evaluating english translation of the short story the general retires by nguyen huy thiep based on j.house's model = đánh giá bản dịch việt – anh của truyện ngắn tướng về hưu của nguyễn huy thiệp

This paper applies translation quality assessment model developed by House 1977 for evaluation of an English translation of a famous Vietnamese short story.. In this paper, the quality o

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÒA

EVALUATING ENGLISH TRANSLATION

OF THE SHORT STORY "THE GENERAL RETIRES" BY NGUYEN HUY THIEP BASED ON J.HOUSE'S MODEL

(ĐÁNH GIÁ BẢN DỊCH VIỆT - ANH CỦA TRUYỆN NGẮN

'TƯỚNG VỀ HƯU" CỦA NGUYỄN HUY THIỆP DỰA TRÊN MÔ HÌNH

CỦA J.HOUSE)

MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60220201

HANOI - 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

******************

NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÒA

EVALUATING ENGLISH TRANSLATION

OF THE SHORT STORY "THE GENERAL RETIRES" BY NGUYEN HUY THIEP BASED ON J.HOUSE'S MODEL

(ĐÁNH GIÁ BẢN DỊCH VIỆT - ANH CỦA TRUYỆN NGẮN

'TƯỚNG VỀ HƯU" CỦA NGUYỄN HUY THIỆP DỰA TRÊN MÔ HÌNH

CỦA J.HOUSE)

MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến

HANOI - 2014

i

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis, which is entitled Evaluating English

translation of the short story "The General Retires" by Nguyen Huy Thiep based

on J.House's model, has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or

any other university This work is the result of my own original research and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text

Signature

NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÒA

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Translation has always been my favorite subject, and I became truly interested

in the issue of translation quality assessment since I registered and attended the course of Assoc.Prof.Dr Le Hung Tien on subject Translation Study From that time, I always bear in my mind the idea of doing my thesis on a topic in such field

My very first and deepest thank goes to my Supervisor, Associate Professor Le Hung Tien for his encouragement, patience and profound knowledge Without his whole-hearted guidance, insightful comments and suggestions, this thesis would not have been possible

I also would like to express my sincere thank for my beloved teachers in the course, Professor Hoang Van Van and Doctor Huynh Anh Tuan for their lectures that inspire me to the relevant knowledge of this thesis My special thank to Ms Ngo Thanh Thuy, who did not mind pouring rain or scorching sun to guide us throughout the course

I highly appreciate advices and comments given by my classmates, Mr Trang and Ms Quynh, who are always willing to give me great help while I gather materials and conduct details of this thesis

I am in debt to my family who does a great spiritual support by their simple but careful actions Despite of the fact that their supports are obviously indirect, they always possess the distinguish motivation source for the formation of my thesis

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ABSTRACT

That translation literature has been put in the race for quantities and time triggers the need for an effective tool for assessing quality of translation This paper applies translation quality assessment model developed by House (1977) for evaluation of an English translation of a famous Vietnamese short story The study firstly emphasizes features and critical problems that translation literature has been facing Secondly, the original and the translation are both analyzed in accordance with House's model before they are put in comparison with each other for mismatches to be found Finally, these mismatches are employed to generalize quality of selected translation and to suggest some recommendations for quality

improvement of the selected translation

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

SL: Source Language

TL: Target Language

ST: Source Language Text

TT: Target Language Text

v

LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS

Figure 1.:A model for translation quality assessment by House (1977) Page 14 Figure 2.:A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation

Text in by House (1997) Page 17 Figure 3:Some instances of semantic translation of dominated verb bảo in

TT Page 21 Chart 1:Statistical frequency of engaging in conversation of each

interlocutor Page 27

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS v

PART A INTRODUCTION 1

1.Rationale 1

2.Significance of the study 2

3.Scope and objectives of the study 2

4.Research method 3

5.Structure of the study 4

PART B DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Literary translation 5

1.1.1 Typical features of literary translation 5

1.1.2 Problems of literary translation 6

1.2 Translation quality assessment 10

1.2.1 Researches in translation quality assessmen 10

1.2.2Julian House and A Model for Translation quality assessment 12

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Chapter 2 AN APPLICATION OF HOUSE’S MODEL INTO

TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT 18

1.1Source Language Text analysis 18

1.1.1 Source Language Text background 18

1.1.2 Analysis of Source Language Text in accordance with House’s mode 18

1.1.3 Statement of function 31

1.2 Source Language Text and Target Language Text comparision and statement of quality 33

1.2.1Source Language Text and Target Language Text comparision for mismatches 33

1.2.2 Statement of quality 38

PART C CONCLUSION 39

1.Recapitulation 39

2.Concluding remarks 40

3.Recommendations for quality improvement of the translation 40

REFERENCES 43 Appendix A Source Language Text: Vietnamese original I Appendix B Target Language Text: English translation XXIV Appendix C A list of colloquial and cultural featured lexical items

and English equivalences (Sorted A – Z LIX

"exporting" literature and culture Literary translation has been immigrating to the center of national literature and it cannot be denied that, with such movement, readers have been being given the change to enjoy quintessence and value of world literature At the same time, literary translation is the one which contributes much to the richness of knowledge in world culture Famous translators such as Trinh Lu, Tran Dinh Hien, Le Bau, Nguyen Bich Lan, Thuy Toan, Huu Viet are typical for their seriousness in translation of literary and were awarded by Vietnam Association of Literature

However, not every translated work has been welcome with compliments or assessed specifically and appropriately There are cases, of which translations were done carelessly and hastily, resulted in contradictory reactions since wise readers and critics recognize mismatches between translation and original Meanwhile, it seems that in Vietnam, proper and serious attention paid to research and assessment in literary translation is somewhat limited The quality

of translation thus has always been a critical issue because of the appearance of incidents where the translations were navigated too much from the original We have seen blooming of translated books with many translation supporting tools (software, dictionary, search engine, etc.), but the question of quality remains controversial, especially translations in specific fields As the result, there is a need for an effective and trustful tool, which can be used to evaluate the quality

of such translations from a more scientific view

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This study is carried out with two grounds in mind Firstly, it is a modest effort to contribute to translation assessment field in Vietnam by giving an

evaluation on a work in literature Secondly, it pays a revisit to Tướng về hưu,

one famous story which impressed readers since it first appreared and in years later This story was written by Nguyễn Huy Thiệp in 1986 and then was translated into English titled "The General Retire" by Greg Lockhart and was published in 1993 by Oxford University Press

2 Significance of the study

Until now, researches and works in evaluation of translation (English - Vietnamese, Vietnamese -English) are not remarkable In Vietnam National University, at MA degree, within 5 years, there have been about 50 researches conducted in translation, provisionally distributed in 5 main topics such as translation method (of texts and specialized terms), equivalence, translation and its application in teaching, translation assessment and others in which theses on translation quality assessment only make up approximately 10% (figures updated until end of 2011) These theses, although present researchers' efforts in evaluating of texts of different genres and fields from a scientific view, seem insufficient for those who want to get more general view of current status on translation assessment in Vietnam

In this paper, the quality of English translation of the story is about to be evaluated basing on model developed by Julian House in 1977 It is expected that what are found will be useful for further refinement of the translation On the other hand, this study is assumed to, with its particularity, contributes to researches in the field and triggers similar studies in Vietnam

3 Scope and objectives of the study

3.1 Scope of the study

3

Base on House's translation quality assessment model, this study addresses the quality assessment of the entire English translation of a Vietnamese short story

named Tướng về hưu The translation lasts for 21 pages (pp 115 – 136) and was

entitled "The General Retires" The translation assessment is thus limited in literary text where difficulties in translation of such texts are described attentively Putting into practice House's translation assessment model, this study applies some issues addressed in discourse, pragmatics, grammar, speech act theory and systemic functional grammar

3.2 Research questions:

This study is conducted with the aim of shedding a light on following questions:

1 How good is the translation in accordance with House's model?

2 What can be done to improve the quality of the translation?

4 Research method

Supposing that translation in literature encounters numerous problems, a text in the field was selected for assessment The next step is to choose an assessment scheme which should make it possible for a relatively comprehensive and linguistic based analysis Therefore, the assessment model that Julian House developed in

1977 acts as the crucial analytical frame and the pragmatic and disourse based appoach was utized

With House's model used as a system of reference, analysis includes the description of ST and TT and a comparison between them Descriptive and comparative methods were thus employed respectively in order to work out answer for 2 above research questions Descriptive method is useful for gathering set of data constituted by features found in each dimension during description of each text, while comparative method was taken its full advantage for comparing dimension by

To make it convienient for description and comparision of ST and TT, each text was marked using conventions of numbering Each paragraph was numbered by Roman numeral while each sentence was numbered by Arabic numerals These texts can be found in Appendix A and B of this paper

For statement of function of ST and quality of TT, generalization technique was utilized It should be noted that only description of ST was presented to fit well for length of this thesis The presented analysis is thus limited in description of ST, statement of function, covert and overt mismatches and statement of quality

5 Structure of the study

This paper comprises following major parts:

PART A INTRODUCTION

PART B DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

PART C CONCLUSION

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PART B DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Literary translation

1.1.1 Typical features of literary translation

We take it for granted that doing translation in literature field is nothing easy To perceive a literature text is the task of reader, to understand and convey the text into another language is the task of a translator The task for the translator is thus always doubled both in term of quantity and difficulty For literary texts, translation is an art while for non literary texts; translation is a science (Newmark, 2004: 10)

As a special type of translation, literary translation shares common features with others while persists inside itself the distinguished ones Those distinguished features make up the differences and originally bring hard tasks to those who want

to translate any variant of literary texts With an effort to define literary translation, Schulte (2010), the president of American Literature Translator Association (ALTA), characterizes it as follow:

Literary translation bridges the delicate emotional connections between cultures and languages and furthers the understanding of human beings across national borders In the act of literary translation the soul of another culture becomes transparent, and the translator recreates the refined sensibilities of foreign countries and their people through the linguistic, musical, rhythmic, and visual possibilities of the new language

In this definition, which seems to be experience-based and function focusing, exists two outstanding notions: one is culture, and the other is language These two notions are interlinked in a special relationship in which translation language is recognized as a mean of cultural reflection This definition is similar to what is meant by Lander (2011:7) when he called literary translation "courier of culture"

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Another feature of literary translation is the TL text's limited degree of sameness

to the SL text This fact is summarized by Newmark (2004) when he distinguished literary and non-literary texts His point is that after using many types of

"compensatory procedures", only "near perfection" can be expected to happen to the case of non-literary translation One reason for this fact is, he explained, the searching for connotative and denotative meaning, of which only a limited amount a translation can capture Another reason, he further emphasized, originated from basic features of two languages, which he called the "tools" for translation Each language is "unevenly and variably equipped with words, have different sounds and grammar and different word-orders, and different lexical gaps and deficiencies" Hence, the translator must follow an anticipated path, which is somehow relative to what Bester said “Translation, like politics, is an art of the possible; compromise is inevitable and universal” (John Bester, as cited in Landers, 2011: 10)

Since the literary texts function is to deliver "the world of the mind and the imagination" (Newmark, 2004), the aesthetic and allegorical aspects of the text are expected The readers of SL texts are basically more "lucky" to those of TL texts because they possess the chance to directly perceive the text The readers of TL texts, who sometimes are "unaware of the foreign origins of some literary text" (Lambert, 1998:130), are more passive and even totally dependent on translators Aesthetic and allegorical, which Newmark (2004: 12) called the truth, are respectively defined as "the beauty of its form and of its sound" and as "the fusion

of imagination and ethics" in literary translation The task of translators now is that they should convey these two truths in such manner that is perceivable to the intended readers while trying to keep specific values of the ST so-called the aesthetic and expressive values

1.1.2 Problems of literary translation

Due to its distinctive features, literary translation brings to translators bunch of hard tasks Lander (2011:7) considered it as "the most demanding type of

on a G7 coffee box (a famous coffee brand in Vietnam) famous words of Sebastian

Without my morning coffee I'm just like a dried up piece of roast goat The question

is how we should translate the simile of roast goat, and whether we accept the

translation that was used Không có cà phê buổi sáng cuộc sống của tôi trở nên khô khan và vô vị Apparently there's no image of "goat" here and for the intended users

(Vietnamese customers), given translation seems to be an adaptation The case of literary translation is even more complex with a number of issues taken into consideration

Basically, translators should own certain knowledge in order to make his/her translations work since this translation variant more or less reflects ST cultures On the other hand, most of the time, they are likely to struggle with uniqueness of style that comprise the distinctiveness of the SL texts in order to generate TL texts that deliver as much effect as SL texts do as possible

Not every translator has the chance of living in two cultures in such time that is sufficient for her/him to transfer comprehensively the culture of this language into another language According to Bush (1998:27), translator of literature is "bilingual and bicultural and thus inhabits a landscape which is not mapped by conventional geographies; s/he is at home in the flux that is the reality of contemporary culture, where migration is constant across artificial political boundaries" and that "involved

at a keen point of cultural convergence" His hidden comparison reveals much about nature of literary translation in its relation with cultures Firstly, translator must try

to survive in an abnormal land which is resulted in the intersection between 2 cultures, one of SL texts and the other of TL texts Secondly, (s)he must be of sound

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mind to realize the contemporary mixed culture (s)he is living in Basically, it is likely that most of the SL texts, or the materials and TL texts, or the products are processed in each own culture, but the processors must always place themselves in the margins in order to balance and close the gap In this process, a special resource must be used, which Lefevere (1998) called "cultural capital" and is defined as

"what makes you acceptable in your society at the end of the socialization process known as education" (1998:42) In his opinion, owning a cultural capital means that whoever you are, you should be able to take part in conversation on certain topics of your culture and this kind of special capital is, in contrast to economical capital, what "intellectual can still claim to have"(1998:42) He (1998:44) continued to explain three factors that directly drive the distribution and regulation of cultural capital, which are (1) audience's need, (2) translator initiator and (3) relative prestige of source/target languages and their cultures By audience's need, he referred to the main reason for translator's translating strategies By translator's initiator, he meant the motivation for translation, such as giving the work to the public or being suggested by the other The last factor indicates expectation of possible readers, some care about the content, some care about how the translator process the SL texts (this is the case of translation assessment) Hence, the

translators must own not only cultural capital of 2 languages at the same time but

also wise strategies to spend these capitals in order to avoid losses Here raise the issue of a subcategory called equivalence at different levels in literary texts This is not as simple as procedure of replacing this word by the other word, not to mention the case of no equivalence Be focused in this study is level of words and phrases which, perhaps ranging from colloquial words to idioms, are "culture bound" (Susan Bassnett, 2002: 32) This problem is critical because it seem to assessors of translated texts that any careless translation of cultural words can be easily recognized and to (bilingual) targeted readers that their intrinsic backgrounds will prevent them from reception of new norms and definitions The frequent technique

In technical translation the order of the cars is inconsequential if all the cargo arrives intact In literary translation, however, the order of the cars - which is to say the style - can make the difference between a lively, highly readable translation and a stilted, rigid, and artificial rendering that strips the original of its artistic and aesthetic essence, even its very soul

Lander emphasized the controversial role of style over the quality of translation process product This is similar to what Reiss (1976) stated when she emphasized that translator should mirror the form of the original in TL text if the primary function of the SL text is to convey "artistically shaped creative content" Literary translation is different from the other forms of translation requiring certain levels of accuracy (technical, financial, scientific…) is that it can be creative Here raise the question of whether translator should be stylistically faithful to the original or be flexible As being said before, the idea of completed sameness or perfection will never be reached, but if a translator wants to create the same effects as the author did with his/her work, faithfulness seems to be a better choice, although this is really a big challenge

Taking into account now the problem of the structure of the work that is meant for translation Bassnett (2002:122), who emphasized much on the relation between the text and its components, said "Every prime text is made up of a series of interlocking systems, each of which has a determinable function in relation to the whole, and it is the task of the translator to apprehend these functions" The crucial

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point that Bassnett made in her concerns of problems in literature translation is the relationship between the content and the form In other words, the problems are translator's failure of relating the overall structure of the text and his/her isolate care

of content leading to the anticipated failure of appropriate interpretation of the text

In her words "the translator stresses content at the expense of the total structure" (Bassnett, 2002:114) As for the prose translation, a fact was mentioned that ones who are translators or carry out the work of translators tend to ignore the overall structure and will start immediately the translation of lines (s)he may encounter The result, therefore, can be mismatches between the form of SL texts and that of

TL texts; for example, loss of effects created by stylistic devices used in the SL texts Bassnett (2002: 115) stated the situation of translator of novels which, however, might happen with most of translation variants:

Again and again, translators of novels take pains to create readable target language texts, avoiding the stilted effect that can follow from adhering too closely

to source language syntactical structures, but fail to consider the way in which individual sentences form part of the total structure

Once entering into the translation of a novel, a prose, a poem, a drama or such types, translators must bear in mind the higher risk of being criticized by the intended and possible readers Translators placed themselves into a little-profit-but-much-challenged battle, and the of-all-time biggest question remains that how to minimize the possible distortion from the SL text after it is molded by one or more than one translator in different times But, prior to that, a trusthful tool for translation quality assessement should be determined

1.2 Translation quality assessment

1.2.1 Researches in translation quality assessment

Much attention has been paid to translation quality by researchers in the field with attempts to work out proper criteria and similar in order to determine how a

Reiss (1976) concluded that in the process of translation assessment, the assessor must do 3 tasks, which are (1) determining SL text's kind of texts (text type and text variety), (2) finding the translator's conception of the translation (expressed

in translator's translating manner or preface statement) and (3) defining the aim of the translated text In Reiss's opinion, by doing so, one can avoid the risk of taking absolute and biased criterion for translation assessment from one amongten translation principles listed by Savory (1957, as cited in Reiss, 1976:112) These principles, according to Reiss (1976:112), are "directly contradictory" and

"mutually complementary" but created "an impressive picture" to describe "what a correct translation should be like" The list is as follows:

