Các chiến lược được áp dụng trong bản dịch tiếng việt tiếng anh về các mối quan hệ họ hàng trong truyện ngắn được viết bởi nguyễn nhật ánh hoa vàng trên cỏ xanh

t HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY OF ENGLISH GRADUATION RESEARCH PAPER STRATEGIES APPLIED IN THE VIETNAMESEENGLISH TRANSLATION OF KINSHIP TERMS OF ADDRESS IN THE SHORT STORY WRITTEN BY NGUYEN NHAT ANH: “I SEE YELLOW FLOWES IN THE GREEN GRASS” TRUONG ANH THU Major: Supervisor: Interpretation Dr TRUONG BACH LE HUE, JUNE 2020 ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA TIẾNG ANH KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP ĐẠI HỌC CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐƯỢC ÁP DỤNG TRONG BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT - TIẾNG ANH VỀ CÁC MỐI QUAN HỆ HỌ HÀNG TRONG TRUYỆN NGẮN CỦA NGUYỄN NHẬT ÁNH: “TÔI THẤY HOA VÀNG TRÊN CỎ XANH” Sinh viên: Lớp: Mã sinh viên: Chuyên ngành: Cán hướng dẫn: Trương Anh Thư AnhK13C 15F7511448 Tiếng Anh Phiên Dịch TS Trương Bạch Lê Huế, tháng 6/2020 Abstract Over the years, terms of address (TODS) including personal pronouns, proper names, kinship terms and occupational titles have been researched sociolinguistically, since interpersonal and transactional ramifications were recognized in human relationships In translating from Vietnamese to English, choosing proper equivalent for those types can be one of the problematic areas of translation studies Meanwhile, kinship terms tend to play the essential role in Vietnamese‟s life in particular and in the world in general This study focuses on exploring the translation of Vietnamese kinship terms into English used in the story written by Nguyen Nhat Anh, namely “Toi Thay Hoa Vang Tren Co Xanh” The aim is to investigate the strategies adopted in translating kinship terms and how the nuances of the terms are conveyed The findings indicate that the most frequently used micro translation strategy is using more neutral words while using more general words and paraphrasing are employed the least For the macro strategies, domesticating overwhelmingly outnumbers foreignizing Some strategies result in the incomplete conveyance of the nuance of the term Consequently, the translator should focus much on the linguistic and cultural elements of not only the source text but also the target text to guarantee the complete conveyance of both meanings and implications of the terms i Acknowledgements It seems to be hard to deny my devotion first and foremost, to the Management Board of the English Department, University of Foreign Languages, Hue University for giving me the great opportunity to carry out this research My deepest gratitude goes to all the teachers of the Faculty of English , from whom I have learned so much I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr Truong Bach Le, for his wholehearted support and invaluable advice This dissertation would not be completed without his guidance, comments, and recommendations Last but not least, I would like to express my profound and heartfelt gratitude to my family, classmates, and friends, who are the sources of continuous love, advice, and emotional support ii Table of Contents Page Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Table of contents iii List of tables v List of Abbreviations vi Chapter Introduction 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Organization of the Study Chapter Literature Review 2.1 Terms of Kinship .4 2.1.1 Definition .4 2.1.2 Studies on Terms of Address .5 2.1.3 Classification of Vietnamese Terms of Kinship 2.2 Translation Theories 2.2.1 Definition of Translation 2.2.2 Translation Procedures/Strategies 10 2.2.2.1 Newmark‟s Translation Procedures .10 2.2.2.2 Baker‟s Translation Strategies .13 2.2.2.3 Leppihalme‟s Translation Strategies 15 2.2.2.4 Venuti‟s domesticating and foreignizing strategies .16 2.2.2.4.1 The Domesticating Strategy 17 2.2.2.4.2 The Foreignizing Strategy .18 2.3 Introduction to Nguyen Nhat Anh 19 Chapter Research Methodology 21 3.1 Aims and Objectives 21 3.1.1 Aims 21 3.1.2 Objectives 21 3.2 Methods of the Research 21 iii 3.2.1 Corpus of the Study 21 3.2.2 Data Collection Procedure 22 3.2.3 Data Analysis Procedure 23 Chapter Findings and Discussion 25 4.1 Strategies applied in the Translated Version 25 4.1.1 Strategies applied in Translating Kinship Terms 25 4.1.1.1 Translation by Using a More Neutral Word 25 4.1.1.2 Literal Translation .29 4.1.1.3 Translation by Omission .32 4.1.1.4 Translation by Cultural Substitution 34 4.1.1.5 Translation by Using more General Words 36 4.1.1.6 Translation by Parahrasing 37 4.1.1.7 Domesticating strategy 38 4.1.1.8 Foreignizing strategy 40 4.2 Summary of the Findings 41 4.2.1 Research Question 42 4.2.2 Research Question 43 4.3 Summary 43 Chapter Implication and Conclusion 44 Reference 46 iv