KHÓ KHĂN của SINH VIÊN KHI DỊCH ANH VIỆT THÀNH NGỮ KINH tế TRONG QUYỂN SÁCH nói TIẾNG ANH KINH tế NHƯ NGƯỜI mỹ của AMY GILLETT

Globalization enhances the close relationship, and the mutual understanding among nations. It takes place in various areas such as economy, technology, environment, culture, and society. The most remarkable area in globalizing period is economy. In this area, the globalization is of necessity to foster the international and national economic integration. To facilitate the integrating process, a global language – English is an efficient and indispensable means to seek the common voice among nations. Therefore, learning English all over the world recently has been of great popularity. As it has become increasingly aware that general English courses frequently which focus on grammar, structure do not meet learners’ or employers’ wants and needs. English should be specified and intensive in certain fields. Therefore, from the early 1960s, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown to be one of the most prominent areas of EFL teaching today. With the globalization of trade and economy and the continuing increase of international communication in various fields, the demand for English for Specific Purposes is expanding, especially in countries where English is taught as a foreign language. That is the true case in Vietnam; ESP has shown a slow but definite growth over the past few years. Its development is reflected in an increasing number of courses offered to students. Especially, increasing interest has been spurred since Vietnam opened its doors and recently entered WTO (2007) with a lot of wellpaid job opportunities for English competent employees. This has led to a rapid demand for English courses aimed at specific disciplines, e.g. English for Economics, in place of the traditional General English ones. As one of the leading universities in language training, ULIS – VNU has applied English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course for the last 10 years, aiming at improving students’ skill in using English as a tool to work in an international working environment and to comprehend technology transference. The course has been applied for seniors whose English competence is upperintermediate. Their four skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking are nearly accomplished. The coursebook was written by Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thom, a professor in ULIS. This book consists of eight chapters; each chapter presents an economic topic. The texts give general background on economics’ items and definitions. Besides, reading texts are followed by different exercises related to the text. The fist type of exercise is definitions matching; the second type is multiple choices on text information. Translating exercises are also given to help students to apply the new knowledge. The objectives of the course are providing students with a great deal of terminology, enhancing students’ ability in translating economic materials, building student’s knowledge of grammar, etc. The objectives to achieve are variable; however, the most desirable aim of students in learning and teachers in teaching this course is the acquisition of terminologies. As stated in the data analysis of Tran (2009) 70% teachers pay attention to teach terms, and 65% students want to learn terms in ESP course. Due to the fact that term really plays an essential role in distinguishing ESP from other language branches, and forming the ESP course. As Robinson (1991, p.4) claims “It may often be thought that a characteristic or even a critical feature of ESP is that a course should involve specialist language (especially terminology) and content”. However, the proper attention has not been paid to this issue; students encounter many difficulties in approaching terminology in the course, which could be considered a major motivation to this study.

Translation in economic field has been an attractive part for many researchers;business idiom translation, however, has not been addressed properly due to itscomplexity and inevitable challenges Concerning business idiom translation, thethesis focuses on the study of students’ capacity of recognizing business idioms,outstanding problems that the students encounter while translating business idiomsthen analysis will reveal the strategies that may be employed for better translations

The book “Speak business English like an American” by Amy Gillett ischosen as a major data collection for research reference Concurrently, 30 responsesfor a survey prepared by the researcher will also provide valuable statistics and truthfor finding out facts on different issues relating to students’ business idiomtranslations The result has shown that almost students claim that they can recognizebusiness idioms when reading business news and magazines However, a small testpoints out their incapacity of perfectly recognizing all given idioms Besides, theirunderstanding of business idioms is still limited due to the major problems like thedifficulties in equivalent expression, the lack of economic background knowledgeand other problems in context and naturalness of specific idioms Analysis also givesanswer to the question on the most common strategy applied in business idiomtranslation – paraphrase With different intentions of the translator, the translationwill exploit different strategies which will be lately discussed in detail Translatingbusiness idioms is now a popular task to all translators and economists as well.Therefore, being aware of economic knowledge and linguistic competence is of greatimportance in producing successful works of business idiom translation

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Table of Contents

ACCEPTANCE i

ABSTRACT ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 RATIONALE 1

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 2

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 2

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 2

1.5 METHODS OF THE STUDY 2

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 3

1.7 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY 4

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 PREVIOUS STUDIES 4

1.2 TRANSLATION 5

1.2.1 Definition of Translation 5

1.2.2 Equivalence in translation 5

1.2.3 Non-equivalence in Translation 6

1.2.4 Translation procedures 7

1.3 IDIOMS AND TRANSLATION 8

1.3.1 Definition of idioms 8

1.3.2 Common problems in translating non-equivalence 9

1.3.3 Translation strategies 11

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY 14

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY 14

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY 17

Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 17

3.1 RESULTS FROM THE SURVEY 17

3.1.1 Recognizing business idioms and the frequency of encountering them 17

3.1.2 The outstanding problems that students face 21

3.1.3 Surveyed students’ translations for translation practice test 25

3.2 SUGGESTED TRANSLATION STRATEGIES FOR BUSINESS IDIOM TRANSLATION 32

3.2.1 Translation by using an idiom with similar form and meaning in the target language 32

3.2.2 Translation by using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form 33

3.3.3 Translation by paraphrasing 35

3.3.4 Translation by ellipsis 37

PART 3: CONCLUSION 39

REFERENCE LIST 43

APPENDIX 1 46

APPENDIX 2 49

APPENDIX 3 66

The description of the book is retrieved at Amazon.com on 15 th April, 2013 67

Book Description 67

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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Demonstration of research process

