In order to provide the evidence, the English-Vietnamese translation assessment of “I-You” dyads via the following excerpts will be demonstrated
Excerpt 1: Context (Draco Malfoy - Ron, Harry)
… He was looking at the other boys Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards
"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking
"And my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."
Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger Draco Malfoy looked at him
"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."
He turned back to Harry " You 'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort I can help you there."
He held out his hand to shake Harry's, but Harry didn't take it
" I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," he said coolly
Draco Malfoy didn't go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his pale cheeks
… Harry nói và nhìn hai đứa đi cùng Cả hai trông chắc nịch và hung tợn Tụi nó đứng hai bên thằng bé nhợt nhạt trông như là vệ sĩ Thấy Harry nhìn hai đứa kia, thằng bé nhợt nhạt hờ hững giới thiệu: À, đây là Crabbe, còn đây là Goyle Tao là Malfoy, Draco Malfoy
Ron ho khẽ mấy tiếng, chắc là để ém tiếng cười khẩy
Regional dialects
Similar to proper names and person reference forms, regional dialects also serve as a significant linguistic aspect for characterizing the protagonist in a literary text, which poses the translators huge challenges To fulfill the research aim, this section aims to offer the answer to the research question in terms of regional dialects: “To what extent are English CSRs in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s
Stone” (2014) and their Vietnamese translations equivalent from the functional- pragmatic perspective of House (2015)?”
4.3.1 Findings of English-Vietnamese translation assessment of regional dialects
The findings show that “Partially functional equivalence” is gained between regional dialects in the TT in comparison with those in the ST The findings also reveal compensation strategy adopted by the translator in order to recompense for the linguistic and cultural differences in translating regional dialects across cultures
The compensation strategy includes “neutralization” in combination with the use of colloquial language to portray the unique personality of the protagonist
In the ST, Hagrid is the only character to speak the West Country dialect in Britain The systematically dialectal features of this character are provided as follows:
Table 4.15.1 Dialectal features of Hagrid in the “HPPS”
"Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does An’ like I told yeh, I'm Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Cứ gọi ta là bác Hagrid Và như ta đã nói với con rồi đó, ta là người giữ khóa ở Hogwarts
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry's whole arm
"What about that tea then, eh?" he said, rubbing his hands together "I'd not say no ter summat stronger if yeh've got it, mind."
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Lão giơ ra một bàn tay khổng lồ, nắm nguyên cánh tay Harry mà lắc Rồi xoa hai bàn tay vào nhau, lão Hagrid nói: Ê, có trà không? Ta không từ chối món xi - cu - la đâu, nếu có thêm chút trà
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ) The giant chuckled darkly
"Yet great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore, Dursley, don' worry."
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Lão khổng lồ xuýt xoa:
Yên tâm ông Dursley ạ, Thằng con bị thịt của ông đâu cần thêm chút mỡ nào nữa Lão đưa xúc xích cho Harry
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does An' like I told yeh, I'm Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts - yeh'll know all about Hogwarts, o' course
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Lão nói: Cứ gọi ta là bác Hagrid Và như ta đã nói với con rồi đó, ta là người giữ khóa ở Hogwarts Dĩ nhiên là rồi đây con sẽ biết hết mọi thứ về Hogwarts
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"Sorry?" barked Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows "It' s
Lão Hagrid nạt to quay sang ông bà Dursley đang co rúm lại trong góc tối Chính bọn này mới phải nói xin lỗi! Ta biết con yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou' Hogwarts, fer cryin' out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yet parents learned it all?"
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone) không biết gì về Hogwarts Con không bao giờ thắc mắc là cha mẹ của con học được tất cả từ đâu à? Tất cả cái gì?
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"Do you mean ter tell me," he growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy - this boy! - knows nothin' abou' - about ANYTHING?"
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Lão Hagrid quát bộ mặt vào ông bà Dursley:
Bộ ông tính nói với tôi là đứa bé này - đứa bé này đây! không biết chút gì về mọi chuyện, phải không?
