NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITYFACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGESENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENTA study on Problems in TranslatingVietnamese collocations into English in Political texts of Natio
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
USED AS A BASIS FOR THE RESEARCH
The theoretical knowledge on translation, collocation and the characteristics of the political documents will be specifically analyzed in this chapter.
There was no clear definition that could precisely and completely describe what the translation is A plethora of translation definitions, therefore, were proposed in the last several decades.
Firstly, regarding the Oxford Dictionary, translation is simply defined as “the process of translating words or text from one language into another’ In addition, various language experts also provided other definitions of translation in their researches According to Brislin (1976), the idea of translation definition was illustrated as a real-life case related to the information exchange from one language to another Languages can be considered in general as either the predefined languages or a sign language which is known as the signs of deafness Besides, another language specialist, Wilss (1982), explicitly determined translation as a method of transforming words into the corresponding Translation includes the comprehension of grammar, terminology and analytical capabilities Furthermore, Nida and Taber (1982) also regarded translation as a system of meaningful replication and target language in terms of approach, which is the closest literal meaning of the original language document Additionally, Newmark (1991) describes a rather brief translating action that is transferring the context of a sentence or a phrase from the original to the targeted language.
Depending on the translation objectives, Brislin and Choliludin (1976) categorized translation into four kinds, including pragmatism, aesthetics, ethnography and language translation First of all, the translation of a document involving the information accuracy which is mentioned in the target language prototype is called pragmatic translation These translations are the transformations of technological
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B knowledge such as the translation of the machine’s instruction before using The second type is the translation of aesthetic-poetry, focusing not only on the texts but also on the emotions connected with the source The next translation type, which is the ethnographic translation, discusses the source’s cultural context and the targeted language version Finally, Brislin described the translating action concerning the constituent form equivalence of the target along with the grammatical form, which is named language translation.
Translation is the process of capturing the idea to convey it into the other language Consequently, when translating a document, the translators have to prioritize the understanding of the original language and then translate it into the targeted language The efficiency of the translation process significantly influences the translation output Although the full understanding of the texts, in fact, cannot completely ensure the successful translation, it also bases on the skills of the translator in the targeted language To make sure that the translating result is accurate and reliable, the translators should apply the following procedure which is generated by
Initially, it is crucial to expand the scope of the texts which need to be translated.
The scope can be specified in terms of the subject and content, the document length,the writing techniques, various sections and etc Generally, the translators will read the document to capture the content, rely on the scan-reading technique, and after that note down the key words or phrases The essential and uncommon phrases will be scanned for proper meaning during such procedure Secondly, it is very necessary to choose the suitable length of the single content blocks that need to be handled Having worked with paragraphs that are too short or inconsistent implies that the unit appears to create an unusual expression which can be ambiguous, whereas the fragments are too lengthy to be quickly remembered without avoiding the risk of others Thirdly,once finishing the first draft version, a comparison should be produced between each block of text and the initial document As a consequence, every content in such material will be far from overlooked or deviated Last but not least, the translators
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B must then review their works for the last time in order to ensure that their translating output is perfectly logical and fluent.
2.1.3 Factors affecting the translation process:
According to I.A Richards, translating “1s probably the most complex type of event in the history of the cosmos” (Nida 1993:1) There are numerous elements having an effect on the process of translation, however, it is challenging to identify the clarification of translation claimed to be comprehensive if such elements are not consistently considered The discussion below, which is referred to the paper of Dongfeng Wong and Dan Shen (1999), will principally concentrate on the great subtlety and complexity of the main factors in three most significant terms which are language, culture and the translator’s personal conditions.
