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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CROSS CULTURAL ISSUE IN TRANSLATION & INTERPRETATION CULTURAL FACTORS IN TRANSLATING COLLOCATION 1 CON[.]
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY-COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CROSS-CULTURAL ISSUE IN TRANSLATION & INTERPRETATION CULTURAL FACTORS IN TRANSLATING COLLOCATION Page CONTENT I OVERVIEW OF COLLOCATIONS Definition3 Types of collocation 2.1 Grammatical collocations (grammatical combinations) 2.2 Fixed collocation (fixed phrases) 2.3 Strong collocations 4 2.4 Verb + Noun Collocations (Less fixed combinations) 2.5 Phrasal verbs 4 II PROBLEMS THAT TRANSLATORS HAVE TO DEAL WHEN TRANSLATE COLLOCATIONS III STRATEGIES TO TRANSLATE COLLOCATIONS Using collocations of similar meaning and form Using collocations of similar meaning but different form Translating by paraphrasing IV CONCLUSION REFERENCES 10 11 APPENDIX 12 I OVERVIEW OF COLLOCATIONS Definition A collocation is two or more words that often go together These combinations just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and just sound "wrong" For example, in natural English, people say the fast train or fast food and the quick train, quick food are unnatural Sometimes, a pair of words may not be absolutely wrong and students will understand what it meant, but it may not be the natural, normal collocation For example: When we say: “ She has got yellow hair”, the others can understand but a fluent speaker of English would probably say: “She has got blonde hair” Students who learn English have to make a special effort to learn collocations because they are often difficult to guess The difficulty level of collocations depends largely on the use of primary and non-primary sense of the component words Collocations in which the words are used in their primary sense are easily understood and translated Learning collocations brings to us a lot of benefits, especially for translators It makes speaking sound natural and alive, provides “chunks” of English that are ready to use and saves us a lot of time and effort when we are trying to express ourselves Also, we will not suffer from grammatical errors when using words We can use a lot of different combinations, enrich our expression and enhance writing sophistication and avoid simple, boring, repetitive writing style Therefore, learning collocations is an efficient method to develop your language proficiency The only way for second language learners to handle collocation is studying them to become more familiar with them as native speakers Types of collocations 2.1 Grammatical collocations (grammatical combinations) There are number of common grammatical combinations that form collocations in English: Noun + verb : dogs bark, cats meow, prices fall Adverb + Adjective: bitterly cold, hugely enjoyable, deeply upset Adjective + Noun: strong tea, heavy rain, powerful engine Verb + Adverb: sleep soundly, rely heavily on Adverb + Verb: flatly refuse, distinctly remember 2.2 Fixed collocation (fixed phrases) The relationship between two or more words can be very close For example, “kith and kin” (an old-fashioned way of referring to your relatives) or “ next of kin” But both words kith and kin have very little freedom to combine with other words in English Ajar ( she left the door ajar – which means “ she left the door open”) Amends ( she was sorry for what she had done and decided to make amends – which means “ she decided to try to make the situation better”) 2.3 Strong collocations The words are very closely associated with each other For example, “auburn” only collocated with words connected with hair (e.g curls, tresses, locks ), “adjourn” is very strongly associated with “meeting” and “trial” Many idioms in English are examples of strong collocations For example: lose face, under the weather, spill the beans 2.4 Verb + Noun Collocations (Less fixed combinations) This kind of collocation is very common in English In such a case, we have more freedom to make combinations, but there are certain restrictions on what is possible or probable For example: make a mistake / make an effort/ make friends 2.5 Phrasal verbs Combination of verb + adverb or preposition For example : pick up, take up, bump into, set off II PROBLEMS THAT TRANSLATORS HAVE TO DEAL WHEN TRANSLATE COLLOCATIONS Because collocations are combinations just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time, so it is not easy to translate a collocation into other languages, especially for non-native speakers They may be hampered due to non- equivalent collocations and cultural barriers and other problems The first problem in translation collocation which translators usually face is finding proper target language equivalent collocation According to Armstrong (2005: 98) “the difficulty for translators is not so much to recognize a source collocation as to find an acceptable target language equivalent” In addition, collocations in target language have to be naturally translated For example, in English, people can combine the word "black" with many animals to describe their color However, when translated into Vietnamese, translators need to be careful because each animal has different descriptions of the word "black" They are also can be called Vietnamese collocations We can call a back cat is “mèo đen” but also “mèo