A study on the translation of adverbs in harry potter and the philosophers stone from english into vietnamese

i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY TRAN THUY HANG A STUDY ON THE TRANSLATION OF ADVERBS IN “HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE” FROM ENGLISH INTO VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC CHUYỂN ĐỔI CÁC TRẠNG TỪ TRONG TÁC PHẨM “HARRY POTTER VÀ HÒN ĐÁ PHÙ THỦY” VỀ TƢƠNG ĐƢƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A. THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van HANOI - 2013 ii DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other‟s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, 20 - 11 - 2013 Supervisor Prof. Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân Candidate Trần Thúy Hằng iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who have given me their generous helps, commitment and enthusiasm, which have been the major driving force to complete the current paper. I am particularly grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân, who generously spent his precious time on insightful guidance and earnest help all through the searching, analysis and paper-writing stages, and kindly sent his valuable and detailed comments on it. My sincere thanks also go to Dean and all the lecturers at Faculty of Graduate Studies for their constructive ideas and assistance. I surely would express my sincere thanks to all friends and workmates who have offered their helping hands whenever I am in need of help. I‟m so grateful to their understanding of my improper appeal for their aid and their kindness towards the inconveniency I have often put to them. To my fiancé, thank you for always having faith in me, for tolerating my temper and being extremely supportive in every way possible. To my dear friends, Hạnh and Ng. Hạnh, you have been a rich source of encouragement and love for me, I am truly grateful to have all of you in my life. Finally, I am deeply indebted my parents for their great encouragement and support during my study at Hanoi Open University. Thank you for the great love and pray in my life. Trần Thúy Hằng iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES viii PART I: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1 1. Rationale of the study 1 2. Aims of the study 3 3. Research questions 3 4. Scope of the study 3 5. Methods of the study 3 6. Design of the study 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 6 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6 1. 1. A review of previous studies 6 1. 2. Theoretical Background 7 1.2.1. Theory of Word 7 1.2.2.1. Word in English 7 1.2.2. Adverbs in English 11 1.2.2.1. Grammatical Definitions of Adverbs 11 1.2.2.2. Form of Adverbs 12 1.2.2.3. Functions of Adverbs 13 1.2.2.4. Position of Adverbs 14 1.2.3 Adverbs in Vietnamese 14 1.2.3.1 Function of Vietnamese Adverbs 16 1.2.3.2 Position of Vietnamese Adverbs 18 1.2.4. Theory of Translation 21 1.2.4.1. Definitions of Translation 21 v 1.2.4.2. Language and Culture 22 1.2.4.3. Translation Equivalence 24 1.2.4.4. Translation procedures 26 1.2.4.5. Translation Methods 33 1.2.4.6. Communicative Translation and Semantic Translation 36 CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND PROCEDURE 39 2.1. Aims of the Research 39 2.2. Research Design 39 2.3. Method of Research 40 2.3.1. Data Source 40 2.3.2. Method and Technique of Collecting and Analyzing Data 41 2.4. Research Procedures 42 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 44 3.1. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of Manner in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 45 3.1.1. Adverbs of manner translated as adjective + verb into the TL 45 3.1.2. Adverbs of manner translated as verb into the TL 46 3.1.3. Adverbs of manner translated as phrases into the TL 47 3.1.4. Adverbs of manner are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 48 3.2. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of Frequency in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 50 3.2.1. Adverbs of frequency translated as adverbs of frequency into the TL 50 3.2.2. Adverbs of frequency are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 51 3.3. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of Place in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 53 3.3.1. Adverbs of place translated as phrases into the TL 53 3.3.2. Adverbs of place translated as adverbs of place into the TL 54 3.4. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of Time in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 55 3.4.1. Adverbs of time translated as Noun into the TL 56 3.4.2. Adverbs of time translated as adverbs of time into the TL 57 vi 3.4.3. Adverbs of time are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 58 3.5.1. Adverbs of degree translated as adverbs of degree into the TL 60 3.5.2. Adverbs of degree translated as phrases into the TL 60 3.5.3. Adverbs of degree are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 61 PART III CONCLUSION 64 1. Recapitulation 64 2. Limitations of the study 67 3. Suggestions for a further study 67 REFERENCES 69 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Adj Adjective Adv Adverb N Noun SL Source language TL Target language V Verb viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating adverb of manner Table 3.2: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating adverb of frequency Table 3.3: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating adverb of place Table 3.4: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating adverb of time Table 3.5: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating adverb of degree 1 PART I: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1. Rationale of the study Words are ubiquitous. In a literate society words are everywhere and unavoidable. Every day people read, write, speak, and hear words. Words can be readily found in books and magazines. They can also be found plastered on signs, engraved on buildings, scrawled on food, printed on clothing, and they often even reside on the tips of our tongues. Obviously, ideas, notions and feelings are actually universal but the way we describe them in different languages is very unique. Therefore, translation plays a crucial role in enhancing better understanding each other, transmitting information, exchanging experiences and getting knowledge. However, translating from one language into another is no easy task. Translation must take into account a number of constraints, including the context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their idioms. In translating, there are some rules that must be obeyed by translator. At least the translator must master the source language (SL) because every language has its own system. Every language has its own grammatical or structural system in conveying an idea. The