1 A translation must give the words of the original

2 A translation must give the ideas of the original

3 A translation should read like an original work

4 A translation should read like a translation

5 A translation should reflect the style of the original

6 A translation should possess the style of the translation

7 A translation should read as a contemporary of the original

8 A translation should read as a contemporary of the translation

9 A translation may add to or omit from the original

10 A translation may never add to or omit from the original

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Until now, some great names in the field such as Newmark, House, Koller, Reiss, Wilss and others have shownconcerns in translation quality and spent much effort on creating a framework for translation assessment Two outstanding and comprehensive models are that of Newmark (1988) and House (1977, revised in 1997), which will be further discussed in the next lines

Newmark (1988:186) used the term "translation criticism", of which a comprehensive one, in his opinion, must cover 5 topics:

[1] a brief analysis of the SL text stressing its intention and its functional aspects;

[2] the translator's interpretation of the SL text's purpose, his translation method and the translation's likely readership;

[3] a selective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with the original;

[4] an evaluation of the translation - (a) in the translator's terms, (b) in the critic's terms;

[5] where appropriate, an assessment of the likely place of the translation in the target language culture or discipline

His model has been evaluated as having practical basis and clear path and thus adopted widely due to its advantages over other models Its practical application originated, according to Le (2006), perhaps from its author, who has a lot of practical experience as a translator However, Le (2006) also noted that the theoretical background that this model was established on is not as firm as in case of House's model, which will be presented next and also the model applied in this paper

1.2.2 Julian House and A Model for Translation quality assessment

Julian House (1942) is a German scholar and linguist She contributed to

translation theory A Model for Translation Quality Assessment, which was

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originally developed in 1977, edited in 1981 and further refined in revisited version

in 1997 with consideration to comments and evaluation given by other researchers

The refined model has been recently referred to as A Functional-Pragmatic model

of Translation Evaluation (House, 2011), which reveals much about its nature Until

now, different versions of this model have been evaluated as among the most effective academic models for assessing translation, even though they have been presenting challenges to applicators with requirements of high linguistic competence and combined application of many linguistic branches such as pragmatic, functional grammar, syntax, speech act theory, etc., (Le, 2006)

For House, assessing the quality of translation means addressing the nature of translation which are (1) the relationship between (features of) the text(s) and how they are perceived by human agents (author, translator, recipient(s)), and (3) the consequences views about these relationships have for determining the borders between a translation and other textual operations House said (1977:25) "the essence of translation lies in the preservation of "meaning" across two different languages" She then listed three aspects of "meaning" which are semantic, pragmatic and textual aspect In her opinion, "an adequate translation text is a semantically and pragmatically equivalent one" and "the translation text has a function equivalent to that of its source text" (House, 1977:30) In this connection,

to assess a translation is to search for functional equivalence between source and that translation text

In order to do so, each text must be analyzed individually for establishment of corresponding textual function, which was defined by House as "the use of the text

in a particular situation" (House, 1977: 38) This situation bounds the text and for the purpose of analysis, it is broken down into specific situational dimensions, which are presented in her model as follows:

Figure 1: A model for translation quality assessment by House (1977)

The theoretical framework for above scheme is Crystal and Davy (1969)'s

model, of which most of dimensions were adopted by House, those of Time, Medium, Participation and Province

The next task, according to House, is to figure out how above situational dimensions "are realized syntactically, lexically and textually" (House, 1977:51)

To do so, analyzer shall, in each dimension, pick up syntactic, lexical and textual means which are"text-specific linguistic correlates to the situational dimensions" (House, 1977:52) The basis for those linguistic correlates were taken by House (1977: 51-61) from linguistic theories such as grammatical models of Quirk and Greenbaum (1973), treatment of the textual means based on Enkvit (1973), theme-rheme distribution of Prague school, types of text constitution of Söll (1974) and illocutionary forces What are found will lead analyzer to statement of in ST's functions composed by ideational and interpersonal textual components, two terms that House adopted from Halliday (1970, 1971, 1793)

Taken together, the prime purpose of her model is to analyze the SL text and

TL text according to given situational dimensions of the model to get the respective textual profiles, and that of SL text will be further used as norm to judge the appropriateness of the TL text (House, 1997: 52) The secondary purpose is to underline the possible mismatches between original and translation one The above

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mentioned detailed comparison of text by situational dimension helps to reveal

possible mismatches, and such mismatches were named covertly erroneous errors This type of error, as it was named, on the other hand, suggests another type: overtly erroneous error, which is used to describe the mismatches in denotative meaning or

breaches of TL system Finding of mismatches, as the result, lets accessors reach the ultimate purpose of the model: statement of the quality of the examined translation

The operation of House's model, as summarized by Le (2006: 242) experienced through 3 major steps:

1 Analyze original according to 8 criteria, 3 aspects of language user and 5 aspects of language use

2 Compare and contrast text construction manner according to criteria analyzed in original

3 Define level of equivalence in form and function between original and translation to evaluate translation's quality

Realizing the relevance among text typology, textual function, equivalence and translation, House made a further statement of translation typology by suggesting

two types of translation: overt translation and covert translation, and the concept of cultural filter In her definitions, over translation is "one in which the TT addressees

are quite "overtly" not being directly addressed; thus an overt translation is one which must overtly be a translation, not, as it were, a "second original"(1977: 189) and covert translation is "a translation which enjoys or enjoyed the status of an original ST in the target culture" (1977:194)

House's definition of overt and covert translation, according to Munday (2008:93), was "rather confusing" and the difference between them "is cline rather than a binary opposite" (2008: 94) To distinguish, House clarified "the ST of

16

overt/covert translation is respectively tied/ not tied to source language community and culture" (1977: 189,194) Consequently, ST of covert translation is tied to expectation of the target culture addressees while that of overt translation is less likely to be so This explains why cultural filter, which was suggested by House (2001: 251) as "a means of capturing socio-cultural differences in shared conventions of behavior and communication, preferred rhetorical styles and expectation norms in the two speech communities", must be applied concurrently to covert translation Such application challenged both translator and evaluator by demanding a considerable consideration of cultural presuppositions of both SL's community and TL's community, i.e., the translator must, in House's words, "view the ST through glasses of target culture member" (1977: 196 - 197)

