DIFFICULTIES IN THE VIETNAMESE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE FOURTH YEARENGLISH MAJORS AT HAIPHONG UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

The respondent’s answers were analyzed to point out:  The students’ attitude towards translation subject  The students’ difficulties in translating Vietnamese-English texts  How stude

For the completion of this paper, I would like to express my deepestgratitude to people from whom I have been fortunate to receive invaluablecontributions

First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor,Mrs Vu Thi Thanh, M.A for her absolutely indispensable assistance, expertadvices and critical comments in details helping me a lot to fulfill the study Secondly, I am much obliged to all teachers at the Foreign LanguageDepartment of Haiphong University, who gave me an opportunity to carry outthis paper I do not think that I would have been able to complete this researchwell without their belief in me, and their help and transfer of preciousexperience

I also highly appreciate the enormous support provided by the year English majors at Haiphong University for their enthusiasticparticipation in the survey

Finally, I am grateful to the authors and publishers whose researchresults helped me build a foundation in my study

Sincerely,

Dang Thi Hong Gam

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

In today’s globalization and internationalization, it cannot be denied theimportance of English in people’s life and social development No Englishmeans no communication Without communication, there is no way toexpress thoughts, ideas, and feelings And how can the country’s economydevelop when the countries tend to integrate international economy for thewhole development? English becomes a common languagewhich helpspeopleunderstand each other more in the process of diplomaticrelation and economiccooperation and many other fields in today’s era

English isthe most effective international communicative language It is alsothe official language in a large number of countries.According to Wikipedia,there are more than 400 million people in the world using English as a mothertongue, and more than 1 billion people using English as the second language.English is the third language which is widely used only just after Chinese andSpanish All most of the international events and global organizations areusing English as the default language of communication.We again cannotdeny the advantages of English bringing to us, especially in the booming age

of information and technology Because knowing English and using computermore effectively are demands of job’s requirements if you want to get one’sdream job in any international company, earn more money or communicatemore effectively with more people around the world

When Vietnam became one of the members of World Trade Organization in

2006 encountering the difficulties in communicating with internationalfriends,ithas more and more requirements for Vietnamese to have expertEnglish skills, especially translation skill whichis considered as a bridgehelping Vietnam connect withpartners,enhance international economy

andexchangeour culture with other countries in the world Therefore, thedemand of professional translation is getting more necessary than ever.

Translation is essential to learn, but it doesn't mean it is simple for learners

To master translation is not easy for almost all English learners ManyVietnamese people have faced with many challenges when translating ourmother tongue into English This can be very difficult for learners who begin

to study written translation or even for those who are fluent in severallanguages, and there is no exception for English majors at HaiphongUniversity How to deal with this actual situation is still a question

These wondering and interesting facts, ideas promote me to carry out thisstudy: “DIFFICULTIES IN THE VIETNAMESE - ENGLISHTRANSLATION OF THE FOURTH -YEARENGLISH MAJORS ATHAIPHONG UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS.” I hope itwill be new and contributive to help students understand their difficulties andovercome these obstacles in learning process as well as get high mark in theirexams

1.2 Aims of the study

For this study, I expect to clarify two main issues The first is toinvestigatesome common difficulties in the Vietnamese - English translation of thefourth-year English majors at Haiphong University The second is to makesuggestions that can help them deal with the problems

- What are the solutions to help students overcome these problems?

1.4 Scope of the study

Based on in term of studied subject, the study involves Vietnamese writtentexts, documents and their English equivalents in different fields, whichsources may be from books, magazines or Internet.