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"But yeh must know about yer mom and dad," he said "I mean, they're famous You're famous."
"What? My my mom and dad weren't famous, were they?" "Yeh don' know yeh don' know " Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare
"Yeh don' know what yeh are?" he said finally
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone) Đáng lẽ con phải biết về cha mẹ của con Ý ta nói họ rất nổi tiếng Con cũng nổi tiếng
Dạ sao ạ? Con… ba con, má con đâu có nổi tiếng gì đâu?
Lão Hagrid lùa bàn tay vo đám tóc dầy rậm gãi sột soạt, còn đôi mắt lão thì dán chặt vô gương mặt cậu bé
Con không biết… vậy ra con không biết, không hề biết con là gì sao?
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter."
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Lão Hagrid ngồi xuống chiếc ghế dài, lão ngồi hơi mạnh nên chiếc ghế rền rĩ to hơn và lún thêm Và là một phù thủy xịn Ta dám nói vậy, một khi con được huấn luyện chu đáo, con sẽ là một phù thủy cao tay ấn Là con nhà nòi của những phù thủy xịn như ba má con, thì con nhất định phải trở thành phù thủy xịn mà thôi À, ta cho rằng đã đến lúc con phải đọc bức thư này
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ) Hagrid grunted
"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said
"A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call nonmagic folk like them An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Thiệt tình ta cũng muốn coi một Muggle bự như lão sẽ cấm cản thằng bé như thế nào? Harry chen vào hỏi: Một gì bự ạ?
Một Muggle Lão Hagrid giải thích Đó là tên chúng ta gọi những người không có phép thuật, tức là bọn phàm nhân Thật không may là con được nuôi lớn lên trong một gia đình Muggle điển hình nhất mà ta để mắt tới
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"Oh, well - I was at Hogwarts meself but I - er - got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth In me third year They snapped me wand in half an' everything But Dumbledore let me stay on as gamekeeper Great man, Dumbledore." "Why were you expelled?"
"It's gettin' late and we've got lots ter do tomorrow," said Hagrid loudly "Gotta get up ter town, get all yer books an' that."
He took off his thick black coat and threw it to Harry
"You can kip under that," he said "Don' mind if it wriggles a bit, I think I still got a couple o' dormice in one o' the pockets."
Chapter 4 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Ta cũng từng là học sinh ở Hogwarts chứ chẳng chơi, nhưng mà ta… ờ… ta nói thiệt cho con biết, ta bị đuổi học, năm thứ ba Họ bẻ gãy cây gậy phép của ta nhưng cụ Dumbledore lưu ta lại làm người giữ khóa Cụ Dumbledore thiệt là người vĩ đại Tại sao bác bị đuổi? Khuya dữ rồi nghen Mai còn nhiều chuyện phải làm lắm, nào là dắt con xuống phố sắm sửa sách vở đồng phục và đủ mọi thứ nữa
Lão cởi chiếc áo khoác đen dày thảy cho Harry: Con chui vào đó mà ngủ Nó hơi sột soạt một tí nhưng không sao Ta đoán chừng trong túi áo vẫn còn hai con chuột nhắt
Chương 4 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
"Make yerselves at home," said Hagrid …
"Another Weasley, eh?" said Hagrid, glancing at Ron's freckles I spent half me life chasin' yer twin brothers away from the forest."
Harry and Ron were delighted to hear Hagrid call Filch "that old git." "An' as fer that cat, Mrs Norris, I'd like ter introduce her to Fang sometime D'yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can't get rid of her - Filch puts her up to it."