mun”, but a black horse is called “ngựa ơ” or a back dog is called “chó mực” In this case, all these words refer to black color People can understand what are “ngựa đen” and “chó đen” but they not seem to be natural There are many reasons to explain this First, Vietnamese is under the influence of Chinese, the word "ô" in Chinese has the meaning "black" Vietnamese people also often call the color by name of the objects which have similar colors They call "con mèo mun" because it has a color like the ebony color and "con chó mực" because it has color of ink These are old collocations, which are still using, aim to enrich the Vietnamese vocabulary Another important issue is dealing with culture-bound collocations According to Barker (Barker 1992: 59-61): “Some collocations reflect the cultural setting in which they occur If the cultural setting of the source and target languages are significantly different, there will be instances when the source text will contain collocations which convey what to the target reader would be unfamiliar associations of ideas Such culture-specific collocations express ideas previously unexpressed in the target language Like culture-specific words, they point to concepts which are not easily accessible to the target reader […].” For example, in sentence “It's Friday-head into happy hour with some new cocktail conversation”, we cannot find out corresponding form for the English collocation “happy hour” in Vietnamese “Happy hour” is a period in a bar from about 5-7 pm when drinks are sold at reduced prices in a bar or other licensed establishment It belongs to American culture, which started in the US Navy in the 1920s and quite alien to Vietnamese culture Translators also can make the same mistake when translate collocation “hard liquor” This word is common in culinary field, for instance, “How to make hard liquor at home?” “Hard liquor” is an alcoholic beverage that is distilled rather than fermented In Western culture, this collocation was used to refer to kinds of liquor as vodka, tequila or whiskey It does not include other alcoholic drinks such as beer Another example, when translate collocations “dry wine” and “sweet wine”, if the translators are not knowledgeable about the culinary culture they can mistranslate For cultures where wine is consumed often, dry wine is the only wine used with meals and sweet wine is used only as desserts wine If they are translated "rượu khô" and "rượu ngọt", the meanings of words will be lost Therefore, background knowledge is very important to translate the collocations which contain cultural features The difference of traditional concept is also a major barrier for translators In western culture, people say "lady and gentlemen" but in eastern culture, it is “quý ông quý bà” The difference is due to the concept of gender In Western countries, male is often more priority than male There is a cultural feature called "lady first" In contrast, in Asia, men are superior to women It is the reason why, it is unnaturally if they translated "quý bà, quý ông" Moreover, translators also have difficulty when a word collocates with another word because it may have secondary meaning which is different from its primary one, and usually cannot be translated word-for-word into the receptor or target language For instance, with the words "dry" which means "free from water", we can collocate with many words However, in many other combinations, it has another meaning For example : dry voice (cold voice, in the sense it does not express emotion), dry cow (a cow that does not yield milk) or dry bread (bread served alone without butter or jam) Because collocations usually have many meaning so that translators can be confused if they not realized their second meaning, which are different from the meaning of individual elements Lastly, translators may encounter some trouble in translating collocations in animals In Vietnamese, the words "đàn" can be collocated with many different nouns of animal For example: “Ngày ngày, cậu lăn sau đàn bò đồng, tối đến lại lăn sau đàn bò nhà” (Sọ Dừa, Vietnamese fairy tales) “Đàn kiến từ vườn cổng đàn kiến từ cổng vào vườn không lạc đường chân ” (Song “ Đàn Kiến” by Vũ Hồng) “Trơng đàn gà lơng vàng, theo mẹ tìm ăn vườn.” (Song “Đàn gà con” by Việt Anh) “Có đàn hổ ni trái phép xã Xn Tín từ năm 2006 đến nay, Hạt kiểm lâm huyện Thọ Xuân để tồn tại.” (Article: “Bất ngờ đàn hổ “sống chung” với hàng trăm hộ dân” – VTC News) Meanwhile in English, there are many words meaning “đàn”, as follows “There was once a flock of birds peacefully pecking seeds under a tree.” (A folktale from India - A flock of birds) “Then he went homewards, but when he reached the crossroads he met Little Claus with his herd of cattle.” (From: Andersen’s fairy tale) A pack of dogs/ calves A school of fish/ chickens Therefore, Vietnamese translators often encounter this problem when translate from Vietnamese into English These are the common problems in translation when translator unfamiliar with the concept of collocations They will most likely attempt to translate literally from their native language, which results is making mistakes To be able to solve these troubles, translators need to find appropriate strategies in translating collocations III STRATEGIES TO TRANSLATE COLLOCATIONS Translators have many problems in translating a collocation to another language The main reason