(Luận văn thạc sĩ) the quality of google translate’s translations of metaphors in kafka on the shore by murakami haruki into vietnamese

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY HUỲNH HÀ MI h THE QUALITY OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE’S TRANSLATIONS OF METAPHORS IN “KAFKA ON THE SHORE” BY MURAKAMI HARUKI Field: English Linguistics Code: 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: LÊ NHÂN THÀNH, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN HUỲNH HÀ MI h ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƢỢNG DỊCH ANH-VIỆT CỦA GOOGLE TRANSLATE KHI DỊCH CÁC PHÉP ẨN DỤ TRONG TÁC PHẨM “KAFKA TRÊN BỜ BIỂN” CỦA MURAKAMI HARUKI Ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Ngƣời hƣớng dẫn: TS LÊ NHÂN THÀNH i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP This thesis represents my own work and due acknowledgement is given whenever information is derived from other sources No part of this thesis has or is being concurrently submitted for any other qualification at any university except where due reference has been made in the text Quy Nhon, 2020 HUỲNH HÀ MI h ii ACKNOWLEGEMENTS It is utterly impossible to complete this study without the support from many individuals around me First and foremost, I own a substantial debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Le Nhan Thanh, who is always willing to offer advice and encouragement during my course of conducting the study regardless of being overwhelmed with his heavy academic workload and personal life Secondly, I would like to show my strong indebtedness to all the lecturers of Foreign Languages Department in Quy Nhon University Honestly speaking, they not only instruct me academically to sharpen my language skills but are also of great inspiration for my orientation of ethical manner and professional development Last but not least, it is my family and friends that I profoundly appreciate and h am indebted for their unconditional love as well as encouragement Their spiritual support keeps me positive and committed to my conduction of thesis Binh Dinh, August, 2020 iii ABSTRACT This thesis was conducted to investigate the quality of Google Translate when translating English metaphors into Vietnamese The data was extracted from the novel Kafka on the Shore by Murakami Haruki The metaphors in the novel were identified based on the theory put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and the occurrences of translation errors were found using the framework of Nord (1997) The results after analyzing the number and frequency of translation errors for each metaphor type helped to assess the translation quality of Google Translate when dealing with metaphors It was noted that all the three types of metaphors were present in the novel Among these metaphors, ontological metaphor was the dominant type Regarding the translation errors, there were only three out of four types categorized by Nord (1997) found in the novel They were pragmatic h translation errors, linguistic translation errors and text-specific translation errors Cultural translation errors were absent in the source text The data collected showed that Google Translate seemed to be reliable source to refer to when rendering the metaphorical meanings of the source text since approximately half of the metaphors’ translations of done by Google Translate were correct The results of the study also showed that Google Translate handled orientational metaphors better than other metaphor types However, the occurrence of translation errors was not trivial The most challenging element was pragmatic errors followed by linguistic errors and text-specific errors iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF ABBREVIATION .vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1.2.1 Aim 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY h 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 METAPHORS 2.1.1 Definition of metaphors 2.1.2 Traditional approach to metaphors 2.1.3 Cognitive approach to metaphors 2.1.4 Classification of metaphors 2.2 TRANSLATION THEORY 13 2.2.1 Definition of translation 13 2.2.2 Translation method 13 2.2.3 Different theories of translation equivalence 14 2.4 TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT 20 2.5 TRANSLATION ERRORS 23 2.5.1 Definition of translation errors 23 v 2.5.2 Classification of translation errors 24 2.6 MACHINE TRANSLATION 28 2.6.1 Introduction to machine translation 28 2.6.2 Google Translate 29 2.7 PREVIOUS STUDIES ON GOOGLE TRANSLATE 30 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODLOGY 32 3.1 RESEARCH METHODS 32 3.2 DATA COLLECTION 34 3.3 DATA ANALYSIS 36 CHAPTER RESEARCH FINGDINGS AND DISCUSSION 40 4.1 TYPES OF METAPHORS 40 4.1.1 Ontological metaphors 40 4.1.2 Structural metaphors 42 4.1.3 Orientational metaphors 43 4.2 TRANSLATION ERRORS 44 h 4.2.1 Pragmatic translation errors 45 4.2.2 Linguistic translation errors 48 4.2.3 Text-specific translation errors 50 4.2.4 Cultural translation errors 51 4.3 Quality of Google Translate in translating metaphors 51 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 60 5.1 SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS 60 5.2 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY 62 5.2.1 Implication for teachers and students 62 5.2.2 Implication for translators 62 5.2.3 Implication for researchers 63 5.3 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 63 REFERENCES 64 ANNEX: TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF METAPHORS vi LIST OF TABLES Table Names of tables Table page number Table 3.1 Metaphor samples 35 Table 3.2 Metaphor and translation error samples 37 Table 3.3 The number and frequency of translation errors made 38 by Google Translate Table 4.1 The number and frequency of metaphors 40 Table 4.2 Translation errors of Google Translate 45 Table 4.3 Rates of translation errors and correct translations 52 h vii LIST OF ABBREVIATION B.C: before Christ etc.: et cetera GT: Google Translate MT: machine translation p.: page pp.: pages SL: source language ST: source text TL: target language TQA: translation quality assessment TT: target text h CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE As the world has increasingly globalized in the past few decades, the need for reading literary works in English among Vietnamese people has risen as well However, in the process of reading, readers might encounter some challenges related to figurative languages, one of which is the translation of metaphors Generally, literary works such as novels are usually featured with figurative languages in order to give special effects on readers Through reading novels, they will get unlimited imagination, pleasure, and enjoyment Gibbs (2008, p 233) states ―the literary writer uses metaphor to go beyond and extend our ordinary linguistic and/or conceptual resources and to provide novels insights and perspectives into human experiences‖ That is to say, by using metaphors, the writers invite readers to h read between the lines instead of clinging only to the literal meanings Interesting as it might seem, metaphors can be problematic for translators since they are closely related to the source language culture and requires translators to keep not only the meanings but also the aesthetic values of the story in the novel Besides, they compare one thing to another in a more indirect and subtle manner in which the sign of comparison is not clear as that in simile since metaphors not use signal words such as like, as, and as though In an attempt to partly bridge this gap, an obvious tool which has been created to help accommodate the urgent need for instant translation of metaphors within a short timeframe is using online machine translation Among those available on the market, Google Translate is one of the most prominent ones that came out in 2006 However, there has been considerable concern about the quality of Google Translate’s translations as machine translation is known to experience certain problems among which translating metaphors is a significant one This is mainly