Chapter 8 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone)
Lão Hagrid thả con Fang ra, bảo: Cứ tự nhiên như ở nhà nha các cháu…
Một đứa nữa của nhà Weasley hả? Ta đã tiêu hết nữa đời ta chỉ để rượt đuổi hai thằng anh cháu ra khỏi khu rừng cấm đấy
Cả Harry và Ron đều khoái chí khi nghe lão Hagrid gọi ông giám thị Filch là lão già đó Còn con mèo đó, bà Norris, ta đã định cho Fang độp nó từ lâu rồi Các cháu biết không? Mỗi lần ta có việc đi vô trường là con mèo đó theo ta khắp nơi Không thể nào thoát được nó Chắc lão Filch biểu nó làm vậy
Chương 8 (Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ)
Since “reference” means a thing you say or write that mentions somebody or something else; the act of mentioning somebody or something (Oxford English
Dictionary); the following translation assessment focuses on the content word (e.g.,
“yeh”) as a CSR rather than other function words (e.g., ter, an‟, abou‟)
Table 4.15.2 “I-yeh”- West Country dialect of Hagrid in the “HPPS”
Chapter 4-“Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone” Chương 4-“Harry Potter và Hòn đá phù thuỷ”
"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey "
Không có trà nước gì sao? Chà! Chuyến đi thiệt là vất vả
"Yeh look a lot like yet dad, but yeh've got yer mom's eyes." Con giống cha con lắm, nhưng đôi mắt của con thì lại giống mẹ
"Anyway - Harry," said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, "a very happy birthday to yeh Nhưng lão khổng lồ quay lưng về phía ông bà Dursley, nói với Harry: Dù sao thì cũng chúc mừng con một sinh nhật vui vẻ nhé Harry
Got summat fer yeh here - I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right."
Có chút quà cho con đây Không chừng ta có đè mông lên nó một chút, nhưng mà mùi vị nó vẫn ngon lành
"True, I haven't introduced meself Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts." Ờ, ta chưa tự giới thiệu Ta là Rubeus Hagrid, người giữ khóa và gác sân ở Hogwarts
"I'd not say no ter summat stronger if yeh've got it, mind." Ê, có trà không? Ta không từ chối món xi - cu - la đâu, nếu có thêm chút trà
"Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does An' like I told yeh, I'm Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts
Cứ gọi ta là bác Hagrid Và như ta đã nói với con rồi đó, ta là người giữ khóa ở Hogwarts
"It' s them as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren't gettin' yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou' Hogwarts, fer cryin' out loud!
Chính bọn này mới phải nói xin lỗi! Ta biết con không nhận được những lá thư, nhưng ta không thể ngờ con lại không biết gì về Hogwarts
Did yeh never wonder where yet parents learned it all?" Con không bao giờ thắc mắc là cha mẹ của con học được tất cả từ đâu à?
But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, "About our world, I mean Your world My world Yer parents' world."
Supplementation for House’s model
Reflecting on the findings of the three CSR categories in relation to the theoretical framework, this section recapitulates the supplementation for House‟s model based on the aforementioned findings and discussion
House‟s model, extended with Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), has shown to be useful in assessing the translation of the whole three groups of proper names, regional dialects, and person reference forms from English to Vietnamese
The evidence obtained from the three CSR groups shows that Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory have been advantageous in uncovering the author‟s attitudes embedded in proper names, regional dialects, and person reference forms in the texts The analysis of such Attitudinal resources is significant when it comes to the hidden meanings and attitudes of the ST author in the literary text Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory shed light on how the author expresses her attitude towards CSRs via language Such attitude domain is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions, judgments of behavior and evaluation of things The appraisal system generally evaluates the subjective ideology of the language users through the evaluation vocabulary Therefore, House‟s model, extended with Attitudinal resources in Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), has shown to be a useful tool in assessing the English-Vietnamese translation of the three groups of CSRs
Accordingly, compensation strategy is suggested in translating CSRs from English to Vietnamese to make recompense for the linguistic and cultural differences The findings also show that there have been flexible ways of compensations depending on each type of CSR in their specific situational contexts