Figure 2: Frequency of encountering with business idioms among surveyed students Figure 3: Surveyed students’ ability of understanding business idioms

Figure 4: Major problems as perceived by students

Table 1: Statistics in survey results

Table 2: Students’ translations for given business idioms in translation practice test Table 3: Suggested translation for given business idioms in the translation practice

test

Table 4: Proportion of translation strategies applied by surveyed students

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 RATIONALE

It goes without saying that linguistic constructions like business idioms areinvolved with metaphors and based on associations of meaning that have not beensufficiently studied yet It stands to the reason that translating idioms appears to bethe most difficult task, from identifying an idiom, making it out and distinguishingidiomatic from non-idiomatic usage Therefore, mastering idiomatic understanding is

in the urgent need for anyone being fond of making better use of native-like Englishexpressions Especially in business related filed, concise sentences are conventionallyappreciated Nevertheless, in the context of broader integration and corporation,business discussions dyed with cultural colors are inevitable; hence specializedidiomatic expressions are applied as a common phenomenon

Additionally, day-by-day translators have chances to convey big volume ofarticles from well-known magazines all over the greatest financial cities around theworld The common trend is an amazing number of idioms that always occurs in eventhe shortest article in any business publication – The Economist, Financial Times,Bloomberg Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, CNN Money and so on It is convincedimpossible for translators to use accurate Vietnamese terms to express Englishbusiness idioms without strategically tackling these complex combinations of wordsand sentences

These aforementioned motivations have therefore inspired the implementation

of this study Specific area chosen for the study is impressive idiomatic expressions

extracted from 67 – page book named Speak Business English like American by Amy

Gillett This will be carried out with the title:

“English – Vietnamese translation of business idioms in the book Speak Business English like an American by Amy Gillett”

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The study is carried out with the aim to provide learners with fundamentalknowledge in translating idiomatic expression of business terms, especially in the

base of listed business fields in Speak Business English like an American With

thoroughly investigation into different aspects in studying specific business idioms,the research would find out the procedures and strategies frequently used by thetranslators in conveying idiomatic expressions from English into Vietnamese.Moreover, implications for further English – Vietnamese translation in specificbusiness idioms will be suggested

meaning of specific business idioms?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Each idiom translation has its own specific challenges to translators to handlewith; various solutions therefore are offered Nevertheless, limited time and capacityhas narrowed the thesis scope to emphasize on studying, analyzing and suggestingtranslations to business idioms discovered in the book “Speak business English like

an American” In addition, aspects to investigate into the business idiom area arebroad; hence, the thesis would pay special attention to analysis of translationproblems and procedures which are applied in translating those selected idioms

1.5 METHODS OF THE STUDY

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In this study, quantitative method in the form of survey questionnaires is muchresorted to All the considerations and conclusions are mainly based on the dataanalysis and references.

The collected data will be analyzed in comparing and contrasting techniques tofind out the problems that learners cope with in translating specific business idiomsrelating to many business fields as mentioned in the sample book

Besides, discussion with the supervisor, colleagues, personal experience, andmaterial studying from previous researches, newspapers and magazines are alsosignificant contributions to the study

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

To begin with, the study, as stated, aims to support students of translationmajor in particular and anyone who shares the same interest in idiom translation.With careful analysis of the findings in the research, students will be provided withthe most common knowledge around the issues of recognizing problems in theirbusiness idioms translation

Secondly, learners can figure out techniques and strategies that can beexploited and applied into their future translation practices

Last but not least, the study will play the role as a motivation tool for Englishusers who desire to better their English – Vietnamese interchange skills through aconcise list of business idioms that can be discovered in the book “Speak BusinessEnglish like an American”

1.7 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY

Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Development of the study

Chapter 1: Literature review Chapter 2: Methodology Chapter 3: Findings and discussion

Part 3: Conclusion

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE

on Among them, “Idiom Organiser” by Jon Wright (2002) is widely used by learnersall over the world In his well-known book, idioms are clarified and organized bymetaphor, topics and key words, which are practically useful to all idiom learners

For English dictionaries, a very famous one that catches concerns of allscholars and learners is so-named “The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms” byChristine Ammer In this dictionary, the author lists idioms currently used inAmerican English and arranges them into alphabetical categories He also explainstheir meanings and clarifies them by examples Besides, “Oxford Learner’sDictionary of English Idioms” by Helen Warren - a comprehensive dictionarytackling general idiomatic expressions in current English also gives examples andexplanations of unusual features of grammar and usage Another is “OxfordDictionary of Idioms” by Judith Siefring which provides learners with updatedidioms including clear explanations in typical contexts “Cambridge Dictionary ofAmerican Idioms” by Paul Heacock gives clear and understandable illustrations oneach idiom as well as their origins