It is undeniable that language factors have a direct and significant effect on the process of translation There are a plethora of language elements which can interrupt the translating work such as phonology, vocabulary, syntax and text, etc Besides, people regularly find a distinction among the languages that represent barriers to translation It can be assumed that the most critical part of translation is how to obtain appropriate vocabulary performance In particular, the textual difference between English and Vietnamese is a concerning problem for the translators The word meaning, for instance, can be vague and subjective, thereby enabling the translators to be contextual in that meaning Thus, when doing translation from English to Vietnamese, the translators should pay attention to the context and try to establish the corresponding interpretation of the terms to be translated The English word “uncle”, for example, consists of various Vietnamese meaning in different context such as “bac”
(father’s elder brother), “chú” (father’s younger brother), “dượng” (father’s sister’s husband), or “cậu” (mother’s younger brother) Nevertheless, when the term "uncle" is written in a particular document, its sense is clarified by the context, which encourages the translator to use one of the corresponding Vietnamese terms This should be regarded as a misconception of the Vietnamese culture on the factors
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B impacting the success of translation Translators must have the knowledge of both languages and cultures to provide adequate authority to create substantive correspondence between English and Vietnamese in cases regarding semantics.
Compared to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presented by Gorlée (1994), linguistic cultures around the world include various forms of experimentation and analysis Translating work narrows the cultural distance between the two countries and facilitates interaction between diverse language communities Otherwise, Bassnett (1992) describes the language as “the heart in the body of culture”, while the translator is “the surgeon doctor” Obviously, the doctor can hardly ignore the rest of body parts around the heart As a result, when translating, the translators are required to handle the text to ensure that it still has the characteristic and inclusive culture in the field of language In reality, even in this recent society with distinctive lifestyles, cultures among different countries are not completely separated, but are sometimes integrated.
It is apparent that the professional and sentimental circumstances of the translators can affect directly on the translation work They play an essential role in translation and can be divided into two main types which are the personal competence and the personal attitudes So far as the target language representation is concerned,the translators should be able to accurately represent in the target language what they have translated from the source language In other terms, they should be able to identify and develop in the target language “the closest natural equivalent” of the message in the source language (Nida 1996:12) This skill involves not only the comprehensive command of the target language and target culture, but also the capacity to compose in numerous types in the target language, in compliance with both the stylistic demand of the source texts and the appropriate stylistic norms of the target culture It is far from conceivable that people who fail to write in an effective way in the target language can create an esthetically appropriate translation There can
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B be a plethora of differences between the various translations with the same source in the case of particular factors being handled When it comes to the attitudinal factors, it engages the subjective viewpoint of the individual translator within a certain context of both history and culture Two translators with specific attitudinal orientations can regularly create quite different translating versions due to aestheticism, communication, strategy, politics, ethics and professional, even with the similar personal competence.
This overview of these factors that affect the translation process illustrates how complicated a translating task is Each of these elements can significantly interfere with the assessment and the selection of translators and may eventually materialize in one or another form in the final translating version A consistent and comprehensive knowledge of the role and operation of such factors will enable people to appreciate the complex task of translating and then implement successful approaches to address negative effects.
It can be indisputable that one of the essential methods to possess a competent and natural-sounding English is a comprehensive understanding of collocation.
Studying the proper word combinations, thus, is beneficial in preventing typical language mistakes and developing linguistic skills In particular, collocation has been more significant on the agenda of language study in recent years.
The term “collocation” which originated from the Latin for “place together” was first used in a linguistic context by a British linguist John Rupert Firth (1890- 1960) As stated in the Oxford dictionary, collocation is regarded as “the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance” Besides, according to the Cambridge dictionary, collocation can be defined as the way a word or a phrase often combined with another word or phrase, which sounds appropriate for people speaking language all their lives, but may not be
ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
This chapter typically describes the challenges which senior students of Business English program cope with while translating Vietnamese collocations into English in the context of politics Accordingly, these analysis and findings were divided into two main sections which are the degree of adopting English in political translation and the major difficulties of BE program intake 58 students The questionnaire survey was designed and carried out to mainly analyze the concrete utilization of collocation in terms of politics among National Economics University students intake 58 BE program After being collected, these results were fully adapted to response to the questions that were raised in the research.
3.1 The degree of adopting English in political translation of senior students in BE program:
In regard to the academic training curriculum of BE’s specialization, students are encouraged to not only enrich their specialized knowledge and skills in translation but also attain high levels of English competency Nevertheless, the students seem to rarely have chances to experience the translating work of materials in the field of politics This paper primarily identified the students’ obstacles of political collocations as converting Vietnamese into other foreign languages by developing a questionnaire and then sending it to particular individuals On account of this, 50 students of Business English intake 58 of the National Economics University were asked to engage in the response of the survey in this report Apparently, most of the respondents stated that they were not provided with equivalent collocation resources in terms of politics Consistently, the majority of their vocabulary is acquired from different sources with specialized subjects A question about the main authority that BE students access to learn political vocabulary is illustrated and summarized as the chart below.
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Common information sources in political materials
Transcript from radio or TV programmes ieee
Books A26 i=] 5 10 15 20 25 30 m= Never | Rarely Sometimes Often m Always
Figure 3.1 Common information sources in political materials
According to these statistics, 25 out of 50 students regularly rely on newspapers as a vocabulary supplier At a slight number, about 15 students claimed that the internet always is their first option when they need a searching application to acquire several new words Regarding the transcript from radio or TV programs, it recorded more than 20 students sometimes accessing to this information source It is worth noting that students rarely or even never approach these most authoritative sources which are official documents, books as well as journals There are only 2 to 6 students who always choose these sources to gain information and learn vocabulary.
Furthermore, 72% of senior BE students choose to read these political materials in Vietnamese Particularly, when students are interviewed, code 17 and code 30 both reported that if they encountered a specialized terminology in Vietnamese which failed to translate into an equivalent English word, they would unfortunately misconceive the comprehensive context.
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Frequency of exposing to political texts eDaily = 3 or4timesaweek = Once ortwice aweek = Never
Figure 3.2 Frequency of exposing to political texts
Afterwards, the gathered data strongly represent how frequently the senior BE students apply translation to the papers of politics Above 50 respondents, there are 27 students, which accounts for 54%, indicated that they expose to political materials once or twice a week while 4 others said that they read such documents on a daily basis Besides, 16 of respondents showed that they adapt these texts of politics 3 or 4 times a week Surprisingly, three of them never use political documents, with about 6% According to survey data, the senior students of the BE program sound to be far from greatly interested in the materials with the political context.
In addition, questions were raised to evaluate the level of reading and translating such political documents which the students often approach By asking about the confusion when adapting the political materials written in English, 48 out of 50 respondents, which contributes to 96%, feedback that they regularly either misconception in reading or find it difficult to conceive the information The main reasons for that which they described when answering the interview questions are the lack of vocabulary and the specific knowledge in the political field Furthermore, 54% of them claim to be often in trouble with translating the Vietnamese collocations of these materials into English Specifically, only 9 out of 50 students stated that such collocations always challenge them in completion of translating tasks Generally, the numbers of students answering “often” and “sometimes” are much higher than that response “always”, “rarely” and “never” In the curriculum of BE program, students are able to access to the translation course as a compulsory subject, which completely
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B paves the way for students to possess the ability of transferring the Vietnamese- written texts into English and vice versa Besides, during the translation course, by practicing generating a precise and well-organized translation performance, students also enhance their problem-solving skills for textual and cultural translation In comparison, this questionnaire has yielded the fact of the current situation that senior BE students suffer.
Being in trouble with translating Vietnamese political collocations s Always = Often = Sometimes
Figure 3.3 Being in trouble with translating Vietnamese political collocations
As senior BE students were required to translate a number of common Vietnamese collocations in the field of politics into English, most of them hardly transferred these terms correctly and even failed to complete this translating task.
Besides, there were 31 students responding “No” which meant they were unable to translate, with about 62% The different translating results of respondents, for instance, could be presented below:
- Dién dam: e Code 35: radio. e Code 21, 29, 50: telegraph.
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B e Code 5, 25: circulate the function. e 16 out of 19 students involved in the question failed to translate this term.
- Bảo hộ công dan: e Code 5,12, 14, 31, 50: citizen protection. e Code 17: citizen safety.
- Dan giau, nước mạnh: e Code 12, 25, 50: rich citizen, strong country. e Code 17: prosperous people and powerful country.