Regarding proper names, since the proper names in the chosen ST fulfill the ideational and interpersonal functions, the non-translation strategy leads to partially functional equivalence in comparison with the ST Therefore, non-translation of proper names within the main text plus end-of-book glossary is recommended to compensate for linguistic and cultural constraints The use of end-of-book glossary comes in handy for various types of readers, including experts, educated layman, and the uninformed Concerning regional dialects, the findings disclose that regional dialects in a literary text are embedded with the pragmatic purposes of the
ST author Although neutralization serves as an option to minimize undesirable side effects, it leads to partially functional equivalence in comparison to the ST Hence, compensation strategy is also recommended in which “neutralization” is employed in combination with the use of colloquialism With compensation strategy, the translator renders some qualities of the dialect present in ST but expresses it to a lesser degree In the case of the “HPPS”, it is feasible to increase the number of colloquial words to highlight the social status and friendliness of the character
In short, the findings of this study are summarized in the following figure:
Extent of equivalence between English CSRs and their Vietnamese translation in a literary text functional-pragmatic perspective
Target text Target language Target culture
Partially functional equivalence + Field: subject matter
Source proper names Target proper names + Tenor: participant relationship
Source person reference forms Functional equivalence Target person reference forms Social attitude
Partially functional equivalence - Genre description
Source regional dialects Target regional dialects - Statement of function
One of the reasons underlying partially functional equivalence: the constraints of two languages involve in the translation; the SL with its linguistic-aesthetic features belonging to the norms of usage in the source lingua- cultural community; the TL norms, the traditions, principles of target lingua cultural community
Compensation strategy: trade-off, compromise
Figure 4.5 Summary of the main findings of the study
CONCLUSION
Contributions of the study
The study adds empirical evidence to the applicability of House‟s model (2005) in assessing the translation of CSRs from English to Vietnamese in a literary text, especially the translation of proper names, regional dialects, and person reference forms
However, this study sheds more light on the appropriateness of integrating Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory into Tenor within House‟s model (2015) Based on the findings of the three groups of CSRs, Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory have been shown to be a practical tool in uncovering the implied attitudes embedded in the CSRs of the source literary text In a culture-specific text, House‟s model does not specifically indicate how the ST author encapsulate feelings and values in CSRs as realized in Tenor Therefore, Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory Appraisal Theory are adopted to describe and explore the author‟s attitudes within Tenor
The methodological contribution of the study lies in the adoption of the qualitative assessment from the functional-pragmatic perspective of House (2015) triangulated with the qualitative analysis from the interview scripts of the ST author, the translator and other translators and an expert in the field
Although this study is limited in scope, its findings suggest practical ideas for translating proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects from English to Vietnamese The research findings supply the publishing houses as well as the translators with translation strategies to translate proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects in a literary text from English to Vietnamese
Concerning purposeful proper names in a literary text, compensation strategy (non-translation plus end-of-book glossary) is suggested to make recompense for the linguistic and cultural differences between English and Vietnamese Regarding person reference forms, the use of TL-oriented strategy is recommended This strategy has lead to the gains of socio-cultural and pragmatic implications of Vietnamese person reference forms In terms of dialect translation, neutralization serves as a trade-off to minimize side effects Thus, compensation strategy is recommended in which neutralization is employed together with the use of colloquial language to reveal the social status, the level of language, the friendliness of the character
The following section presents the implications drawn from this study, regarding theory, research, and practice.