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Besides, huge numbers of Vietnamese and English idioms can be found inmany books, magazines of other authors and there has been quite a lot of MAthesises on various aspects of English and Vietnamese idioms Up to now, there havealso been roughly 100 M.A theses done in various aspects of idioms in Vietnam.However, there is no evidence that any research on investigating the topic of mythesis has been carried out completely so far

1.2 TRANSLATION

1.2.1 Definition of Translation

Translation studies have witnessed rapid growth particularly over the pastdecades, a myriad of studies have defined the term translation According to Nida andTaber (1982:12), “translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language theclosest natural equivalence of the source language (SL) message firstly, in terms ofmeaning and secondly, in terms of style” In their definition, Nida and Taber pointedout the major bases of translation which involves two languages, the source language(SL) and the target one (TL), and it can be oral or written; however, it is the contextdependent and equivalence is one of the most vital elements

Translation also is a work, “a craft” (Peter Newmark, 2006), in which theoriginal message must be remained exactly the same in the target text thanks to thecreature work of the artists – the translators A good work highlights theachievements of both linguistic and artistic effects

1.2.2 Equivalence in translation

Equivalence is probably the most controversial issue discussed in translationtheory In the simplest way, equivalence can be clarified as a term used to describethe nature and the extent of the relationship between the SL and TL text

Different scholars gave different access to understanding of equivalence in

translation: Baker (1992) studied form-based equivalence .i.e equivalence at

grammatical levels (word, sentence then text level), Nida (1964 – 1969) introduced

function-based equivalence (dynamic and formal equivalence), and Koller (1990)

emphasized the necessity of meaning-based equivalence (denotative, connotative,

pragmatic and formal equivalence) Each approach presents hard-tackling challengesfor translators

By launching the of “equivalent in different”, Jackobson (cited in Bassnett1980: 39) keeps the point of view that translation can always be carried outregardless of the cultural or grammatical differences between the S and T text.Whenever the translator cannot find an exact equivalent to a specific SL,

“terminology may be qualified and amplified by loan words or loan translations,neologisms or semantic shift”

Armstrong (2005:45) shares the same ideas with Jackobson, “full equivalence

is rare”; however, nearest possible equivalent should be found out and considered

Different authors and writers have introduced different approaches totranslation equivalence For a translator, awareness of equivalence plays a crucialrole The translator are required to understand the characteristics of each equivalencetype in order to utilize it appropriately, especially in technical translation of suchtexts as literary texts, cultural texts, medical texts The issue of equivalence isespecially important when it comes to translation revision and quality assessment.Because a good translation not only satisfies the requirement of meaning but alsoother requirements, like styles, communicative value or aesthetic effects…

1.2.3 Non-equivalence in Translation

Non-equivalence in translation is often met due to the differences between the

SL and the TL at cultural, grammatical, lexical or stylistic levels

According to Baker (1992), non equivalence may be at the level of word orabove word level including translating idioms and collocations Non equivalence atword level can occur because of the absence in the target culture of a relevantsituational feature that is conceptually lexicalized for the source language text(Bassnett, 1980:39) The existence of non-equivalence usually is above word level aswords always do not occur on their own, but “almost occur on the company of other

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words” (Baker, 1992:46) Sometimes, a single word does not make sense until it is in

a combination with others to create a full expression of an idea Namely, as Johnson(1975) cited, the great pest of speech is frequently of translation No book was everturned from one language into another, without imparting something of its natureidiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation, single words mayenter by thousands and the fabric of the tongue continue the same, but newphraseology changes much once; it alters not the single stories of the building, but theorder of the columns (Baker, 2001:46)

Non-equivalence above word level faces with concepts or ideas expressed bymetaphors, collocations and idioms then this study’s task is to deal with translatingidioms in a specialized field

1.2.4 Translation procedures.

Classifications of translation procedures have been cleared out by numerousresearchers such as Nida (by changes of order, omissions, structure, addition), Vinayand Darbelnet (by loan, calque, literal translation, transposition, modulation, totalsyntagmatic change, adaption) However, Peter Newmark, as far as I am concerned,made greatest contribution in clarifying different translation procedures applied insentences and smaller units of language like words, phrases and idioms His work of

“A textbook of translation” has introduced eight typical translation proceduresincluding transference, naturalization, through translation, shift/ transposition,modulation, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent and descriptive equivalent

If transference procedure is applied, a SL word will be directly taken into the

TL text without any small change or simple translation, this word therefore will becalled as a “loan word” This procedure is most suitable for cultural, new technicalterms, or proper names to create certain stylistic effects, for example, modernity or

unique Naturalization “succeeds transference and adapts the SL word first to the

normal pronunciation” (Peter Newmark), i.e the way to pronounce a word is used to

denote its concept in the TL Next, through translation is the literal translation of

common collocations, names of organizations, the components of compounds, andoften applies to translation of regionally or internationally organized names.