translator must be able to transform the structure of SL to the appropriate structure of the target language (TL). It means that, the reader and listener can understand about the translation result. Part of speech is very important to make sentences. Maclin (1996) states “Parts of Speech in English are traditionally classified into eight parts; they are verb, adjective, noun, pronoun, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection”. Adverb is a part of speech which serves as a modifier of verbs, adjectives, clauses, sentences and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are 2 primarily determiners and adjectives. I found out that many Vietnamese students are experiencing a lot of difficulties when trying to translate English adverbs. They sometimes wrote down funny sentences which are not pure Vietnamese simply because they translated improperly phrases/sentences containing adverbs into their mother tongue. Being a translator, I would like to discover the art of translation through some translated work in order to find ways to transfer English adverbs to Vietnamese. Furthermore, I also like to know whether my knowledge of English adverbs can be used to help some translator-wannabe deal with the problems. Rowling (born 31 July 1965) is considered one of the greatest authors nowadays and her novel has been translated in hundreds of different languages and has become one of the bestselling novels through years. More specifically, the adverbs in this book are a challenge for the translator. This novel was chosen to be the object of the present study also because it was published rather recently, in 1997, and thus is can be regarded as a very good example of popular literature of the end of the 20 th century. Furthermore, the novel has provoked many controversial thoughts and lively discussion among its readers and in the media because of its rather delicate issues and themes Besides, the novel contains many data that are relevant with the problem discussed and analyzed in this paper. Because of reasons mentioned above, my thesis is entitled “A Study on The Translation of Adverbs in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” from English into Vietnamese”. I hope this thesis will help students and all concerned understand and translate English adverbs more easily. [...]... chapters: Chapter One provides an overview of the previous studies on translation and adverbs This chapter also introduces some theoretical preliminaries on the translation theory, the definitions and classification of adverbs in English and Vietnamese Chapter Two includes an overview of the data as well as the methodology that were used in analyzing the translation of adverbs in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's... different aspects but no one focus on the translation of adverbs and adverbial On doing this research, the writer has followed the viewpoint of linguistics in doing an investigation into common ways for translating adverbs from English into Vietnamese and found out the main approaches taken by translators in translating adverbs from English into Vietnamese 1 2 Theoretical Background 1.2.1 Theory of Word... Task of the Translator (1923) states that translation goes beyond enriching the language and culture of a country which it contributes to, beyond renewing and maturing the life of the original text, beyond expressing and analyzing the most intimate relationships of languages with each other and becomes a way of entry into a universal language Other researchers, Meetham and Hudsan (1969) mention that... that translation is the replacement of a presentation of a text in one language by a presentation of equivalent text in a second language According to Hatim & Mason (1990), translation is a process, involving the negotiation of meaning between producers and receivers of texts In other words, the resulting translated text is to be seen as the evidence of a transaction, a means of retracting the pathways... Vietnamese is a complex work which poses great difficulties to the translator but there are a few researchers dealing with adverb translation There are researchers who have done analysis about language translation and the process of translation from English into Vietnamese So, in conducting this analysis, I have consulted the previous paper and research findings They are: Sinaiko and Brislin, Richard... is carefully controlled and translation is in itself a valuable skill to be imparted to students Furthermore, translation is an operation performed in languages and also a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another More specifically, translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL) Benjamin in The. .. from the point of view of above mentioned authors He defines that translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text Briefly, the starting point of translation is a message This message is expressed in a specific language, which is called the SL When doing translation, we aim to re-express that message in another language (TL) We have already... are interchangeable in a given situation Catford's approach to translation equivalence clearly differs from that adopted by Nida since Catford had a preference for a more linguistic-based approach to translation and this approach is based on the linguistic work of Firth and Halliday Catford proposed very broad types of translation in terms of three criteria: the extent of translation (full translation. .. Philosopher‟s stone translated from English into Vietnamese? 2 What procedures and strategies are used in the process of translation? 4 Scope of the study This study investigates the ways used in translating adverbs from English into Vietnamese Given the limited time, resources, conditions, and the length of the thesis, the researcher focuses only on Rowling‟s novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ... vs partial translation) ; the grammatical rank at which the translation equivalence is established (rankbound translation vs unbounded translation) ; the levels of language involved in translation (total translation vs restricted translation) Moreover, Popovic as quoted in Barnwell (1990) distinguishes translation equivalence into four types: (1) Linguistic equivalence, where there is homogeneity on the . MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY TRAN THUY HANG A STUDY ON THE TRANSLATION OF ADVERBS IN HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE FROM ENGLISH INTO VIETNAMESE. some theoretical preliminaries on the translation theory, the definitions and classification of adverbs in English and Vietnamese. Chapter Two includes an overview of the data as well as the. analysis about language translation and the process of translation from English into Vietnamese. So, in conducting this analysis, I have consulted the previous paper and research findings. They are: