NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITYFACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGESENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENTTRAN THI THU HUONG A STUDY ON THE TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS RELATED TO ‘CAT’ FROM ENGLISH INTO VIETNAM
The relationship between language and cuẽfuire
What is the relationship between language and culture? Language and culture are inextricably linked The vocabulary of a language is a mirror of culture and therefore a close relationship with culture Language does not just contribute to structure into the culture, but also transport and cultural retention.
Language has spread far and wide in social life, for it is a regular and inevitable phenomenon of humans During the contact process with the natural world, people accumulate their knowledge and experience of that the world through language.
In the famous introduction to the Semantics, culture and cognition, universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations, Anna Wierzbicka wrote:
“Languages are the best mirror of human cultures, and it is through the vocabulary of human languages that we can discover and identify the culture- specific conceptual configurations characteristic of different people of the word.” (1992:22)
Language is not only in the sense related to the culture representing their beliefs, history, and origin culture and they must be used accordingly; but the main means also by which we conduct social life When used in the communication context, language must be linked to culture and society in many and complex ways.
In the beginning, the words spoken by humans refer to shared experiences.
They convey information, thoughts, or things that are communicable as they refer to a store of world knowledge shared by others Words often represent the attitudes and beliefs of their readers, their opinions which are those of others as well In both cases language as a system reflects cultural reality.
Lastly, language is a framework of signs that can be considered as a cultural value on its own People distinguish themselves and others based on their use of language; they perceive language as a representative of social personality.
We can, therefore, state that language expresses cultural reality.
Briefly, language and culture still exist together and are mutually reinforcing The relationship between the two aspects is associated with the historical flow from the time of culture and language creation.
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Nowadays, people can see language is the most important medium for the successful advancement of cultural exchange from country to country It can be seen as the direct exchange of humans from distinct regions over the world through the mass media Additionally, it also creates cultural exchanges between countries by translating literary works and other documents from the source language into other languages As a result, sometimes individuals in this community can use some of the words or expressions of other language communities as much as they see them as their natives The distinction in the use of the language of each community does, however, set its particular characteristics.
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Literal and figurative analysis based on context is the first step when a translator wants to translate a word, sentence, or paragraph Its semantic, particularly for idioms, is called idiomatic meanings Therefore, first, we need to grasp the definitions.
The literal meaning of a word is the original meaning (primary meaning) of a word When you search a word in any dictionary, for example, you can see the literal meaning (the first meaning) of the word "mirror" is ‘a reflective surface, originally of polished metal but now typically of silver glass, metallic set in a case, attached to a handle, etc., for use in self-view or as an ornament’.
Obviously, idioms have their idiomatic meaning However, numerous idiomatic expressions can have both literal meaning and idiomatic meaning.
Therefore, when translating idioms, we can choose to translate them into a phrase or search for an equivalent idiom in the translated text language.
In terms of idiom studies, first of all, learners need to grasp what an idiom is Throughout the concept of English idioms, some scholars stress the number of words in idioms Others stress the particular meaning of the English idioms The meaning of the English idioms cannot be synthesized or broken apart Various people have different views on the concept of English idioms; they have a
Tran Thị Thu Hương — 11162286 — Business English 58A particular perspective of concepts While there are many definitions of idiom, I only mention some in English and Vietnamese in the framework of this report.
In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, an idiom is defined as “a phrase or sentence whose meaning is not clear from the meaning of its individual words and which must be learnt as a whole unit.” (Hornby, A.S,
For example, "never after to teach fish to swim" has not a meaning like tiừng bao giờ day cá bơi' but its meaning is ‘ding có múa riu qua mắt tho".
Another example is the idiom “cast pearls before swine” (throwing the pearl out in front of the pig), which means as a Vietnamese idiom ‘dan gay tai trâu”, originating from Matthew in the New Testament.
Besides the definition of the idiom of British scholars, Vietnamese ones also have some different definitions of an idiom In “Tir điển thành ngữ và tục ngữ Việt Nam”, an idiom is defined as ‘permanent phrases used to express a concept’ (Nguyen Lan, 1997) This meaning seems to be general, so it is difficult for learners to distinguish between idioms and proverbs.
Another definition considered as a more complete one was written in
“Thanh ngữ bốn yếu to trong tiếng Việt hiện dai”:
"Thành ngữ là một cụm từ đặc biệt có cấu trúc có định, có vần điệu và thành phần ngữ âm đặc biệt; có thé suy ra từ tong số nghĩa của các yếu tố cấu thành nó; thành ngữ có nghĩa bóng, nghĩa hình ảnh khái quát, thường kèm theo giá trị biểu cảm; thành ngữ thường dùng dé định danh những hiện tượng của hiện thực và thường hoạt động trong câu với tư cách là một bộ phận cầu thành của nó".
(Idioms are a special phrase with a fixed structure, rhyme and special phonetic composition; its meaning can be deduced from the total meaning of its constituent elements; idioms have figurative meanings, generalized image meanings, often accompanied by expressive values; idioms are often used to identify the phenomena of reality and often operate in the sentence as part of it.)
From the above definitions of English idioms, it can be established that English idioms are certain special language structure units — phrases, group of words, and expressions, the meanings of which cannot always be inferred from the literal meanings of the word element of idioms, their meanings should be understood from whole idioms.
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In Oxford Dictionary of English idioms, scholars wrote English idioms have the enormous structural variety (Cowie, Mackin and McCaig, 1993) There are four categories:
Transparent Idiom: The meaning of this type is very close to its literal meaning Therefore, they can be easily understood E.g.: ‘As red as a cherry’ (very red).
Semi-Transparent Idioms: This type of idioms is partially obvious The idioms can have both idiomatic meaning and literal meaning E.g.: old hat
Semi-Opaque Idioms: This kind is partially difficult to understand and mostly used as an idiom because the literal meaning is usually odd or irrational E.g.: to pass the buck (to pass responsibility).
Opaque Idioms: This kind of idioms is the most difficult to understand, as its literal meaning is incomprehensible, quite obscure, and unclear E.g.: spill the beans (reveal a secret).
The meaning is the most important thing to imagine an idiom If you know the source of an idiom, it is often easier to specify its meaning and translate it correctly The origin of an idiom can be a legend; an allegory; a story from culture and customs Many idiomatic expressions come from daily life of the English, from home and family life, e.g a bun in the oven (pregnant); child’s play (a very easy task); to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth (to be born into a rich family) There are numerous expressions which got to do with food and cooking, e.g all the tea in China (great wealth); piece of cake (easily done); sell like hotcakes (sold very quickly) Business idioms are for the work and life of a worker: Thank God It’s Friday (TGIF) (Let’s be happy that the workweek is over!); Right-Hand Man (Chief assistant); Up in the air (not yet decided) Many idioms involve parts of the body, objects, animals, and colours; e.g Go Behind Someone’s Back (to conceal one’s actions from someone); old hat (old- fashioned); love me love my dog (if you love someone, you must accept everything about them, even their faults).
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1.3.2.4 Specific features of idiomatic meaning
Considering the definitions cited above, an idiom will have four following characteristics Firstly, an idiom consists of more than one word and is commonly a phrase or a phrasal verb Secondly, the meaning of an idiom is not always deducible from the meaning of individual words Thirdly, the order of words and the grammatical structure of an idiom cannot be altered Finally, any of the words making an idiom can neither be eliminated nor replaced by others.
Newmark defines translation as "a craft consisting in the attempt to replace written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language" (Newmark, 1988) and "the act of translating as transferring the meaning of a text, from one language to another, taking care mainly of the functional relevant meaning" (Newmark, 1998).