A study on common errors made by the use of collocations in vietnamese english translation by the third year english major students at utehy

Trang 1 ---GRADUATION PAPERFIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICSA STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS MADE BY THE USE OF COLLOCATIONSIN VIETNAMESE - ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY THE THIRD-YEARENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS A

HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS MADE BY THE USE OF COLLOCATIONS IN VIETNAMESE - ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY THE THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT UTEHY (NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CỤM TỪ TRONG BẢN DỊCH VIỆT-ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGỮ NĂM THỨ BA TRƯỜNG ĐHSPKT HƯNG YÊN) Supervisor: Pham Thi Duong, MA Student: Nguyen Kieu Chinh Student number: 11317133 Hung Yen – 2021 HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON COMMON ERRORS MADE BY THE USE OF COLLOCATIONS IN VIETNAMESE - ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY THE THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT UTEHY (NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG CỤM TỪ TRONG BẢN DỊCH VIỆT-ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGỮ NĂM THỨ BA TRƯỜNG ĐHSPKT HƯNG YÊN) Student: Nguyen Kieu Chinh Student number: 11317133 Supervisor: Pham Thi Duong, MA (ký tên) Hung Yen – 2021 I DECLARATION I certify that this thesis entitled “A study on common errors made by the use of collocations in Vietnamese-English translation by the third-year English Major Students at UTEHY” is entirely my own work I have provided fully documented references to the work of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other formal course of study Hungyen, Jun 2021 Signature Nguyễn Kiều Chinh II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Pham Thi Duong for her great support during my study I really appreciate all her help and suggestions on carious drafts of this graduate paper I would also like to express my my full appreciation to all teachers at the Faculty of Foreign Language of Hung Yen University who help me so much in my data collection Besides, I want to express my deepest thanks to all 45members of class TAK16 for providing information in the survey as well as doing the test Finally, I would like to express my love to my family and friends for their help and warm encouragement throughout my hard time building the study Without them, I could not have overcome such time and concentrated on my study III ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to investigate the common errors in using collocation in Vietnamese-English translation committed by third-year English major, Faculty of Foreign Language, Hung Yen University and to propose some specific recommendations for the student Firstly, the researcher gave theoretical background about translation, translation methods, errors, and some common errors committed by Vietnamese translation when translating from Vietnamese into English Secondly, the researcher presented the methodology of the study by delivering the questionnaire to students of class TAK16 - English major Having collected the data from survey questionnaire found that students make various errors in the use of collocations in Vietnam-English translation Some common using of collocation errors of students when translating and the cause of the errors were also identified Based on the result, the researcher gives some recommendations for English major students to improve student’s translation skills and help them get better translation performance IV TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS VII LIST OF TABLES VIII LIST OF CHARTS IX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study 1.2 Aim and objective of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Methods of the study 1.5 Subject of the study 1.6 Scope of the study 1.7 Significance of the study 1.8 Structure of the study CHAPTER : LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 An overview on translation 2.1.1 Definition of translation 2.1.2 Translation methods 2.2 Definition, collocation types 2.2.1 Definition of collocations 2.2.2 English collocation types 2.2.3 Vietnamese collocation types .7 2.3 Collocation errors 2.3.1 Definition of collocation errors 2.3.2 Types of errors 2.4 Sources of collocation errors CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 11 3.1 Methodology 11 3.1.1 Participants 11 V 3.1.2 Methods of the study 11 3.1.2.1 Qualitative research methods 11 3.1.2.2 The quantitative method 11 3.1.3 Data collection instruments 11 3.1.3.1 Questionnaires .11 3.1.3.2 Task 12 3.1.3.3 Interview 12 3.1.4 Research procedure 13 3.2 Data analysis and major findings 13 3.2.1 Students’ attitudes towards translation .13 3.2.1.1 The results from questionnaires 13 3.2.1.2 The results from interview 15 3.2.2 Research question 16 3.2.2.1 The results from questionnaires 16 3.2.2.1.1 Literal translation 17 3.2.2.1.2 Improper synonyms 18 3.2.2.1.3 Ignorance of rule restrictions 19 3.2.2.1.4 Addition 20 3.2.2.2 The results from the interview 21 3.2.3 Research question 21 3.2.3.1 The results from questionnaires 21 3.2.3.2 The results from the interview 23 3.2.4 Research question 24 3.2.4.1 The results from questionnaires 24 3.2.4.2 The results from the interview 26 3.2.5 Summary 27 3.2.5.1 Common errors on using collocations when translating Vietnamese into English made by 3rd year students 27 3.2.5.2 The causes of errors made by the students 27 3.2.5.3 Suggestions to improve errors .28 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 29 4.1 Summary