An analysis of errors in english vietnamese translation of modality should made by english majors at the hcm university of social sciences and humanities problems and solu

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES LÊ CÔNG THIỆN AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF MODALITY “SHOULD” MADE BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT THE HCM UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS M.A THESIS IN TESOL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTER DEGREE IN TESOL Supervisor: Dr NGUYỄN TIẾN HÙNG HO CHI MINH CITY-2005 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF MODALITY “SHOULD” MADE BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT THE HCM UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee The thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree Ho Chi Minh City, December 2005 LE CONG THIEN RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, LE CONG THIEN, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Mater’s theses deposited in the Library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses Ho Chi Minh City, December 2005 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my great thanks to Dr Nguyen Tien Hung, who has given me invaluable advice and guidance without which I could not have fulfilled my work I am greatly grateful to Ms Ngo Thi Phuong Thien, and Mr Truong Hon Huy for their precious suggestions on my thesis, as well as to all the senior lecturers of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature of the Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their lectures Finally, I would also like to thank the students in my classes for their willingness to fulfill the portfolio assignments and the questionnaire ABSTRACT The thesis focused on analyzing the students’ errors in translating modality “should” into Vietnamese and was written for the purpose of identifying the students’ common problems in the process of translating this modal verb, as well as the causes of the problems And from the study findings, solutions and implications to these problems were suggested as useful contribution to the teaching and learning grammar and translation, that is, the translating of modality in general and “should” in particular The synthesizing and analyzing methodology was used in the thesis 63 secondyear students majoring in English were given an assignment as a portfolio one consisting of 11 daily speeches with “should” from the Web Concordancer website and textbooks Then, the data was collected and analyzed on the basis of theories on the modality used as the standard of evaluating the student’s translations of should In addition, a questionnaire related to the students’ thought of, their habits of, and their problems of translating the modality should was given to the students after the test so that they could express their opinions, problems, suggestions and so on The results showed that most of the students in the study had difficulty in translating modality “should”, especially its structures, aspects and the notion of time reference and tense The problems were due to the students’ misjudgment of the meanings of the English and Vietnamese modality, their way of learning grammar and translation, and the role of the teacher If further research on modality is studied, and if the students are taught all the structures of modality, the students will make much progress in their English study TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY Rationale Aims and objectives Scope of the Study Overview CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW The Concept of Problems - Errors in Translation 1.2 The Concept of Translation Problems 1.3 The Concept of Translation Errors 1.4 The Significance of Error Analysis 11 Source of Errors 13 2.1 Interlingual Errors 13 2.2 Intralingual Errors 14 Modality 19 3.1 Definitions and the Meaning of Modality 20 3.2 Classifications 21 3.2.1 Epistemic Modality 21 3.2.2 Deontic Modality 22 3.3 23 Modality and Aspects – Time Reference – Tenses – Moods 3.3.1 Aspect – Time Reference 23 3.3.2 Tenses 24 3.3.3 Mood 25 3.4 26 Modal Verb Should Gaps and Research Questions 27 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 29 Population 29 Materials 29 Procedures 30 3.1 Portfolio Assignment 30 3.2 The survey 31 3.3 Data Analysis 31 CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 33 Results and Discussions 33 1.1 Data Analysis - Findings 33 Table 1: The Result from the test of should translation 1.2 Analysis of Common Problems 33 61 Table 2: How the students appreciate the modal should 61 Table 3: Some difficulties the students have in dealing with the modal should 62 Table 4: Causes of the difficulties with the modal should 64 Table 5: Approach to deal with the modal should 65 Comments on The Common Problems - Implications 66 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION 80 Conclusion 80 Limitation and Suggestions for Further Studies 81 APPENDIX 84 Appendix 1: Portfolio Assignment in Translation 84 Appendix 2: Questionnaire 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY 90 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION RATIONALE