List of tables Page Table 2.1 Vietnamese Kinship Terms Table 3.1 Translation Strategies for Kinship Terms 24 Table 4.1.1.1 Examples of Translation by using a more neutral word 27 Table 4.1.1.2 Examples of Literal Translation 30 Table 4.1.1.3 Examples of Translation by Omission 32 Table 4.1.1.4 Examples of Translation by Cultural Substitution 35 Table 4.1.1.5 Examples of Translation by Using more General Words 36 Table 4.1.1.6 Examples of Translation by Paraphrasing 37 Table 4.1.1.7.1 Examples of Domesticating strategy 38 Table 4.1.1.7.2 Examples of Domesticating strategy 39 Table 4.1.1.8 Examples of Foreignizing strategy 40 Table 4.2.1 Micro Strategies Applied for Kinship Terms based on Baker (2018), Newmark (1988) and Leppihalm (1997) 42 Table 4.2.2 Macro Strategies Applied for kinship terms based on Venuti (1998) 42 v List of Abbreviations OALD Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary SL Source Language ST Source Text TL Target Language TOD Term of Address TT Target Text vi Chapter Introduction 1.1 Rationale Within the expansion of intercultural communication, the interaction between people from different nations and cultures is becoming more frequent In communication, it is inevitable to use kinship terms which, to some extents, differ because of the cultural identity and diversity as well In fact, kinship terminology is considered as the classification of kin which represents mutual human relationship, in other words, the reflection of national cultures (Braun, 1988) They play an essential role in communication since it is believed that those are the first information transferred to others Not to mention, during thousands of years of development, Vietnam has created a sophisticated addressing system in general and a kinship term system in particular, while those in Western countries tend to be more simple relatively The Vietnamese system of kinship is significantly different from and much more diverse than the English system (Luong, 1990) Hence, to make the translation more precisely and specify exactly the relation between people, it is of importance for the translators to have a profound understanding of various kinship terminologies According to Chaika (1982), Paulston (1976) and Trudgill (1983), it is generally accepted that addressing terms have two functions so-called “vocative” by which they are used to call someone directly, and “referential” by which they are used to refer to people In this paper, the former will be carefully concentrated through the use of kinship terms in the Vietnamese story of Nguyen Nhat Anh and English translated version to examine the effectiveness of these strategies in conveying the rich nuance of the terms from Vietnamese to English The purpose of the research is not only to describe how the strategies are applied, but to raise the need for translators of Vietnamese-English literary texts as well, particularly in treating kinship terms, to regard meticulously the linguistic and cultural features of both original and the translated text During the analysis process, the similarities and differences regarding sematic features between Vietnamese and English kinship terms are clarified before coming to the final considerations and generalizations for the translation of Nguyen Nhat Anhs story The research is to seek answers to the following questions What strategies are used in the Vietnamese-English translation of kinship terminology in the story? How these strategies convey the nuances of the kinship terms? 1.2 Organization of the Study The paper consists of five chapters in total Chapter 1: Introduction, presents the statement of the problem, a justification for the thesis, its scope, research questions, and organization of the study Chapter 2: Literature review, is composed of three sections The first one reviews the classifications of kinship and previous studies in this field both in Western and Eastern countries In the second part, critical analyses of translation theories related to the research are provided, namely the definition of translation, and translation strategies and procedures Finally, the third part provides an introduction to Nguyen Nhat Anh, his literature, and the translation of Nguyen‟s story Chapter 3: Methodology, begins with an introduction to the aims and objective of the research Mixed methodologies including qualitative method, quantitative method, descriptive method and contrastive method are chosen for the research Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion, presents the results of the research It begins with a brief introduction to the framework of the research The next section summarizes and discusses the results from the classification of Kinship terms in the source text The rest of this chapter is devoted to the strategies used for the translation