of the findings 29 VI 4.2 Limitations of the study .29 4.3 Suggestions 30 REFERRENCES 31 APPENDIX 32 APPENDIX 35 APPENDIX 36 VII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS UTEHY: Hung Yen University of Technology and Education TL: target language SL: source language FFL: Faculty of Foreign Languages VIII LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 2.1 English collocation patterns Table 2.2 Vietnamese collocation patterns Table 3.1: Contents of the questionnaires 12 Table 3.2: Students’ attitudes towards translation and collocations 13 translation in translating process Table 3.3: Literal translation 18 Table 3.4: Improper synonyms 18 Table 3.5: Ignorance of rule restrictions 19 Table 3.6: Addition 20 22 Chart 3.3: The causes for errors in collocation choice by students The result of question 7, obviously, there are many factors involved in translating collocation from Vietnamese-to-English 55.80% of the students admitted that “lack of vocabulary” is an important cause in their Vietnamese-into-English collocation translating “Poor grammar” and “poor of background knowledge” are considered the important factors by 48.90% and 44.40% of them There are 40% of the students chose “limited of translation skill” and 20% of them chose “lack of practice in translating collocation” 2.20% (1 student) chose other factors, but he did not make it clear 23 Question 8: How much time you spend on translation self-study per week? Chart 3.4: Time for self-study The chart show that most of the students, 40%, spend about hours per week on self-study translation More frequently, 13.30% of the students spend more than hours per week on practicing translation 8.90% of them chose the answer “others” but they did not refer how much time they self-study However, the largest number of the student belong to the answer "I rarely it", 42.20% They did not practice hard, enrich translating skill, try to pick up their level in translating They should spend more time in study translation like frequently practice translating, learning grammar, reading books in both languages, enrich vocabulary, etc 3.2.3.2 The results from the interview According to the results of the interview to the teacher, the causes of errors were divided into three groups including objective causes, subjective causes, and other causes For the objective causes of translation errors, the teacher stated that the difference 24 between English and Vietnamese She explained that English went by very strict rules while Vietnamese was much more flexible Beside, “the lack of background knowledge and vocabulary”, as well as insufficient linguistic competence in English and Vietnamese The results of the interviews with teacher showed that students’ insufficient background was also the reason why students can not translate correctly Besides subjective causes and objective errors, some other causes were also stated by the teacher These causes were students’ limited translation skill, interference of Vietnamese and students’ carelessness Following the teacher, the students can be affected by Vietnamese to transfer the source language into English, she asserted that students did not pay attention on the context, they usually applied word for word translation strategy 3.2.4 Research question What are the suggestions to improve these errors? 3.2.4.1 The results from questionnaires Question 9: What you when you encounter new words or phrases in the translation process? 25 Chart 3.5: Students’ solution in translating new words or phrase The responses to question from this pie chart show how the students solve problems about vocabulary When encountering new words or phrases in translation process, 66.70% of the students choice look up dictionary 51.10% of the students usually ask their friends and teacher; 42.20% of the students can guess the word meanings from the context; 35.60% of them choice of searching Google and there is only 2.20% (1 student) has another way which means students were flexible in translating new words or phrases 26 Question 10: What you to improve your translating skills? Chart 3.6: Suggestions to improve the students’ translation The result of question shows that students have chosen different solutions to improve their translation skills The numbers of students tick “Learn vocabulary” reach at 66.70% (22 students) There are 55.60% of the students who chose the answer “Learn grammar” Similarly, the students agree with “reading books” and “practice translation more” are respectively 42.20% and 40% The lowest choice such as “reading books in both languages” has 31.10% 3.2.4.2 The results from the interview The result of question about suggestions to overcome the above-mentioned errors is pointed the students should: “learn more vocabulary related to the given topics, enrich their background knowledge and they should keep practicing translating” Learning more vocabulary to help students have rich vocabulary so they can have more correct choices in translation Beside, students should enrich background knowledge to get more 27 experiences and truly understand about the fields they translate And the last, the teacher said that students should keep practicing translating This way is important, practicing translating more and more students have access many topics, can improve their translation skill 3.2.5 Summary Basing on data collected from the questionnaire, the interview questions, there are some findings and causes of problems in Vietnamese-English translation of the students found as follow: 3.2.5.1 Common errors on using collocations when translating Vietnamese into English made by 3rd year students Analyzing the results of the questionnaires and the interview for