Rationale In the second year, the students begin to study English – Vietnamese translation at both basic and advanced levels And since almost all other subjects in the next phases are related to linguistics, literature, culture, etc., students’ good capability of translating the source language into the target language properly is an indispensable requirement As a matter of fact, for the first two years, the students have to attend grammar courses at the university and have to acquire a good command of language skills and a good knowledge of language usage However, for several years of teaching advanced reading, British & American cultures, and, recently, translation, I have noticed that one of the difficulties many students have is that of translating modal verbs This may be caused by their lack of translation experience and by insufficient knowledge of theories of modality Perhaps, the students will have less difficulty in understanding the semantic features of the modal verbs, but they are likely to encounter the complicated English syntactic structures, and the functional grammar of modality, for modality, in addition to expressing the propositional meanings, can convey the notions of advisability, certainty or possibility, the speaker’s attitudes, expectation, criticism, and so on when used in its specific syntactic 10 Most of the students not invest enough time to their studies, or to practicing modality The students even have the feeling that they are made to study again what was taught at high school, which can be a drawback in studying new things Table showed some 27% believed that the grammar books at the university didn’t present all the theories of modals, and it’s the case Recently, the main materials of grammar have been refined and compiled with more details of modality However, the problem is whether the students really study them thoroughly I strongly believe that the students must be asked to give presentations on grammar lesson with the teacher’s guidance so that they can have opportunity to explore and assess the language they are studying It is high time for the students to have a sense of the importance of self-studies As far as the students are concerned, only when they take regular attendance at lessons as required, and the best to study and practice all the tasks can they master the complexity of the modality in both English and Vietnamese 88 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION Conclusion The modal verbs are extremely difficult verb forms for non-native speakers to master, and the translating of the modality is even more difficult since they have many irregularities in forms and interpretations Modality is usually considered as the province of the closed class of modal verbs and treated as part of the English grammar In English, crucial aspects of interpersonal meanings can be expressed by modal verbs and by a large number of lexical words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) while in Vietnamese the interpersonal meanings by lexical words Lynn M Berk [1999:130] wrote, “Modality has nothing to with form; many different kinds of constructions can be used to express modality” The study proved that most of the students had big confusion about the structures and the notion of English modality time and tense and Vietnamese one In English, while most modal auxiliaries have a distinct past tense form, this form is not always applied to mention past time; it is impossible to use the past tense form of a modal verb to indicate a past event and a past judgement by the speaker The modal verb should in “Should I carry your suitcase?” is not the past tense of shall and is slightly more polite or more obsequious and thus shows the interpersonal meaning While English past modality is conveyed by the using of 89 the perfect aspect Vietnamese modality time preference is expressed by adverbs as “mất (thôi)”, “mất (rồi) [Cao Xuan Hao, 2000: 62] Thus the complexity of modality in both English and Vietnamese, its similarities and subtle differences in both languages, the scales of implicatures, interpersonal meanings through context of situation, context of culture, etc cause most students unpleasant difficulty in translating the modality, especially the modality should, into Vietnamese Limitations and Suggestions for Further Studies Firstly, since the porforlio assignment was designed for the second-year students, it did not include all the structures of modal should Secondly, in the study, the negation and the passive voice of the modal should have not been discussed A negative occurring right after a modal verb may include or exclude the part of the meaning conveyed by a modal verb For example, the negative in (78) You may not go out at night negates the permission - the modality, whereas the negation in (79) "She might not have seen you" negates the event (It is possible that she didn't see you) I strongly believe that the broader scope and narrow scope of negation signified by the modal verbs are sure to cause problems to Vietnamese students of 90 English, thus should be studied more Unfortunately I have not had chance to a have close examination about this in my study