- Mai mãi xanh tươi, đời đời bền vững: e Code 5, 12, 25: forever green, eternal sustainability. e 13 out of 19 students involved in the question failed to translate this term.
- Nước lang giéng núi liền núi, sông liền sông e@ Code 15: Our neighbors are all around our border. e 18 out of 19 students involved in the question failed to translate this term.
It can be easily seen that some students were confused to comprehend the meaning of the Vietnamese collocations, which could prevent them from translating accurately these terms or even fail to complete the performance Furthermore, although numerous students were able to understand the collocation meaning, it is rather complicated for them to transfer such terminologies into English due to no fixed equivalent versions.
Correspondingly, a question was presented to define whether students were satisfied with their translation skills or not In the following chart, it is not fairly surprising to figure out that 43 of 50 fourth-year BE individuals, which occupies 86%, were expressed that they are hardly satisfied with their translation performance In contrast, there were 6% of people choosing fairly content with their translation skills along with 4 students (8%) claiming that they were fully confident With reference to the statement of a BE student code 27 “I have not any experience in translating political texts, so I just translate these collocations based on my understanding”, the
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B majority of students (38 out of 50), in general, have mentioned that their translation skills in terms of politics were quite limited As a result, on the ground that students are more likely to learn a plethora of precious theoretical lessons, which is apart from increasingly practicing these translation skills in reality, thereby leading to the failure to apply flexibly such acquired knowledge in translating properly and effectively political collocations.
= Extremely satisfied = Satisfied = Not satisfied
Figure 3.4 Satisfaction with translation skills in terms of politics
3.2 The major difficulties of BE program intake 58 students:
When it comes to the Vietnamese-to-English translation, definitely, the problems senior BE students faced while converting materials can be divided into two major sections that are linguistic and cultural issues In particular, the language problems consist of the limited lexical resource, the ambiguity as well as the non- parallelism while cultural issues concern various features in different situations In fact, students were required to respond to a question for the purpose of investigating the radical challenges they faced.
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Figure 3.5 Difficulties when translating political collocations
It is anticipated that half of the respondents admitted they constantly encounter both lexical and cultural difficulties when transferring the Vietnamese collocations in terms of politics into English Meanwhile, the lexical aspect is the problem that a small number of students with about 28% ensured they were experiencing, followed by the cultural difficulties at approximately 21% Regarding the level of these difficulties, a proportion of students, around 20%, assessed the lexicology as “very-difficult” level, whereas 17 out of 50 students thought the cultural difficulties were at a neutral level.
As a consequence, it can be concluded that various groups of individuals cope with distinctive issues To summarize, there are only two main problems which need to be handled in this study to facilitate students to enhance their collocation skills, which include vocabulary as well as culture Simultaneously asking the questions directly to these students, the results were the same The reception of information and knowledge can be possibly seen through their process of access to specialized education.
After reviewing the responses, 39 out of 50 students indicated that they confronted the problem of lexicology Remarkably, ambiguity comes top of the list with the number of 23 students considered, which accounts for 46% Besides, 20% of respondents admitted that they lacked the technical terminology in the field of politics.
Furthermore, the rest of them are able to understand the meaning of such specialized words but it is problematic for them to find an equivalent version in English.
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Lexical problems when traslating political collocations
Limited Ambiguity Non-parallelism lexical resource
Figure 3.6 Lexical problems when translating political collocations
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following chapter will not only establish a groundwork but also provide a variety of highly effective methods for senior BE students to eliminate their issues.
During the process of translation, the translators can confront a plethora of problematic situations However, there will be corresponding solutions for each problem, which enable students to advance their translation skills Regarding the linguistic issue, it can be proportionately tackled by supplying several respected dictionaries, the databases of technical terminologies as well as other linguistic resources.