of its each type, and the „foreignizing‟ and „domesticating‟ applied to them in general The final part presents the conclusion of the chapter The outcome of the research shows the dominance of the kinship terms in the Source Text, which reflects the important role of the terms in the Vietnamese system of addressing The translations, meanwhile, extensively adhere to the principle of „domesticating‟ natural in English to use “Miss.” Or “Mr.” before the first name such as before Vinh; however, this translation is still effective in helping the readers understand the speaker‟s respect and affection for his uncle‟s lover Should this kinship terms be omitted, the nuance of the whole sentence will obviously be affected Although this equivalents form might not sound very natural in English in such situations, it evidently does not make the Target text non-fluent, neither does it result in any disruptions to the flow of the Target text In this case, this way of addressing successfully accommodate linguistic and cultural differences of the original text However, the study of the text “I See Yellow Flowers In The Green Grass” found that such attempts to produce formal equivalence translation was rare This is understandable since giving the equivalent forms to all the kinship terms would make the Target text highly unnatural and influent Also, doing so would frequently require lengthy footnotes or explanations to make the target text comprehensible In the last two examples, the translator either keeps the name as in the Source Language (51) or literally translates the whole name into “Little Plum” (50) The choice to foreignize the translations in these cases can perplex the readers who never know the meanings or representative of those names 4.2 Summary of the Findings This sub-section is a summary of the findings of the study gleaned from the display, analysis and discussion of the findings of the study above in response to the research questions posed in Chapter Adapted from the strategies proposed by Baker (2018), Newmark (1988) and Leppihalme (1997) and Venuti (1998) the strategies applied for translating kinship terms were summarized in Table 4.2.1 and Table 4.2.2 respectively 41 Micro Translation strategies Tokens Percentage (%) Translation by using a more neutral word 648 61.36 Literal translation 180 17.05 Translation by omission 138 13.07 Translation by cultural substitution 48 4.55 Translation by using a more general word 24 2.27 Translation by paraphrasing 18 1.70 1056 100 Total Table 4.2.1 Micro Strategies Applied for Kinship Terms based on Baker (2018), Newmark (1988) and Leppihalm (1997) Macro Translation strategies Tokens Percentage (%) Translation by using Domesticating 869 86.40 Translation by using Foreignizing 187 13.60 Total 1056 100 Table 4.2.2 Macro Strategies Applied for kinship terms based on Venuti (1998) 4.2.1 Research Question With the aim of analyzing the Vietnamese Kinship terms, as being analyzed above, there are a variety of strategies giving a helping hand to clarify the hidden meaning when conveying Vietnamese kinship terms into the english version They are so-called Translating by using neutral words, literal translation, translation by omission, cultural substitution, using a more general word, paraphrasing, foreignizing and domesticating Those are the framework suggested by Baker (2018), Leppihalme (1997), Newmark (1988) and Venuti (1995) Regarding the strategies used for each type of kinship terms, it was found that „using a more neutral word‟ was the most prevalent strategy for translating kinship terms In case the name was preceded by a kinship term, the translator combined two strategies, 42 which are so-called “Literal translation” and “ using loan words” to fully transfer the meaning and implications of the term Of all the strategies, translating by paraphrasing was the least popular, being used only eighteen times in the translations accounting for only 1.7% Also, domesticating and foreignizing can be considered as another macro strategy, based on Venuti (1995) The former is applied during the translated version more than the latter Apart from benefits brought by those strategies, sometimes they create a misunderstanding of target readers due to the cultural barrier when translating Vietnamese kinship terms 4.2.2 Research Question It is undeniable that the contribution of those strategies is obvious, there still be some doubts about the way they can convey the nuances of the kinship terms To clarify how those strategies fulfill the nuances, kinship terms for family members and relatives can be translated into English equivalents thanks to the help of them In the cases where they are used among non-relatives, these terms, depending on the contexts, can be rendered literally To minimize the unnaturalness caused by