students and teachers, the researcher finds out that two research instruments come up with similar findings There are four difficulties and also are main common errors in collocations translating of students: improper synonyms, ignorance of rule restrictions, literal translation, and addition Specifically, all the interviewees point out that the most frequent translation errors are literal translation and improper synonyms, which might infer that students could be affected by SL could lead to errors in collocations Those error types are similar as the teacher’ opinion The interviewees also acknowledge that ignorance of rule restrictions is the most serious error as it can totally distort the meaning of the source texts.This error might become students’ lack of acknowledgement There is a error type which does not greatly affect the SL message such as addition In conclusion, all the errors found out in this part are the most typical mistakes by students Normally, these errors are made mainly due to students’ shortcomings in collocation competence as well as their failure to double-check the translated word combinations 3.2.5.2 The causes of errors made by the students In brief, this chapter has so far presented and discussed the results of the study The results from the study indicated that the students made collocation translating errors included errors in ignorance of rules restrictions, Improper synonyms, addition and literal translation 28 According to the results of the interview and questionnaires from the students, there were many causes of the students’ errors such as: lack of vocabulary, poor grammar, poor background knowledge, limited translation skills, lack of practices translating and other factors but they did not note them Beside, the results from teacher were the same answer, there were three groups of the causes of the students’ errors They were objective causes, subjective errors, and other causes The objective cause was the difference between English and Vietnamese The subjective causes were students’ insufficient linguistic competence in English and Vietnamese, and lack of background knowledge The other causes of students’ errors were students’ limited translation skill, interference of Vietnamese and students’ carelessness 3.2.5.3 Suggestions to improve errors In the light of main findings concluded earlier in this chapter, this part of the chapter offers some suggestions to help students improve their translation performance They should learn vocabulary then should relate word with words in collocations Students should read more books in both languages, they can see a lot of words, collocation being used in certain context They can learn and remember about reading book, as a result they can enrich their background knowledge Furthermore, students should keep practicing anytime as possible The students try to frequently practice about the words, phrases, the topics that they learn or read, it helps the participants remember better For the teachers, translation is a subject that most students though it’s difficult but they have a positive attitude toward the subject The teachers should inform the students about fields they will learn in the next lesson The teachers should encourage students in class learn the new collocations by games to help them interested in class Beside, the teacher should decide the class into pairs or groups and put them in competition, it may be effective way to promote students in learning 29 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION This chapter will summarize and evaluate the results of the whole paper by summing up the findings responding to the three research questions, stating the limitations of the study as well as providing several suggestions for further investigations on collocation translation errors made by students 4.1 Summary of the findings In general, there is a correspondence between the factual findings and the assumptions discussed in Literature review Specifically, the researcher comes up with common collocation translation errors which have been pointed out by previous studies In addition, most of the translation procedures pointed out in Literature review are found to be deployed by UTEHY students The research is revealed from the study that due to students’ limited linguistic competence, they frequently make collocation translation errors The most common ones include ignorance of rule restrictions, improper synonyms and literal translation Some errors may distort the message of the source text; others, though not misrepresent the content, make the translations unnatural and unprofessional Most students are not aware that they are making mistakes They often rely on bilingual dictionary to create collocations without cross-checking by monolingual or collocation dictionary 4.2 Limitations of the study After finishing the study, the author realized some limitations as following First of all, the scope of the study is quiet narrow It should be noted that due to time pressure, the author only focuses on 45 students in K16 English major The author has not expanded the research on more participants yet Therefore, the result of the study also does not embrace Faculty students’ general situation Secondly, the research just use questionnaires and short statements in order to find out the linguistic errors Therefore, the result may reflect a part of the reality only At last, the researcher just investigates the most typical and prevalent errors among students As a result, the findings not imply that students only commit four types of errors pointed out There are still other mistakes made by students which may be further investigated in other researches 30 4.3 Suggestions