This division has posted crucial implications to translation in that how cultural presuppositions would be necessary and level of equivalence required With regards

to translation in literature, her conclusion that "covert translation presenting more subtle cultural evaluation problems" (1977:207) suggests one typical problem of such type In later refined model, classification of text into overt and covert had been integrated into the model as its last step as reviewed by Munday (2008: 93)

In the later years, this model has been given numerous comments and criticisms, which led her to further refinement in 1997 The most controversial issue

in her model, according to many critics, is the overlapping of data while analyzing the text by dimension One example is the anticipated duplication of data following

dimension of social role relationship and of social attitude

In later refinement, House added the category of Genre in order to provide

more comprehensive analysis for text profile The scheme was rearranged and directed to the application of M.A,K Halliday's theory of Functional Grammar Such analysis and comparison of an original and its translation experience 3 levels: the levels of Language/Text, Register (Field, Mode and Tenor) and Genre Genre is

a level that lies between individual textual function and register It amends for the

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limitation of Register, which only shows relationship between text and context but fails to capture individual linguistic features Instead, Genre is used to characterize

“deeper” textual structures and patterns of the text In a recent revisit to her modal,

to name its nature, House (2001: 247) called this A Functional-Pragmatic Model of Translation Evaluation

House (1997:108) summarized her model as below:

Figure 2: A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation

FIELD

Subject matter and

social action

TENOR Participant relationship

- Author‟s provenance and stance

- Social role relationship

- Social attitude

MODE

 Medium (simple/complex)

 Participation (simple/complex)

LANGUAGE/TEXT

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Chapter 2 AN APPLICATION OF HOUSE'S MODEL INTO

TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

1.1 Source Language Text Analysis

1.1.1 Source Language Text Background

The story “Tướng về hưu” was writen by Nguyen Huy Thiep in 1986, when Vietnam began to step into the renovation age This story is one of his most excellent works and it marked the impressive entrance of Nguyen Huy Thiep to Vietnamese literature When Vietnamese literature was familiar with traditional works at that time; the unusual style that Nguyen Huy Thiep delivered in his story had created great impacts, both negative and positive In this work and many other works, his style is characterized as popular literature, in which he tent to use common words and direct expression That he does not avoid calling taboo name became a rule in his writing (Tran, 1990) Because of this, many people criticized his literature as being vulgar and impolite; and the history described in his works was even evaluated as bare On the contrary, many readers showed their agreements and interests to his style with the thought that his stories while displayed the bare reality of a degenerated society, were still full of humanism

In the following section, the ST is about to be analyzed basing on House‟s model which she developed in 1977 This un-revisited model was chosen to be applied in this study because its criteria fit well with description of the texts In other words, the analysis scheme helps to reveal the author's style and the underneath idea in the ST

1.1.2 Analysis of Source Language Text in accordance with House's model

The text is treated as first-person or homodiegetic narrative (termed by Gerard Genette, 1983) in which author is recognized as homodiegetic narrator who describes own personal experiences as a character in the story one character The text, therefore, has two components: (1) record of speeches among interlocutors and

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(2) narrative setting frames for the situations in which (1) happened The narrative led the speeches in time sequences and elaborated on the way speeches emerge from situations In each of the following situational dimension, these two components are considered simultaneously

A Dimension of language user:

(1) Geographic origin: for the narrative, it is non-marked standard Vietnamese For the speeches among interlocutors, they are marked as Northern Vietnamese, outskirts of Hanoi However, this geographical dialect is not strongly marked by linguistic means but rather by the content of the text

(2) Social class: the narrative is non-marked, educated middle-class while speeches are marked for some of them covered case of uneducated low-class as being

marked with casual address forms: mày, tao and lexical items marked as substandard:bố khỉ, các bố, nhắm, "đòm" phát là sướng, mất mẹ, mẹ mày

(3) Time: marked, after war

B Dimension of language use:

(1) Medium:

The medium is complex, which is written to be read as if heard for both cases of

narrative and conversations because while reading the story, the reader is aware of the fact that (s)he is the direct receiver of the story the author is telling, in other words, the addressees will have a feeling that (s)he is listening to the other‟s sentiments

Syntactic means:

a Presence of elliptical, commentary clauses typical of oral conversational encounters where it is the situation that automatically disambiguates the incomplete utterances: XIX5,XIX11, XIX16, XX4, XXVI15, XXXVI28, 29, XXXV18

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b Short and simple structured sentences, this is easy to see throughout the text and thus not necessary to be listed here In the case of narrative, some sentences stand alone which brings to readers the feeling that the information is left unfinished

c Lack of conjunction such as but, and indicating the typical feature of speaking

d Typical patterns characterizing the spoken mode reproduced in form of a narration Dialogues in the text are, therefore, set up in one direction The

structure always is: A said “(message X)” B said “(message Y)”

Lexical means:

a Presence of interjections: thế, à, nhé, (chị/ bà/ bố/ con) ơi

b Apple use of expletives and colloquial words in both narrative and speeches: thế nào, văng mạng, hẳn hoi, xí xớn, theo trai, báu gì, mẹ mày, bỏ mẹ, con khỉ, ác thật (compliment), có chửa, đếch, thôi chết, chết mục xác, mẹ khỉ, bán sạch, đại

để, mát mặt, mang tiếng, đồ chó, đồ đểu, đồ khốn nạn, không đủ rửa ruột Full

list of colloquial and cultural featured lexical items is shown in appendix C

c Flexible use of idioms to express subjective evaluation on events: bông hoa nhài cắm bãi cứt trâu, một giọt máu đào hơn ao nước lã, môn đăng hộ đối, nghĩa tử

là nghĩa tận, cáo chết ba năm còn quay đầu về núi, nước mắt cá sấu

d Repeated use of such lexical words as cũng (38 times) or cả (30 times) revealing

the inclusion typical in narration and expressing the afterthought

e Fore-grounded words: due to distinctive features of speeches, the controlling process in the text is verbal process What seems to be special and somehow

unusual is the ample use of verb bảo in most of the cases That it is used

repeatedly (119 times) reflects clearly the style of author where the alternation in

expressing nuance is modest In Vietnamese, bảo is a verb used in informal

communication and its use signals the familiarity among interlocutors On the other hand, the repeated use of this verb helps to maintain the atmosphere throughout the text (atmosphere in communication of a family) In general, this

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verb is an equivalent of nói (tell or say), but it is used intentionally by the author

with meaning of “ask”, “answer”, “suggest”, “reply”, “explain”, etc The meaning of verb in each case is inferred from context and by common sense of readers These verbs, at the same time, show little variety of emotions and act as

a way to maintain the familiarity Here are some examples:

XII2

XII3

Cha tôi bảo: "Nghỉ rồi, cha làm gì?"

Tôi bảo: "Viết hồi ký"

Ask Suggest

apologize XXIX13 Vợ tôi bảo tôi: "Họ hàng nhà anh kinh bỏ mẹ" Exclaim

XXXIII12 Cha tôi bảo: “Chú ơi, lúc này mà chú đùa à?” Reprove

Figure 3: Some instances of semantic translation of dominated verb "bảo" in TT

Textual means:

a The text is etic on level of fictions since there are various references to the enveloping situation by means of personal, local and temporal deictic Personal pronouns are used throughout the text Local deictic such as: II2 - Trong làng, họ Nguyễn là họ lớn, VI4 - Ngôi nhà tôi ở ven nội, X2,3 - Tôi ở Viện vật lý Thủy ở bệnh viện sản, VIII6 - ở trong gia đình, cha tôi bao giờ cũng là hình ảnh

text, such as: I1- khi, II9- năm mười hai tuổi, III1 - khoảng năm, IV1 - khi lớn lên,

VII1 - năm bẩy mươi tuổi, IX9 - đúng một tháng sau, X1 - trước khi kể tiếp, XIV1

- một hôm, XV1- sau ba tháng, XV4- một năm sau, XVI1 - tháng bảy năm ấy,

XIX13 - sau đó, XI1 - một tối, XXIII 1 - tháng mười hai, XXIV1 - trước tết Nguyên đán, XXV 1 - trước hôm đi, XXVI1 - sáng chủ nhật, XXVI2 - tối thứ hai, XXVI11

- hôm sau, hôm sau nữa, XXVII1 - hôm thứ bẩy, XXVII8 - hai hôm sau, XXVIII1

- sáu tiếng sau, XXXII1 - đêm ấy, XXXIV6 - đến tối, XXXV1 - Tết năm đó,

XXXV2 - chiều mồng hai, XXXV6 - sau này, XXXVI7 - một bận, XXXVI12 - một hôm, XXXVII1 - tháng Năm, XXXVII12 - buổi tối, XXXVII18 - trước khi lên

xe, XXXVIII28 - sáng hôm sau

b Lack of transitional words and phrases sentences indicating the transition of theme between juxtaposed and thus reveals lack of premeditation typical of spoken mode as it seems: XII9 - XII10, XIII6 - XIII7, XIV9 - XIV10, XXIX9 -XXIX10, XXXIV17 - XXXIV18, XXXV10 - XXXV11, XXXVI20 - XXXVI21, XXXVI29 - XXXVI30,XXXVI35 - XXXVI36

(2) Participation:

This category is complex since it is characterized as monologue but contains

features of dialogue where there is participation of both addressers and addressees Syntactic means:

a Ample use of direct addressees: the addresser uses first personal pronouns where

he addresses himself as tôi and directly addresses readers as người đọc and ai đã

có lòng để mắt đọc điều tôi viết The excuse that tôi made at the beginning and

the ending of the story is an attempt to elicit addressees participation and display

an illocutionary force of indirect, subtle invitation to the addressees to take a

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position to observe his story He also uses abundant possessive pronouns to

indicate his relationship with other interlocutors: cha tôi, mẹ tôi, ông tôi, vợ tôi, các con tôi

b Presence of rhetorical questions and embedded questions in utterances produced

by interlocutors through which the addressees are invited indirectly to participate in the arguments put to them: XXXVI29, XXII11, XXXII6, XXXIII15,16,17, XXXVI35

c Jussive mood is employed to elicit addressees participation:

I2….xin người đọc nể nang những tình cảm đã thúc đẩy tôi viết mà lượng thứ cho ngòi bút kém cỏi của tôi

XLI10 - Nếu có ai đã có lòng để mắt đọc điều tôi viết, xin lượng thứ cho tôi

XLI11 - Tôi xin cảm tạ

(3) Social role relationship

There are two distinct relationships (a) the addresser (author) and the addressees (readers) and (b) one interlocutor (narrative character) and other interlocutors (remaining characters) While the first one is symmetrical, i.e author has no authority over readers; the latter seems to be more complex with the appearance of both asymmetrical and symmetrical relationship between narrator and remaining interlocutors Within scope of this study, (b) will be analyzed unidirectionally from the stance of narrator towards each interlocutor with little consideration to complex and multi-directional relationship among remaining characters

Relationship (a) can be described as follow: the author, taking the stance of observer, tells his own family story Since he and his addressees have no shared knowledge of his family, he made an effort to clarify his own story by inserting background information whenever it is required The role relationship, in this case,

is neutral and impersonal and thus widens the circle of possible addressees, who can be anyone with a mind to read the story However, during the text, this

As the result, with regards to theme and idea of the text, there are more to discuss in the case of the latter

Possessive pronoun is used more frequently than third person singular personal

pronoun, for instance, to address his father, he uses cha tôi (105 times) - ông (20 times), vợ tôi (68 times) -Thủy (8 times) Neutral attitude towards other

interlocutors is expressed through the use of third person singular personal

pronoun and name:ông Bổng (41 times) -ông (8 times), ông Cơ (23 times) - ông (2 times), cô Lài (18 times) - cô (3 times)

b Repetition of first person plural personal pronouns: cả nhà (7 times), chúng tôi

(6 times) helps to convey involvement and closeness among interlocutors

c The positional role of addresser in his family is manifest in the particular illocutionary forces which utterances acquire in the text, e.g, those of complete agreement, suggestion, and sluggish reaction: IX4, XII3, XIV5,XIV23, XXX2,XXX22, XXXV16,XXXV29, XXXVI15,XXXVI32, XXXVI34, XXXVI37,