Shift or transposition appears to be a level-up process relating to the change in

the grammar/ part of speech This is due to the difference in preferred equivalentgrammatical structure between the two languages and also to the goal of performing

naturalness in translation Meanwhile, modulation offers a variation in the message

when it is translated into a target language due to a change in point of view It could

be in the way of talking about one part to mean another, discussing positive side todouble negate it or, using the passive form to express the active one

Cultural equivalence is a more complex procedure in which a SL cultural

word or expression is translated by a TL cultural word considered equivalent to it, forexample, the expression “as cool as a cucumber” in English can be translated by

“lạnh như tiền” in Vietnamese, or many other ways based on preferred measurements

in different countries Also, functional equivalence is the replacement of cultural

word with a cultural-free expression in a translation This procedure is appreciated as

“the most accurate way of […] deculturalising a cultural word” (p.83) Newmark also

introduced descriptive equivalence as a procedure which allows translator to explain

or paraphrase the words in the target language This procedure shares something incommon with free translation

1.3 IDIOMS AND TRANSLATION

1.3.1 Definition of idioms

One of the most complicated but luring part of English in use is that of idioms.Idioms are still frequently used in various contexts, from daily life conversations andbusiness meetings to highly formal written format Learners apply idiomaticexpressions into their speech to make it more native-like, but this requires of deepcompetence of English and may easily lead to misusage Severely, idiom recognitionalways gets the most confusing Questions raised around idioms have been amountain; however, in the easiest way, “an idiom is a kind of complex lexical item It

is a phrase whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the morphemes

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it comprises” (Langacher: 1968:79) Idioms are characterized as “a fixed group ofwords with a special meaning that cannot be guessed from the combination of theactual words used” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1981) Forinstance, on every Thanksgiving occasion, it is extremely easy to catch sight of

“Black Friday Specials” advertisement which is an accurate and popular idiom, not

“Golden Sunday” or “Red Friday” Therefore, wrong-use of idioms is popular andmore frequent is the failure to convey English idiomatic expression into Vietnamese

It is due to the reason that “idiom’s meaning cannot easily be worked out from thewords it contains Idioms have the potential to cause foreign learners of a language tosome difficulty If you say to a native speaker visiting a place for the first time, ‘howdid you find Stratford?’ you will get the response ‘great-I loved it; or I did not likethe place at all’ But if you ask a nonnative speaker the same question, the responsemay be ‘how did I find Stratford? The train took me there Here ‘find’ is usedidiomatically” (Jarvie, 1993:148)

1.3.2 Common problems in translating non-equivalence

A translation problem is any type of difficulty or obstacle that the translatorshave to encounter in conveying the ideas of the source text into the target one Thisobstacle is commonly clarified as grammatical, stylistic, cultural or lexical problems.However, to idiom translating, the obstacles are usually narrowed down to thedifficulties in handling with stylistic, cultural or lexical problems

Grammatical problems rise as the indispensable consequence of thecomplexity in grammar of the SL, or more specifically, in different way to organize aword, a sentence, an expression in English and in Vietnamese Most frequentgrammatical problems can be listed out as:

has superordinate while the SL does not

- The translation of nominal, verbal and conditional sentences.

The problem of translation equivalence is closely connected with the stylisticaspect of translation cannot reach the required level of equivalence if the stylisticpeculiarities of the source text are neglected Full translation adequacy includes as anobligatory component the adequacy of style, i.e the right choice of stylistic meansand devices of the target language to substitute for those observed in the source text

The style, or the way of writing, of a particular SL text may pose differentproblems for the translator One of these problems is fronting, in which a word, aphrase or a clause is stated at the beginning of a sentence in an unusual way Forinstance, “suicide he committed” instead of “he committed suicide” The purposebehind such a fronting is to emphasize on the fronted word, or to draw attention to itsimportance to the meaning of the whole sentence

Other stylistic problems may include parallelism, ambiguity, redundancy, andnominalization vs verbalization (Ghazala, 1995:18-24)

A variety of problems come to be long-lasting and enormous issues in cultural translation as “the greater the gap between the source and target culture, themore serious difficulty would be” (Yowelly and Lataiwish, 2000:107) English andVietnamese translation involves two totally different cultures (the Western and theOriental cultures), which supply a favorable background for such cultural problems.Cultural problems may include geographical, religious, social and linguistic ones

Baker (1992) has paid great contributions in identifying common problems intranslating non-equivalence In terms of lexical problems, one case is when the SLword is semantically complex, i.e, when one word is complex in its lexical meaning,

it results in translation problems Besides, The SL may poses a wide variety of

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specific terms (hyponyms) that drive the translators into confusing situations whenmaking a right word-choice.