In translation teaching, teachers should raise students‟ awareness of collocations so that they can make appropriate collocations in both English and Vietnamese It is advisable that teachers organize activities for students to study English collocations In collocation learning, students should make a habit of reading and listening to authentic English and Vietnamese in order to create the most natural and appropriate word combinations Beside, students should also learn to make good use of dictionaries and other reference sources such as the Internet or newspapers to find out good collocations It is recommended that students develop their own strategies and tips to remember collocations and therefore can achieve better translation quality in the long term For further research, other types of collocation translation errors should be tackled in order to provide a more comprehensive classification of these errors In addition, further research may also investigate translation errors for each type of collocations and find out which type is the most challenging to students Strategies to translate each collocation type should also be addressed in future research 31 REFERRENCES In English 1, Baker, M (1992) In other words, Routledge, London 2, Dahlmeier, D and Tou, H (2011) Correcting Semantic Collocation Errors with L1induced Paraphrases (National university of Singapore, 2007) 3, Dubois, J., et al (1973) Dictionnaire de linguistique, Larausse, Pari 4, Larson, M.L (1984) Meaning-based translation – a guide to cross-language equivalence Lanham: University Press of America 5, Mashharawi, A K (2008) Collocation Errors Made by English and Journalism Majors at the Islamic University of Gaza (Master dissertation, The Islamic University, 2008) 6, New mark, Peter (1988) A textbook of Translation NXB London and New York: Prentice Hall International (UK) 7, Nida, E A & Taber, C.R (1974) The theory and practice of translation, E.J.Brill, Leiden 8, Sirinna, B (n.d.) An analysis of collocational violation in translation In Vietnamese 1, Vu Thi Kim Lien (2013), errors in Vietnamese-Englich collocation translation made by students at the university of languages and international studies (ULIS) 32 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY FOR STUDENTS This survey questionnaire is designed for the study “A study on common errors made by the use of collocations in Vietnamese-English translation by the third-year English Major Students at UTEHY.” Please complete the following items You can confident that you all your personal information as well as your answers will be kept confidential and not be used for other purpose Gender: Age: Class: How long have you been learning English? How long have you been learning translation skill? No Question How Answer you feel translation? in learning Very interested Interested Normal Not interested Others Is translation important? Vitally important Important Neither important nor unimportant Unimportant Vitally unimportant Is collocation choice in translating Vitally important important? Important Neither important nor unimportant Unimportant 33 Vitally unimportant What you think about translation of Easy but not interesting collocations? Difficult but interesting Difficult and not interesting Easy and interesting Normal In your opinion, what kind of English – Vietnamese translation translation is more difficult to you in Vietnamese – English translation translating collocation documents? Which theme makes it difficult for Ignorance of rule restrictions (Sự thiếu you in using collocations to translate? hiểu biết hạn chế quy tắc.) (You can choose more than one) Improper synonyms (Từ đồng nghĩa không phù hợp) Literal translation ( Dịch theo nghĩa đen) Addition ( Thêm từ) In your opinion, what are the possible Lack of vocabulary causes for errors on the use of Poor grammar collocations in Vietnamese – English Poor background knowledge translation? (You can choose more Limited translation skill than one) Lack of practice in translating collocations Other opinions (please make them clear): How much time you spend on I rarely it translation self-study per week? About hours More than hours Others What you when you encounter Look up dictionary new words or translation process? phrases in the Ask friends or teacher Guess from the context 34 Google search Others: 10 What you to improve your Learn vocabulary translating skills? Learn vocabulary Read books in both languages Read Vietnamese books, articles, etc Practice translating more Others: 35 APPENDIX Collocation translation errors No Vietnamese Translation Suggested Trong năm gần recently years In recent years Thêm năm more years years more Giáo dục Việt Nam Vietnamese education Vietnamese education cất cánh cannot boost cannot take off Làm suy giảm khả deplete human immunity impair human miễn dịch người Vấn đề tồn cầu nóng immunity A hot global issue A burning global issue bỏng Bốn mùa rõ rệt Four clear seasons Four distinct seasons Một hình ảnh đại diện cho an avatar for Vietnamese A representative doanh nhân Việ businessmen for Vietnamese businessmen ảnh hưởng xấu đến môi affect badly to badly affect the trường environment environment Nhu cầu ngày cao Increasingly higher increasing demand demand 10 Đứng trước thử facing to a serious facing a serious thách nghiêm trọng challenge challenge 36 APPENDIX Interview with teachers 1.What you think about your students’ attitudes towards learning translation subject? 2.What kinds of errors related to using collocation in Vietnamese - English translation your students often make? 3.Could you please state the reasons why the students often make the above errors? 4.Can you propose some suggestions to overcome this situation?