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d The presence of rhetorical question Sao nó không đưa thơ nó cho người khác xem mà lại đưa cho vợ tôi? is twofolds, one is to show his powerlessness

towards what have been happening (his wife and his neighbor affair), the other

is to invite the comments of addressers (readers) All of these contribute to show his weak character

e Both active and passive was used to indicate asymmetrical relationship between narrator and his father such as inVI2, VI3, XI5 in which the occurrence of passive voice is modest but consecutive, mainly to define the relationship with his father

as benefiter of his well-beinglife In this connection, the relationship between narrator and his father is asymmetrical in term of material life: VI2: Tôi được học hành, được du ngoại

f There is another asymmetrical relationship between the wife and the other members of family, especially with her husband - the narrator The wife has power or, in other words, family authority over the others, which is manifest by the dominance of utterances marked polarity of negative or carry illocutionary forces of demanding, ordering, questioning produced by his wife [-positive] sentences such as: VII8 - Vợ tôi không trả lời, VIII2 - Vợ tôi không chịu, XX3 -

Vợ tôi không nói năng gì, XXIV14,15-Vợ tôi bảo: “Tôi không thích./ Thế ông bảo sao?”, XXVII5 - Vợ tôi không nói năng gì, chiều hôm ấy thấy mang về chục mét vải trắng Utterances with demanding, ordering, questioning: XXII11, XXIII2, XXIV2, XXIV9, XXVII11, XXVIII3, XXXIV12, XXXVI38 Deonitic mood is easily realized in typical utterances of the wife: XIV13 -Vợ tôi bảo: "Đừng mừng họ chỉ nhờ vả Cha ạ, cha đừng làm gì quá sức", XXIV19 - Vợ tôi bảo:

"Được, đừng lấy hai nghìn của ông (to servant), XXII11 - Vợ tôi bảo: "Đừng đổ sâm, khổ cho mẹ" (to husband), XXX19 - Vợ tôi bảo:" Đừng nghe ông Bổng, lão ấy đểu lắm (to husband), XXXIV12- Vợ tôi bảo: "Đừng khóc (to servant),

XXXVI38 - Vợ tôi bảo: "Đừng đi (to husband)

Lexical means:

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a Presence of lexical items that show uncertainty, hesitation, negation through which the asymmetrical relationship between character Thuan (the son) and his

father, his wife is shown: cũng không, nhưng cũng không, nhé, đừng, sao

b The way he called his father cha is not normal for northern area, as normal word used is bố He also called his father: cha tôi, ông, người to show deep respect

c Although the text is classified as first person narrative, adjectives are not heavily featured in the text Most of adjectives are used for describing events or the

father to show his respect and silent care: vinh dự, tự hào, tình cảm đặc biệt, ngưỡng vọng, xúc động, thích thú, ngạc nhiên, kinh hãi, đau đớn, lặng lẽ, âm thầm, nhanh nhẹn, trẻ trung In this regards, asymmetrical relationship is

defined as that between father - son in term of hierarchy in family On the other hand, the narrator tends to avoid expressing the attitude towards his wife but rather discreetly reveals his asymmetrical relationship with the wife by describing actions and utterances produced by her

Textual means:

a Presence of events in chronological order reveals the role of a narrator Since he and his addressees have no shared knowledge of his family, he made it clear for every detail before insertion of speeches

b The theme is set carefully with the presence of "hedgy" clauses

Trước khi kể tiếp, xin nói về gia đình tôi

Tôi quay lại đoạn kể cha con tôi bàn việc gia đình

Cũng cần nói thêm: quan hệ tình cảm của vợ chồng tôi êm thấm

c The relationship among interlocutors is also manifest in number of utterances produced in the circumstance For such a condensed story like this text, frequency of utterance of each interlocutor more or less contributes to reveal the things under this situational dimension Total number of utterance is 173 (counted by each interlocutor's turn in conversation), in which the one who tends

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to dominated most of conversation is Thuy (the wife), as being shown in the following chart:

Chart 1: Statistical frequency of engaging in conversation of each interlocutor

The narrator, by this way, reveals the relationship with his wife as being

contrasted with what he explicitly described as "êm thấm"

(4) Social attitude

In this dimension, both relationship (a) and (b) described in previous dimension are considered simultaneously although their indications in the text are not equally presented The text is, therefore, mixed by the tone of formal and informal, depending on each situation which sets the frame for interlocutors and addresser The formal elements are occasionally replaced by more informal elements The opening and ending of the text features the formal atmosphere but most of the time, the tone of the text is made to be informal and casual due to the (intentionl) careless design and use of colloquial words and phrases The social attitude of the

addresser towards his addressees then is reflected on the level of a casual style Consultative style is manifested in the way the addresser was aware

consultative-that he could not skip certain parts of his message, and hence be fairly elaborated in

Thuần (Me narrator), 31

-General Thuấn (Father), 35 Thủy (Wife), 38

Mr Bổng (Uncle), 29 Lài (Servant), 9

Mr Chưởng (Father's Junior), 4

Khổng (Neighbour), 2

Other, 2

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providing background information After using hedging utterances and providing background information, addressees are now considered as temporary “insiders”, and this is where the casual style is featured Relatively elaborated explicitness throughout the text more or less reveals the intimacy that addresser has set between himself and his (potential) addressees so that he could express freely his own confidence Casual style is manifest in conversations among interlocutors

Syntactic features:

a For the case (a), jussive mood is used to signal the (temporary) formal situation between addresser and addressees: I2, I3, X1, XLI10

b Incompleteness of clauses: presence of elliptical clauses which add to the

conversational and chatty tone of the text (cf.Medium)

c Short and very short sentences indicating the style of a story teller and signaling the direct speech between addresser and addressees: XI15, XIV2,

Lexical features:

a Use of explanatory blankets to clarify and supplement information to avoid misunderstanding or confusion: XXIV12, XXXVIII2

b Fore-grounded verb bảo marked [-formal] due to the relation that the addresser

set up with his addressees and high frequency of colloquial words and phrases and expletives used in existing relationship between him and his relatives (cf