Implications
The theoretical implications drawn from the findings of this study concern the applicability of House‟s functional-pragmatic model for the
English-Vietnamese translation assessment of the three groups of CSRs
Since there exist the deep layers of attitudes and values underlying the linguistic surface of proper names, person reference forms, regional dialects, the incorporation of Attitudinal resources of Appraisal theory into House‟s model has facilitated the researcher to uncover the author‟s implied attitudes embedded in the CSRs in the literary text The discovery of author‟s implied attitudes embedded in CSRs in the ST has facilitated the researcher to figure out to what extent the author‟s attitudes and the translator‟s attitudes match in order to fulfill the overarching aim of translation assessment Therefore, the findings of this study, to some extent, add empirical evidence to validate the use of House‟s model when adapted to the specific aim of this study
Firstly, from the findings of this study, this study echoes the need of conducting research on TQA from an interdisciplinary approach, including linguistic and cultural studies In this study, the heart of translation assessment journey is hunting for the equivalence between the TT and ST In order to answer the question related to the extent of equivalence between the
ST and TT, an interdisciplinary approach firstly embraces the studies of linguistics because a translation is the result of a linguistic-textual operation in which a text in one language is recontextualized in another language
Moreover, an interdisciplinary approach also incorporates cross-cultural and intercultural studies because a translation is always the replacement of a text, and above all a special relationship between languages and cultures As reflected from the data of this study, the linguistic differences of proper names, person reference forms, and regional dialects are indicative of cultural differences between English and Vietnamese In this study, the choice of translation strategies adopted by the translator is constrained by linguistic and cultural differences between English and Vietnamese This interdisciplinary view facilitates a profound understanding about the choice of the translator as well as a well-rounded translation assessment
Secondly, although the adoption of multiple sources of data is recommended in investigating complex constructs regarding the equivalence in translating CSRs from English to Vietnamese, the number of studies making use of such methodology remains limited Previous studies (see Table 2.2.1; Table 2.2.2) are likely to incline to the use of textual analysis It is justifiable that the use of textual analysis is helpful for the purpose of assessing the translation of a text from English to Vietnamese However, in order to gain insights into the intentions of the author embedded in the text, it is recommended that textual analysis is employed in combination with the interviews with the author of the ST Therefore, this study adds more empirical evidence to the effectiveness of such triangulation
Firstly, the findings of this study have shown the role of text analysis in both TQA theories and translation practice Prior to translating the text, it is requisite for the translators, translator trainees to analyze the text carefully
The purpose of text analysis is to determine the author‟s pragmatic intentions and implied attitudes embedded in distinctive linguistic and cultural features in the ST In line with this implication, Đinh Hồng Vân (2012) also stresses the role of understanding the purposes of the ST author and rendering the pragmatic purposes of the ST author into the TT via ST analysis During the text analysis process, it is of significance for the translators, translator trainees to collect related articles, interviews conducted with the author of the
ST and other relevant information to gain insights into the author‟s purposes and attitudes embedded in the text
The ST analysis procedures are suggested in line with the modified House‟s model as below:
Field : what is going on (subject matter in the text) Tenor : the relationship between participants
Author’s Provenance: temporal, geographical, social and cultural provenance of the author (Dimensions of language user)
Author’s Attitude/ Stance: author‟s feelings and attitudes towards the subject matter
Social Role Relationship: relationship between author and reader; relationship between participants (within the text)
Social attitude: different styles: Frozen, Formal, Consultative, Casual, and Intimate
Mode: Medium, the channel of communication being used
Genre Description of the genre of the ST
Secondly, as reflected in the findings, it is vital for the translators and translator trainees to gain a profound understanding about not only two languages but also two cultures As evidenced in the group of person reference forms, English person reference forms is simpler than Vietnamese
In English, there exists a neutral dyad “I-you”, which is used in communication as prefabricated units When translating the neutral dyad “I- you” into Vietnamese, Vietnamese person reference forms has no one-to-one equivalent dyad with the dyad “I-you” because there are various socio- cultural factors determining Vietnamese person reference forms The selection of equivalents for “I-you” dyad depends on contextual factors including age, sex, social status, interpersonal relationships, social attitudes, and the varying degrees of formality of the context Secondly, Vietnamese speakers tend to use kinship terms to address in communication The choice of kinship terms also hinges on a wide range of contextual factors, including communicative purposes, interpersonal relationships between participants, social attitudes, and communicative rules For these reasons, it is integral for the translators to pay full attention to cultural differences and contextual factors to select equivalents in Vietnamese for English “I-you” dyads
Thirdly, given that the findings show the linguistic and cultural differences, compensation strategy is recommended in dealing with cultural problems As evidenced in this study, compensation strategy is recommended for the translator as well as the publishing house in which an end-of-book glossary is provided Such end-of-book glossary aims to interpret the meanings embedded in purposeful proper names of the literary text as Manini
(2014, p 137) suggests that “the use of explanatory notes or other forms of