Also regarding non equivalence, difficulties in translating may be due to thedifferences in fixed and idiomatic expressions between SL and TL This posesnumerous challenges for translator, especially when the author intends to refer toboth literal and figurative meanings of an expression (Huyen N T., 2011)

1997, p.317) That is, a certain modification can be applied in the TT The changesmay be in style or form and expression of the text For instance, idioms in the TLmay not be rendered as idioms at all If the translator chooses the strategy of notpreserving the text with too close similarity with the original text then two possiblestrategies can be suggested by Gottlieb as:

(Gottlieb, 1997, p.317)With the first strategy, they translator may decide to be loyal to the style in the

TT, which is called as “stylistic loyalty” – recreating the verbal atmosphere of theoriginal The second strategy pays more attention to translator’s choice for

“conceptual loyalty, aiming at adapting the original text to a new communicative

situation” (Gottlieb,1997:317)

Idiomaticity in translation sometimes means that idioms should not betranslated by idioms Sometimes the search for the target language idiom alwaysgrabs the priority mission The same like many other languages, English, especiallyEnglish for specific purposes may record no idiomatic concept Eckhard Roosshowed his contributive arguments in idiom translating According to that,

1 SL idioms matched by TL idioms:

a Congruence (identical at word level)

b Equivalence (differing at word level)

2 SL Idioms matched by other TL lexemes:

a Single-word matches

b Formula (non metaphorical multi-word matches)

c Free form (encyclopedic renderings) (Gottlieb 1997, p.319)

Another scholar, Bo Svensen, suggests other four categories for translatingidioms:

1 Idioms with identical metaphors in SL and TL

2 Idioms with related metaphors

3 Idioms with different metaphors

4 SL idioms with no metaphorical counterparts

(Gottlieb 1997, p.319)

In the work In Other Words (1992), Mona Baker points out four followingstrategies for translating idiomatic expressions:

1) using an idiom with the same meaning and form,

2) using an idiom with the similar meaning but different form,

3) paraphrasing,

4) by omission

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In conclusion, knowledge of translation and idioms definition, obstacles in theprocess of translating specific business idioms above mentioned would effectivelysupport this research as a strong theoretical background and make the outcome of theresearch more reliable

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY

This part gives a concise presentation on research subjects, researchinstruments In addition, phrases in the research process will be clearly indicated

2.1 SELECTION OF SUBJECTS

The dominant research samples are excerpts from the book titled Speak

Business English like an American by Amy Gillett This book is a precious material

for any learner who is engaged in sharpening his native-like style around businesstalks Addressing a study on it, various business idioms regarding a myriad ofbusiness fields will be discovered in excitement The success of the book has gainedtremendous compliments from users, scholars and linguistics As featured in the Wall

Street Journal, with Speak Business English like an American, you can “communicate

like a native speaker of English with the ultimate guide to today’s Business English”

Different sources are employed in seeking answers for the research questions.The first source comes from trustful recognized bilingual dictionaries – thesetranslations hereafter become official acknowledged translations Besides, byreferring to great Vietnamese idiom and proverb treasures, the answered are alsoconcluded In a broader lookup, several domestic and foreign websites or forums forEnglish learners are chosen; these personal translation versions therefore mostlyreflect diversified subjective analysis and translation Last but not least, asking forsuggestions from experienced translators and Business English lecturers isunavoidably a useful tool for a more completed outcome

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2.2 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS

As stated in the previous sections, the study purpose is to examine Englishlearners’ ability of providing proper translations for frequently-met business idioms;

it later comes to give out strategies for better improvement in translating

In this study, survey questionnaires are designed to assess learners’ abilities ofrecognizing and understanding business idioms and then realize their major problemsand difficulties in doing this hard-solving task Specifically, the survey form isproduced including of two main parts, the Case Testing Questionnaire and theTranslation Practice Task Results are collected from 30 randomly-pickedVietnamese students who have studied both English and Economics at University ofLanguages and International Studies Questionnaire papers are delivered to students

of class 09E24, 09E23, 09E17 in duration of 10 days, from 10th March to 20th March,2013

After concluding out the common problems that learners encounter inrecognizing and understanding business idioms, solutions will be revealed bysuggested strategies for translating

2.3 RESEARCH PROCESS

Two stages of research process are conducted alternately In the verybeginning step, responses for the research’s surveys are carefully classified,examined and reported in detailed percentage charts and summarized conclusion ofstudents’ difficulties in translating business idioms

Moving to the second stage, research subjects are chosen, analyzed andinvestigated by the researcher to find out the most applicable and useful strategies.This phase brings out the findings of the researcher to put them into a comparativescale with other authentic and reliable sources

As an illustration, the diagram below will give a more descriptive outline forresearch process:

Figure 1: Demonstration of research process

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY

Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This most important part of the study reveals findings from the results ofstudent survey together with the researchers’ inferences with different reliablesources

3.1 RESULTS FROM THE SURVEY

Student survey as the first instrument investigated to find out commonproblems and difficulties among students when translating business idioms,

especially the ones studied in the book “Speak Business English like an American”

by Amy Gillett The survey handles with the first research question: What are thecommon problems in translating specific business idioms Answers are concludedthrough collecting, combining and comparing 30 different sheets Solutions toresearchers’ questions are guaranteed purely random picked Students have time tocheck and refer to multimedia and material sources in order to ensure that theirtranslation tasks are fulfilled with all their best