(5) Province

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"The General retires" is an outstanding work of Nguyen Huy Thiep in the topic

of post-war family life and inspiration of criticism In this story, the addressees read about life of a General's who used to be a powerful commander on the battlefield but became lost in his own house and relationship with other relatives In this connection, the province of this text is that of an implicit criticized story told by a special character that observed and acted as one part of that story, and the language

of ST is thus the language of expressing

The purpose of the author is to criticize the impacts of market mechanism on people's life: moral degradation, relationships that seems to be close but turned out

to be loose among members of a family Within few pages, many topics were compacted and wisely presented: war, money, family affairs This text belongs to first-person narrative text, so it possesses inside itself the distinctive features For the purpose of analysis, in this paper ST is sub-categorized as autobiography

Syntactic means:

a Use of words and phrases carrying emotive force of criticism and effect of

humor: lố lăng, dung tục, rất hãi, khủng khiếp, bậy bạ, ầm ĩ, nhảm nhí, ô hợp láo nháo thả nhiên rất đời, thô thiển, thậm chí còn ô trọc nữa, nói là mượn chắc

gì đòi được, say rượu tống cổ cô con dâu, cầm dao chém bố, may trượt

b Deliberate use of verbal verb bảo to create the effect of simplicity (c.f Medium)

c Presence of figurative language: those of simile (cf Medium); rhetorical

questions: XXXII6- Sao chết đi qua đò cũng phẫi trả tiền? Sao lại cho tiền vào miệng bà, XXXIII15,16,17 - Sao lại đánh lừa?/ Chẳng lẽ người chết đều đã đánh lửa người sống cả sao?/ Bãi tha ma này toàn quân lừa lọc; repetition and

listing: XXXII13,14,15 - Tôi thấy cô đơn quá /Các con tôi cũng cô đơn /Cả đám đánh bạc, cả cha tôi nữa; XXII26 - cái ông chú đánh xe bò, lỗ mãng, táo tợn, làm đủ mọi điều phi nhân bất nghĩa

d Such addressing form as thằng Tuân - nó, cậu Khổng - Khổng - cậu - thằng Khổng are used to express relatively negative attitude or to convey ironic effects

Lexical means:

30

a An impression of contradiction spread throughout the text by the use of lexical

items with opposite implications: cả nhà, êm thấm, lạc loài, lạc lõng, mới, cổ

hủ, am tường, bất trắc, thô vụng, lố lăng, nhảm nhí, láo nháo, ô hợp, thô thiển, ô trọc Repeated use of word tiền (13 times) and interspersion of the word cô đơn

(3 times), and its synonyms help to bring the emotive force of criticizing

material aspect of society High frequency of such words as nhục (4 times), tâm

(4 times) in a short paragraph evokes emotion in readers

b Use of [+archaic] lexical items and collocations marking the province as one

which is no longer present (cf Time): tục huyền, trai đinh, tiêu chuẩn lương thực thực phẩm, chiến trường, thuốc Galăng, Spunhich, Bảo Đại thông báo, mề đay

c The text is dominated with words and phrases belonging to the theme of war:

doanh trại, vải lính, Bộ Quốc phòng, đơn vị, tướng, bộ đội, đại bác,tập trận, đại

úy, thiếu tướng, ra trận, trận địa, chốt, liệt sỹ;money: khoản thu, chi tiêu, kiếm (tiền), vay (tiền), món nợ, hụt thu, lạm chi,cầm chịch, kinh tế, tiền chinh, hào nhôm, đánh tam cúc ăn tiền, ngậm miệng ăn tiền, trả (tiền);loneliness: lạc lõng, lang thang,lặng lẽ,lạc loài,ít nói;marriage: cô dâu, chú rể, mâm cỗ,kèn, pháo, ô

tô, thuốc lá; funeral: chết, vật vã, khổ nhục, đau đớn, bãi tha ma, hương án, phường bát âm, quan tài, bốc mộ, bia đá, nhập mộ, trùng tang, thiên di, yểm bùa, tiền đi đò

Textual means:

The text is divided into 15 chapters with unequal length Textual cohesion is relatively loose due to that it is maintained mainly by the use of phrases indicating chronological events and the distribution of main themes throughout the text This textual mean, however, helps to characterize the text as narrative and reflects the professional activity of author as writer Main themes are indicated through several mechanisms of theme-dynamics and clausal linkage as follows:

Theme-dynamics:

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a Repetition of lexical items which carry the theme and act as key-words in the

text:cô đơn, tiền, chết, khóc

Iconic linkage: is revealed through the use of structural parallelism:

X2,3 - Tôi ba mươi bẩy tuổi, là kỹ sư, làm việc ở Viện Vật lý.Thủy, vợ tôi, là bác sĩ, làm việc ở bệnh viện sản

XVIII3,4 – Thuốc lá đầu lọc nhưng gần cuối tiệc hết sạch, phải thay bằng thuốc lá cuốn Năm mươi mâm cỗ nhưng ế mười hai

may trượt

XXII6,7 – Tôi lặng đi Cha tôi khóc

Clausal linkage: is indicated by logical connectors:

Explainatory: XXII4 – thực ra; XXXVIII2 - số là; Causal: II6,VIII2 – vì vậy;

Adversative: VIII6 – tuy thế, V4,XVII7, XXXVI34, XXXVII4, XL3– nhưng, XXXV32

– nhưng mà

1.1.3 Statement of Function:

The function of the text consisting of an ideational and an interpersonal componentcan be summarized as follows: the addresser‟s intention is (1) to tell the addressees the story of his father in such a way that the story was made to be short and simple but impressive with the use of colloquial and informal lexical items so that it can draw attention of and be suitable for any addressers who were pointed out

by the addresser as “those who may pay attention to”, and (2) to implicitly criticize the negative impacts of market mechanism to human attitude, behavior, and social affairs among them by listing actions in the past of a family where different social components are gathered to evoke addressees' pondering and concerns with some obsessiveevents

The situational dimensions contribute either overtly or covertly to the text‟s functions While the interpersonal component of the text is marked on each situational dimension, the ideational one is implicitly presented or invisibly marked