Also, as Randolph Quirk [p 220] put it, “Another point of significance is that the modals themselves tend to have overlapping meanings.” That is, in some circumstances, modal verbs can be more or less interchangeable I have to admit that I have not done a research on the aspect in my work Being aware of the complexity of the modality in expressing a relation with reality, and in overlapping meanings between modals, I present this thesis in the hope that it could be helpful to teachers and students and that further research on modality will be studied Thirdly, in the light of translation, although the criteria of valuation in translation, especially the translation of modality, have been discussed, I suppose there have been questions related to appreciating the quality of a translation According to Bassnette, during the process of evaluation, the teacher must be as objective as possible, following the standards of equivalence in translation However, to the best of my knowledge, so far there has not been a standardized system of translation evaluation, and if any, it has not been studied scientifically and sufficiently That is why the teacher easily has the tendency to analyze the 91 translation errors rather than assess the student’s translation itself Most teachers, I think, often bases his evaluation standards on his own deduction to decide whether the student’s translation is good or bad, or exactly speaking, right or wrong Therefore, in my opinion, the evaluation of the students’ work may be sometimes rather subjective Realizing that doing research on translation and translation assessment is one of the challenging tasks at a higher level, I have focused only on the translation of the modality and explained my viewpoints about it I hope that further studies on translation theory and translation evaluation will be thoroughly studied in order to be served as a standardized criterion in teaching, learning and assessing a piece of translation 92 APPENDIX Appendix 1: PORTFOLIO ASSIGNMENT in Translation PORTFOLIO ASSIGNMENT in Translation Translate the following sentences into Vietnamese 1) The compartment was empty I sat down by the window and opened a book The door slid open and a man with a large suitcase came in “You’ve got my seat.” “Your seat?” “Let’s check You should be occupying seat 34, and this is my seat, number 39.” _ _ 2) “Should I help you with the washing up, Mum?” “There’s not much work to do.” _ _ 3) If a Dutch tulip-grower should be reading this article, I should like to know if one can still buy Semper Augustus _ 93 4) Today should start with showers in the west and Ireland, but dry, bright and frosty in central and eastern areas _ _ 5) It is absolutely absurd that anything that happened 18 years ago should come up now _ _ 6) I was shocked that she shouldn’t have invited Phyllis _ _ 7) Woznica Sir, “Why should there be such a turmoil in the financial market, just because one bank lost a lot of money?” _ _ 8) As the former aide to Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader in the House, he should have been able to judge just what was possible in Congress _ _ 9) Should hunting be banned, Bailey and Carlton will have to find alternative employment 94 _ _ 10) Everyone agrees that there should be some constraints on what advertisers are allowed to say _ _ 11) We feel Mr Howard should have taken the opportunity to change this _ _ compartment (n) = A room on a train turmoil (n) = disorder ban (v) = prohibit, forbid constraint (n) = restriction 95 Appendix 2: Questionnaire BẢNG CÂU HỎI KHẢO SÁT Chào Anh Chị sinh viên học môn Dịch Anh Việt Hiện thực đề tài nghiên cứu khó khăn việc dạy học môn Dịch Anh Việt đối tượng sinh viên chuyên ngành ngữ văn Anh trường nhằm góp phần nâng cao thêm chất lïng dạy học môn Chúng tôt mong Anh Chị dành thời gian trả lời phiếu thăm dò sau Thông tin Anh Chị cung cấp quan trọng thành công đề tài, sử dụng vào mục đích nghiên cứu Xin cảm ơn Anh Chị PHẦN 1: THÔNG TIN CÁ NHÂN Anh Chị vui lòng điền vào phần thông tin cá nhân Năm sinh _ Nam/ Nữ Anh Chị học trung học phổ thông Thành phố Thị xã Nông thôn 96 PHẦN 2: CÂU HỎI NGHIÊN CỨU Anh Chị chọn nhiều phương án cho ý kiến cá nhân 1) In your opinion, MODAL VERBS are A not very important B very important because they can express the speaker’s attitudes, feelings, etc C too difficult to study, so you don’t pay attention to them D Other ideas _ 2) What difficulties you have in translating the modal SHOULD? A You don’t know its special structures and meanings B You are affected by the habit of translating “SHOULD” into “NEÂN” C You have no difficulties D Other ideas _ 97 3) In your opinion, what can cause difficulties in translating the modal “SHOULD”? A You think that “SHOULD” has only one meaning “NEÂN” B You haven’t been taught all the special structures of “SHOULD” C You have been taught the theories of “SHOULD”, but it is too difficult to master D You don’t practise modal verbs regularly E The grammar books which you have used at school and the university don’t present all the theories of modal verbs F Other ideas _ 4) What you often when dealing with the modal verb SHOULD? 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