The findings come to three facts: 1) recognizing business idioms and thefrequency of encountering them; 2) the difficulties of students in translating businessidioms; and 3) the common mistakes made by students in translating selectedbusiness idioms

Charts and tables are exploited effectively to demonstrate the results Apartfrom these tools, clear explanation will be given out respectively

3.1.1 Recognizing business idioms and the frequency of encountering them.

This part firstly will give an insight into the statistical fact of the frequency ofencountering business idioms in daily news, magazines and materials In the next,students’ ability to recognize a business idiom will be revealed through theiranswered survey questions.

The survey question 1 - “Can you recognize an idiom when reading businessnews?” – has recorded 30 frank and straight answers from 30 random surveyedstudents The result is not out of expectation, 28 students out of 30 claimed that theysurely can realize an idiom when reading business news It is a notable result thatmarks over 93.33 % of surveyed students can recognize business idioms – the veryhard – to understand because of its abstraction in language generally and in businessparticularly On the other hand, only 2 students admitted their incapacity ofrecognizing business idioms

In order to check the truthfulness of students’ self-judgments, I give surveyedstudents a small practice case-conversation

“In a company’s meeting,

- We are losing a lot of business to your competition

- Yes, our competition is eating our lunch

- We may be at a loss if we don’t bail the sales department out.”Four business idiomatic expressions are found in this conversation, “to losebusiness to your competition”, “our competition is eating our lunch”, “at a loss”,

“bail the sales department out” Nevertheless, collecting all their answers foridentifying business idioms occurred in the conversation, it comes to the fact thatstudents are not really sure about their ability to recognize business idioms Resultsshowed that only 2 students were able to point out four applied idiomaticexpressions Almost the rest (14 students) found out three out of four businessidioms The next equal group consists of 11 students who underlined two businessidioms in the whole provided conversation Amazing result also tells that three

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students left only could indicate only one idiom Overall result for the surveyquestion 1 is provided in the table below:

Table 1: Statistics in survey results

Regarding the quantity of idioms found in the conversation, the figures cannottell about the real ability of surveyed students in recognizing business idioms Thefact is that students cannot know exactly which ones are business idioms Apart from

2 cases perfectly cleared out four idioms, the rest virtually underlined the wholesentences or just the phrase verbs contained in the idiomatic expressions only Theproblem here obviously is that students are ambiguous about the true structures ofeach idiom

The question of frequency is answered through survey question 2, which isdemonstrated in the chart below:

Figure 2: Frequency of encountering with business idioms among

surveyed students

As what can be seen from the chart, a noticeable portion of 50% surveyedstudents admitted their common encounter with business idioms when readingbusiness news At the same time, the number of students who always cope withbusiness idioms also is a considerable figure – 30% No-one denies their meetingwith business idioms while about 20% surveyed students acknowledge their unusualcontact with business idioms These above statistics have shown the popularity ofbusiness idioms in use; hence the need to improve knowledge on understandingbusiness idioms is vital and immediate to all students, especially with ones havingdaily contact with business affairs and materials

Nevertheless, the factual status of students’ understanding regarding businessidioms still requires further discussion for improvement

To prove this authentically, result of the survey question 3, “How do youunderstand those business idioms?” can give the clearest illustration to surveyedstudents confession on their real situation of business idiom understanding ability

The results are drawn as in the below figure:

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Figure 3: Surveyed students’ ability of understanding business idioms

When students can identify exactly what the business idioms are, it still cannot

be assumed that students can see through the meanings of those idioms The figuresfrom the above chart have specified the reality of surveyed students’ ability ofunderstanding business idioms A majority of surveyed students (65%) claimed thatthey sometimes understand the business idioms that they coped with The group thatrarely understands business idioms accounts for a smaller proportion (27%) No casedares to affirm their absolute understanding of business idioms while to a surprise,8% of surveyed students really do not understand the business idioms that they havejust pointed out

Therefore, in order to help students themselves give the explanation to theirfailure to make out the meaning of business idioms they met, I provide the fourthsurvey question – “What is your biggest problem in translating business idioms?”Answers have been collected then according to them; I have been completing reports

on their problems when translating, which will be presented in detail in the next part

3.1.2 The outstanding problems that students face.

The question of outstanding problems that students face in translating businessidioms is investigated through the survey question 4 – “What is your biggest problem

in translating business idioms?” The results are revealed as following:

Figure 4: Major problems as perceived by students

The survey targets to students studying both majors, English Translating andInterpreting and Economics Therefore, their knowledge and skills confirm thetruthfulness of their shares regarding the actual problems they perceived during theirinteraction with business materials As the chart showing that different students meetdifferent challenges in translating business idioms Among various listed difficulties,difficult equivalent expression and lack of economic background knowledge are thetwo most common problems coming up to 38% and 35% surveyed studentsrespectively put a thumb up for the selection Different expressions due to themismatch between SL and TL are always big problem for all languages’ translatorsand interpreters The next vote belongs to the option of “lack of materials tocompare” with 11% answers Although the extending networks have offered amyriad of search tools for students, this “lack of materials” is still understandable asthe information provided widely on the Web is almost untrusted and multisided Theresults have demonstrated the left three problems with fewer effects on the surveyed

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students, which are “complex lexical organization” (8%), “unclear context” (4%) and

“no equivalence in the target language” (4%) Under the level of senior yearuniversity students, only a small portion of students considered these as their biggestproblems in translating is reasonable as their knowledge of both English andeconomic issues by this time is sufficient enough for this lowest level ofcomprehensive reading The biggest problem lies in each one’s ability of besttransferring messages and content of each idiom from SL to TL

However, in conclusion for difficulties in translating business idioms, majorproblems are listed out as follow:

The mismatch between the SL and the TL, rooting from the differences inculture, as well as numerous variations of cultural words used in idioms, acts as themajor cause to translating business idioms The complexity in the translating Englishbusiness idioms into Vietnamese is already predicted by the definition of idioms as acomplex linguistic expression whose whole meaning may be different from meaning

of each individual words that make up the expression (Lipka,1990:96) Idiomsexpress an abstract meaning, which means that a high semantic complexity in SL will

be conveyed to a relatively concise figurative expression in TL

Besides, these linguistic constructions are built based on different rhetoricalfigures such as metaphors or comparisons, hyperboles or others This use oflanguages and semantic words until now has not been understood fully yet.Therefore, it would be extremely hard for translators to guess the meaning withoutlooking up for the cultural base, religious base or social base of the idioms indifferent relevant sources

Fuertes Olivera & Samaniego Fernández (1998: 41-45) in their work havestudied that the meaning of plentiful business idioms is motivated by a small set oftraditional symbols or metaphors belonging to a portion of popular categories such asmachines, liquids, human body, daily life, animals, plants, colors, medicine, war,sports, games and so on This finding indicates the possibility of predicting thefigurative meaning of business idioms Fraile Vicente (2005) has successfully

proved this through this research in which he collected two groups of conceptualmetaphors that can be used to describe the conceptual structure of economics and themeaning of its idioms These metaphors empower the economists to vary the extent

to which predictions and control are represented as animate metaphors which areused to demonstrate the movements of an economy (for instance, the growth and thedepression) and the economic organizations (for example, parent and sister company)under the experts’ control In animate metaphors describe market movements such asrebounds and slides are beyond human control (Charteris-Black, 2000 149:163)

To continue, the characteristic that denotes the unchangeable nature of idiomsalso causes difficulties in translating To give it an illustration, we may say “If we

end up in the red on this project, we are going to get in trouble” The idiom “in the

red” is fixed with the unexpected meaning as “losing money”, it is not “in the green”

or any color else What is more, the phrase “in the red” only does not make it easilyfor the translators to consider it as an idiom

However, a translator may recognize an English idiom if it violates “truthconditions” That is, the idioms themselves tell about impossible phenomenon or

false reasoning such as in some idioms like “half-baked idea”, “storm in a teacup” or

“to bite the bullet” On the contrary, once idiom is out of this nature, it absolutely

become more difficult to recognize With these cases, under-experienced translatorscan misunderstand them easily or consider them as a popular expression, with theconsequence of either losing its tone or losing its meaning

The second problem that may be met while translating is that the wordcombination of the SL can have equivalence in form in the TL but it denotes totallydifferent meaning

Take the idiom “to take someone for a ride” as an example In a general

context, translators may understand it as “taking someone to go around in one's car ormotorbike”, while a careful reading of the idiom in its context may give quite adifferent meaning, for example, cheating someone in some ways

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3.1.3 Surveyed students’ translations for translation practice test.

The translation practice test is designed with the aim to conclude out anoverview around actual ability of students in giving appropriate translations forselected business idioms There are six business idioms which touch different aspects

of business After receiving answers for the survey, both surprises anddisappointment appeared In general, students have gained success in conveying themeaning of business idioms into Vietnamese However, mistakes and translationfailures are never avoidable Collecting all sheets, it is easy to witness commonmistakes and unacceptable mistakes expanding from forms to ideas The below tablewill draw out typical manifestations of surveyed students in giving translations togiven idioms:

advertising campaign Their

advertising agency has come up

with a winner.

1

Giành chiến thắngGiành (được) thắng lợi (lớn/mới)

2

Đoạt giải

3

Rất thành côngThành côngSắp thành công

2 Susan made a killing on her

Google stock and retired at 40

Vớ bẫm

some ideas about how to make our

products safer They’d like to meet

this afternoon to run some ideas

don’t spend much on R& D They

are fast followers; they are just

waiting for foreign competitors to

Người bắt chước rất nhanhHọc lỏm nhanh

Những người theo sauNgười ăn trộm ý tưởngBắt chước ý tưởng

Kẻ chớp thời cơ ăn theo

Kẻ biết ăn theo nhanh chóng

Kẻ học mót nhanh nhạy

lately Do you have any ideas for

drumming up business?