A huge amount of vocabulary may appear in the typical English-learning materials, encouraging the students to learn and remember However, numerous students just learn by heart the list of new words, trying their best to put them into their short-term memory, thereby enabling them to easily forget those vocabularies after taking the exams Hence, the potential method to promote students to memorize vocabulary is the frequent practice in reality with the process of daily learning and using the sentence or context that can contain these terms Particularly, English used in the political environment requires the highly formal and diplomatic standard as people mainly interact with the officials from various government agencies That is to say, it can be a fairly embarrassing situation if you are unable to communicate with them Thus, there is no question that acquiring English vocabulary is completely significant in this field To facilitate students to broaden their lexical resources, a number of helpful tools are provided as follows In the context of modernization and technology, a plethora of online tools are increasingly developed for students to access.
There are several sites which contain a collection of videos as well as audio lessons for the professional English training such as English FluentU, British Council - Learn English Additionally, with the aim to enrich the English vocabulary resource in the
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B field of politics, students can learn the glossary from a number of helpful websites, for example Democracy.org.au, Parliament.uk and so on Moreover, students can visit the websites of various government agencies in Vietnam, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the bilingual content to acquire more Vietnamese political collocations and their English equivalent versions.
In fact, practicing is greatly crucial for every translator to strengthen their translation skills This is because translation is a highly important skill for the foreign language learners in general and the English learners in particular, along with four key skills which are reading, listening, speaking and writing The translation, however, is considered as one of the most difficult skills when learners desire to be a master in that language as it requires a high level of accuracy Hence, the translators must be qualified and proficient in the foreign language which they have to translate It is essential for the translators to read carefully the document in advance to highlight the phrases which are difficult to translate or ambiguous to understand Notably, a term or a phrase can deliver various meanings, which demands the translators to try their utmost to apply their knowledge, skills and personal experience to convey the meaning which the authors referred to In the process of translation, a translator can accurately transmit the meaning of the text from Vietnamese to English or vice versa by using the same English or Vietnamese phrases, producing the equivalent translation of phrases or collocations, with the aim to completely avoid the literal translation which is understood as the word-by-word translation method Regarding the translation in terms of politics, the translators will need the background information of both political systems in Vietnam and other English-speaking countries by using the methods of comparative political study It has played an important role in stimulating the translators to not only shed the light on the operation of these respective political systems but also place the texts precisely in the receptive culture.
In particular, this theoretical measure can help to understand the power as well as the limitations of the political actions in two separate political structures, figuring out the convergent and divergent features of the two political systems As a result, the
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B translators are more likely to acquire the thematic knowledge which becomes reasonably active and helpful only at the very moment of conducting translation.
Specifically, the translators ought to be meticulous with their translation paper to prevent the lexical errors When completing the translation, it is vital for them to run the spell-checker and then correct the mistakes of typos and misspellings In the next step, the translators can have an opportunity to be editors as they need to read all over the translated materials, compare it to the original and then read it thoroughly again without the source document to ensure it makes sense Readers are unable to access the source material or even fail to pay attention to whether the text was translated and how it was translated In particular, they just want to read the document in their mother tongue and the translators are the bridge which can promote them to do so That is to say, the translated texts have to be free of both literal translations and complicated expressions and avoid any errors in terms of lexicology and culture.
Additionally, the translation should be carefully checked along with the source to find out any missing text or formatting problems It can be a challenging task for the translators to work on loading translation memory then checking the constancy, format, file coherence, missing translations and “suspect translations” where the separate source parts generated the similar translation or vice versa, when multiple translations have been produced by only a single source file.
How to address the issues of translation which result from the cultural differences is a considerably critical task when people carry out their translating work.
The translators, thus, should place a greater importance on the cultural equivalence than on any other aspects In fact, it is possible for the translators to achieve the equivalence but not easily to be always at the same level That can be regarded as the key point of translation as it may pose a great impact on the translating outcome.
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4.2.1 The exploration of cultural features in English-speaking countries:
In the last century, Jawaharlal Nerhu who was the first Prime Minister of India once declared “Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit” Furthermore, when it comes to the relationship between culture and language, researcher Wenying Jiang (2000) affirmed that “in a word, culture and language are inseparable”.