may be due to the specific local cultural elements in collocations or collocations have no equivalent in the target language This creates difficulties in the translation process with the aim of translating a language into another language naturally Therefore, to overcome this problem, we need to use some strategies to make translating collocations easier Barker (1992: 48) suggests that: "patterns of collocations are largely arbitrary and independent of meaning This is so both within and across languages The same degree of mismatch that can be observed then comparing the collocational patterns of synonyms and near-synonyms within the same languages is evident in the collocational patterning of "dictionary equivalent or near equivalents' in two languages" Using collocations of similar meaning and form There are many collocations that we can find Vietnamese collocations with a similar meaning and which is expressed in the same way Therefore, translators can use the same meaning and form collocation For example: English: I go jogging every morning Learning to ride a motorbike is very easy Vietnamese: Tôi vào buổi sáng Tập lái xe máy dễ In this case, “go jogging” and “đi bộ”; “ride a motorbike” and “lái xe máy” have the same meaning and the same form Using collocations of similar meaning but different form We can find Vietnamese collocations with similar meaning for English collocations However, each language has each way to express, so we cannot translate collocations literally Instead of, we use different form but similar meaning words For example: English: Mary has got a hen and a cock Vietnamese: Mary có gà mái gà trống Do not: Mary có gà gà đực “Gà mái” and “gà trống” are two Vietnamese collocations that describe gender of chickens Also, “drink like a fish” cannot be translated “uống cá” into Vietnamese because this translation unnatural It must be translated “uống nhiều” Translating by paraphrasing In case equivalents in target language cannot be found, paraphrasing may be the best way to deal with collocation In this strategy, students produced alternative versions of translation by means of definitions, examples and descriptions, without changing the meaning of the original For example: “Chập chập lại cheng cheng Con gà trống thiến để riêng cho thầy Đơm xơi đơm cho đầy Đơm mà khơng khéo thầy thiêng” (Vietnamese folktale) When we translate collocation “con gà trống thiến”, there is no equivalent collocation in English It often appears in folklore, derives from the worship tradition of Vietnamese Thus, to translate this collocation, translators need to explain, describe or annotate what is “con gà trống thiến” because for those who not understand the Vietnamese culture, they will not know what this collocation means IV CONCLUSION Socio-linguistic and cultural aspects play important role in collocation translation Therefore, understanding culture helps translators be able to translate collocations more easily They must have a deep knowledge on both source language and target language so as to understand the connotative meanings of collocations of the source language and then to recreate their exact counterparts in the target language The most important is that they not make mistakes, or mislead cultural Furthermore, to have a good translation, translators have to recognize collocations which contain cultural setting to decide which strategy to be used If you select the appropriate method, you will translate better, more natural without losing its meaning In addition, translators should also have knowledge, understanding by continually learning about collocations and how to use them 10 REFERENCES http://www.ozdic.com/collocation-dictionary/holiday http://www.myenglishteacher.eu/blog/5-most-common-adjective-noun-collocationsexpress-chilly-rich-heavy-strong/ http://sv-etc.nl/collocations.pdf http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=S8LQZ1luZsC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=very+fixed+collocations&source=bl&ots=IRK89gwSzx &sig=qqO-gN6vMmb2-1lU8jLSZv6VkIU&hl=vi&sa=X&ei=K9idUpkFsTJiAfUlYDQCg&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=very%20fixed %20collocations&f=false http://www.umc.edu.dz/theses/anglais/FAN1152.pdf http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/J/J96/J96-1001.pdf http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2010/v55/n3/045065ar.html http://www.umc.edu.dz/theses/anglais/BOU1142.pdf 11 APPENDIX http://food52.com/blog/8290-the-history-of-happy-hour http://tfetfe.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-Hard-Liquor-at-Home http://truyencotichhay.blogspot.com/2012/01/chuyen-co-tich-so-dua.html http://lyric.tkaraoke.com/33178/Dan_Kien.html http://thegioidochoi.vn/news/7694987E9E30E43D3C0F483B19201E/-Dan-ga-con.aspx http://vtc.vn/394-329347/phong-su-kham-pha/bat-ngo-dan-ho-song-chung-voi-hangtram-ho-dan.htm http://www.storyarts.org/library/nutshell/stories/flock.html http://books.google.com.vn/books? id=rSkY72wD7owC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=a+herd+of+cattle+in+fairy+tales&so urce=bl&ots=_8tYrTgVlf&sig=UKugDbn5llzT8-MfVHSRXRBAyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iAKwUpDoAaaKiQfk1oBI&ved=0CF0Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q =a%20herd%20of%20cattle%20in%20fairy%20tales&f=false http://vi.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ca_dao_Vi%E1%BB%87t_Nam 12