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Tăng trưởng kinh doanhThúc đẩy kinh doanhTăng cường hoạt động buônbán

Nỗ lực phát triển kinh doanhCải thiện tình hình kinhdoanh

Tăng doanh số/ doanh thu

US Automakers had to bite the

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Ngậm đắng nuốt cayNgậm bồ hòn làm ngọt

bullet and cut jobs. Thắt lưng buộc bụng

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Dũng cảm đối mặt với khỏkhăn

31

Nhẫn nhục / cố gắng cầmcự

Cắn răng chịu đựngGặp khó khăn

32

Chấp nhậnChấp nhận khó khănChấp nhận thử thách

33 Cắn răng cắt giảm kế hoạchCắt giảm nhân sự

Cắt giảm sản xuấtThu hẹp

Table 2: Students’ translations for given business idioms in translation

practice test

Apart from responses with no translation given, translation errors andtranslation failures are recorded with not a small number In translation, there is nowrong translation; however, translations that fail to correctly denote the given itemswill be considered as “incorrect translation”

As what can be seen from the table 3.2, various mistakes were made bysurveyed students in their business idiom translations Regarding the first idiom

comparision with the SL A new advertising campaign cannot bring about a “genius”,

so the translation “khám phá ra nhân tài” has violated the relevance between the

context and the idiomatic expression Similarly, the translations 2 and 4 have allmention a relation to a competition, or a race in business, which is out of context

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Translations 1 and 3 have the same intention in indicating the success of theadvertising agency, but they fail to denote what the success is about The translation

6, in contrast, clarifies the success in terms of advertising strategies Two translations

“nảy ra một ý tưởng hay” and “một ý tưởng tuyệt vời” seem to best convey the

meaning from the SL into the TL

The second idiom “to make a killing” is translated conversely from its

meaning by surveyed students with the translations 7, 8, 9 and 10 The idiom wants toexpress a big gain in Susan’s stock Students misunderstand it as a failure whichresults in Susan’s retirement at the age of forty; therefore they translate it with thenegative meanings However, successful translations also are recorded, such as the

this case seems to more expressive, “ăn đậm”, “trúng quả”, “vớ bẫm”.

The third phrase to test, “to run some ideas”, is a quite easy one Only theword “ideas” can reveal much of the idiom’s meaning Thus, almost surveyed

successful Also, translations 15 puts the idiom to other sides “To run some ideas”

does not imply “to apply the ideas into reality” By the contrary, it involves “asking

translation version 12 comes to a totally incorrect outcome

The only noun phrase for the translation practice appears to be an easy onewhile a majority of survey students gave appropriate answers to it Translations 21 arecollection of correct and acceptable translations to this idiomatic expression Besides,the questionnaire results also show mistakes and failure The most seriousmistranslating is the case which the word “fast” cannot make any sense to thestudent Next, the same word “fast” give a wrong direction to students who translated

it literally 17 “người theo sau tốc độ” Translation 19 also does not convey correctly the

mean of the word “fast” when translating it as “may mắn” “Fast followers here

mention the people who quickly copy the achievements of others This action belongs

to “copying”, “violating registration laws”, not “good adapting”, so the translation 18

is probably the most unacceptable incorrect translation which its author did not payattention to the context or apply economic background One student thought aboutthe meaning of the idiomatic expression in a wrong way as she based on the context

in a wrong way to translate Since supposing that the company has a poorcompetence and weak initiates, she give 16 “chậm tiến” for “fast followers”

In the second context, meaning of the idiom “to drum up business” is revealed

quite clearly, which means the board is calling for ideas to improve its sales reportwhen the current business status is not very positive Thus, almost students cantranslate the idioms easily like the translations 22 Among these, the translations “tăng

doanh số”, “tăng doanh thu” are quite far from original meaning, yet they are

acceptable in terms of implication Similarly, the translation 23, 24 and 25 refer to theway that can be applied to “[drum] up business” and do not directly denote the

cannot specify the case of doing business here This may be due to the fact that theword “business” holds rather numerous meanings One case is recorded to have given

an incorrect translation based on no reference to the context provided Under thecircumstance of the somber situation of sales, there is no reason for the company’shope to maintain this sales status Hence, translation 26 is concluded to be an incorrectone

The last idiom to be surveyed is “to bite the bullet” The same as other idioms, this one is easy-to-guess” thanks to the context, especially key words like “demand

was down” and “cut jobs” The remarkable translations are among those with

bụng” and “ngậm bò hòn làm ngọt” Not to transfer the meaning idiomatically, the

translations 31 convey the message literally The translation 30 will be a good one

without the word “dũng cảm” as there is no sign of this characteristic in the SL Also,

the US Automakers does not show that they “accept” anything in the originalexpression, so all expression of translations 32 do not seem to be suitable Studentshave the habit of adding information to their translation based on their economic

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