Consequently, beside the parallel improvement of language skills such as lexicology, grammar, etc., the translators are required to enhance their comprehension of the culture so as to better facilitate them to make use of their capacity to interact in the second language Language perception is not only understanding the meaning, comprehending the content included in those words but also most significantly grasping the deep sense of the information content On top of that, the issue can be more severe if the absence of cultural understanding may trigger the “cultural conflict” or “cultural shock” The answer for these critical concerns is to find the modern courses of foreign language training which integrate the cultural aspects into the lesson Alternatively, students can read further information on international cultures via foreign language articles or other various types of books.
4.2.2 The selective perception of information:
The world is advancing dramatically with the new era of high technology, which beneficially paves the way for the applications of translation tools into its technical field The Internet is increasingly developing and the information is widespread, bringing a great deal of advantages for students with a massive amount of digital information as well as the allowance of unlimited access Students, therefore, can use them for the purpose of learning and research However, it often carries both benefits and drawbacks On the downside, social networks with a variety of information from numerous sources can apparently increase the risk of exposition to the unexpected materials which sometimes can be unreliable or even malicious.
Particularly, with regard to the terminology of culture, they can provide the inaccurate data, which may pose a tremendous effect on both communication and translation.
Thus, wisely choosing the information channel is what the students should apply while searching for the data on the Internet Additionally, besides looking for the data
Dao Trà My — 11163458 — Business English 58B through online sources, it is vital for students to select the reliable sources through books or any papers written by the acclaimed authors with the strict information censorship.
As a translation technique, adaptation is presented as a technical and objective measure According to Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), it can be defined as “a procedure which can be used whenever the context referred to in the original text does not exist in the culture of the target text, thereby necessitating some form of re-creation” This widely accepted explanation regards adaptation as a method utilized to obtain an equivalence of situations where cultural discrepancies occur Eugene Nida (1964) once stated that “language is a part of culture, and in fact, it is the most complex set of habits that any culture exhibits Language reflects the culture, provides access to the culture, and in many respects constitutes a model of the culture” The following methods can be applied to render culture to be the specific elements and represent a certain culture model:
- “omission”: eliminating or reducing the part of the text.
- “expansion”: explicating the information which is completely implicit in the source material, including in the main body text, footnotes or glossary.
- “exoticism”: substituting the slangs, dialects, nonsense words, ect., in the source text by rough versions in the target language (sometimes marked by the format of italics or underlining).
- “updating”: replacing the outdated or ambiguous information by the modern equivalent version.
- “situational equivalence”: inserting a more familiar context than the context utilized in the original.
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In brief, the research explored the interest of senior BE students as well as the challenges they encountered when translating the Vietnamese collocations in terms of politics into English The study was conducted to affirm that the students highly evaluated the importance of political translation in the development of their translating skills In fact, BE students have rarely exposed to the political materials or even hardly translated the texts in the field of politics They frequently target on translating the documents in the domain of economics such as finance, business, marketing and so on With regard to the instructional materials used in the curriculum, the majority of those are written in Vietnamese Notably, as students practice translation, it is essential for them to acquire the method of nationalizing their mother tongue into a foreign language Besides, the numbers of senior BE students satisfying with their translation skills in terms of politics are far from massive Most of them regularly confront the difficulties in relation to lexicology and culture while conducting translation tasks Particularly, vocabulary is still a common issue that students need to handle Lexical ambiguity occurred when there are different ways of expression for words, collocations or context, along with the lack of English equivalence Additionally, another problem in the translation process which students often experience is in the aspect of culture Learners fail to systematically study the cultural features of other countries which may increase the possibility of mistakes and misconceptions After noticing these obstacles, the paper promptly proposed a variety of potential solutions Initially, there is a highly recommended initiative for students to search for information through both online and offline channels Nonetheless, students ought to wisely choose the information resource and frequently update the latest edited version with the aim to lessen the misunderstandings while translating the political materials, especially the political collocations Secondly, it is crucial for students to proactively enrich their lexical resource by approaching perspective tools in terms of vocabulary Meanwhile, they should practice actively compiling the texts related to politics, which can stimulate students to boost their vocabulary and prevent unprecedented mistakes.
2 The limitation of the study:
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