the literal translation of kinship terms, a suggestion by Ngo (2006) is that where there is a need for the linguistic and cultural elements of the original terms to be conveyed in the translation, the translator can give the equivalent forms in the target language and implications of the use of terms in the body of the text as part of it, instead of footnotes The effects brought by translation strategies are a lot because thanks to them, there is a dramatical reduction in understanding Vietnamese kinship term of target readers 4.3 Summary In short, like kinship terms cannot be understood if certain socio-culturally rules which specify their relations to usage contexts are not taken into consideration These rules, as Luong (1990, p.147) observes, are not consistent with one another, thus causing the “ambiguities in the meanings of kinship terms and many other terms” Therefore, it requires the translator to have a profound understanding of these terms and be flexible when choosing any strategies in the translation process Strictly adherence to either the „domesticating‟ or „foreignizing‟ can result in the loss of meaning of the Source Language and confuse the target readers 43 Chapter Implication and Conclusion The research is an attempt to explore the translation strategies applied in the Vietnamese-English translation of Kinship terms in the short story written by Nguyen Nhat Anh In this chapter, an overview of the work done will be presented and followed by implications and reccomendations to the teaching and study of translation in relation to conveying culture-specific kinship terms Based on the findings, it can be concluded that Kinship terms in the Source Text were used flexibly to describe the characters‟ relationships and to signal subtle changes in their relationships and attitude towards each other Based on the classification kinship terms of proposed by Cooke (1968) and Luong (1990), 1056 kinship terms, the most common type, were identified They were used for both people related by blood or marriage to the speaker and for those not related to the speaker Either the kinship terms in the Source Text were used independently, or they were added before first names to signal the respect or hierarchy There also existed the pairs of kinship terms with fixed structure, by which the use of these pairs indicated the expectations of Vietnamese people regarding the relationship between male and female or the superordinate and subordinate within a family structure or in the society With the purpose of analyzing the translation strategies, the framework suggested by Baker (2018), Leppihalme (1997), Newmark (1988), and Venuti (1995) were adopted Eight strategies play an essential role in conveying the meaning to english, which is an indispensable tool for target readers to acquire the true meaning from the original author, to some extends The strategies for Kinship terms provided the preliminary basis for judging the extent to which these strategies could be classified into either „domesticating‟ (Target Language-oriented) or „foreignizing‟ (Source Language-oriented) Not only were these two utilized in the translation of different types of Kinship terms, but they are also repeated many times The translations of the story adhered more extensively to the principle of „domesticating‟ strategy; hence, were more on the 44 side of the Target Language-oriented approach This strategy claims to create an equivalent in terms of effect among the target readers, but evident from the data is that there were cases where the terms translated by „domesticating‟ strategy failed to convey the socio-cultural meanings and implications of the richly nuanced Vietnamese Kinship terms Those meanings were found to be important to an adequate understanding of the original text; therefore, the effects that the translations create are not equivalent to the ones experienced by the readers of the Source Language The impossibility of the Target Language-oriented translation in creating the equivalent effects, however, does not necessarily mean that the Source Languageoriented translation could always so The findings regarding these two, to some extent, run counter to the conclusion made by Ngo (2006) According to her, the „domesticating‟ (target language-oriented) translation causes the loss of meaning and pragmatic implications of the original terms, thus making the „foreignizing‟ (Source Language-oriented) translation a more effective choice The results of my study showed that neither of these two could fully convey the rich nuance of the terms In the case of kinship terms, the Source Language-oriented translation helped the target readers to develop a similar understanding about the Target Text as the readers of the Source 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