The fourth-year English major students in BA English A K13class(2012-2016curriculum) at Haiphong University are also the targeted objects of thisresearch

1.5 Methods of the study

Questionnaire analysis: consisting of eight questions answered by 40

participants The respondent’s answers were analyzed to point out:

 The students’ attitude towards translation subject

 The students’ difficulties in translating Vietnamese-English texts

 How students deal with a Vietnamese-English text

 Methods of studying translation and the amount of time students

usually spend on it

Interview analysis: Two interview questions are designed to make the study more reliable Interviewees are teachers teaching Translation

1.6 Design of the study

This study consists of the following parts:

Part I: Introduction

The first part will give readers an overview of the study includingrationale, aims, scope, methods, and design of study

Part II: Development

This part consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature Review

It focuses on knowledge theoriesrelated to translation such as: the

concepts, the importance, strategies and difficulties in Vietnamese-English translation

Chapter 2: Methodology

In this chapter, the writer will show methods carried out during theresearch process

Chapter 3: Results and discussion

It will focus on analyzing common difficulties and giving solutions forthem

PART III: CONCLUSION

The last part will summarize the study and comment limitations of thestudy and suggestions for further study

PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review

1.1 Definition of translation

There are many the concepts of translation that have been discussed andpresented by many scholars with different perspectives for many historicalperiods

Firstly, numerous linguistic scholars mainly focus on findingequivalence (of meaning, grammar, content, etc.) According to Catford(1965), “Translation is the replacement of textual material in one language(source language) by equivalent textual material in another language (targetlanguage)” They add Translation “consists in reproducing in the receptorlanguage the closet natural equivalent of the source language message, first interm of meaning and second in term of style.”(Nida & Taber (1969) Hartmanand Stork (Newmark, 1995) also defines that “Translation involves replacing

a text in one language by an equivalent text in a second language.” Bell.R.(1991) gives the same point when saying that “Translation is the replacement

of a presentation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalenttext in a second language.”

Another idea shows that “Translation is a transfer process, which aims atthe transformation of written source language text into an optimallyequivalent target language text, and which requires the syntactic, the semanticand the pragmatic understanding and analytical processing of the sourcelanguage.” (Wilss, 1982) Barkhudarov says that “The transformation of aspeech product in one language into that of other language keeping content(or meaning) unchanged.” Bao and Thu (1999) defines that “Translation isrendering a written text into another language in the way that the authorintended the text Translators are concerned with the written word Theyrender written texts from one language in to another.” Besides, Koller (1995)indicates the equivalence relation among languages when saying that

“Translation can be understood as the result of a text-processing activity, bymeans of which a source-language text is transposed into a target-languagetext Between the resulting text in the target language text and the source

language text, there exists a relationship which can be designated astranslational, or equivalence relation.” Although there are many differentstandpoints, all most of them emphasize the significance of “equivalence” inboth languages

Secondly, based on Culture and Context theories (by Peter Newmark

1982 [49, p.25],) concentrate on culture and context during the translationprocess He defines “Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace

a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message oftextual material in one language into another language in the way that theauthor intended the text.”

Besides, functionalists do not pay attention to the source texts Theirmain is to point out the power of translation Hamtim & Mason (1990) saythat translation has communicative function when stressing that “Translating

is a communicative process which takes place within a social context.” Theyalso add that “Translation is an act of communication which attempts to relay,across cultural and linguistic boundaries, another act of communication.”(Hatim and Mason - 1997:1) Other scholars say that “Translation is anextremely motivated industrial activity, supported by information technology,which is diversified in response to the particular needs of this form ofcommunication.” ( Sager,1994) or “Translation, as the process of conveymessage across linguistic and cultural barriers, is an eminentlycommunicative activity, one whose use could well be considered in a widerrange of teaching situations than may currently be the case.” (Tudor, cited inDuff 1989)

Nord (2007) describes “Translation is the production of a functional targettext maintaining a relationship with a given source text that is specificaccording to the intended or demanded function of the target.”

Briefly, it can be said simply that “Translation is the process of changingsomething that is written or spoken into another language.” (AdvancedOxford Dictionary) All above definitions of translation share the same idea

that Translation is the process of replacement or substitution a written text or

an utterance from one language into another language, which remainsequivalence in content, the purpose of communication, or pragmatic

1.2 The importance of translation

Nowadays, Translation plays an important role in our life The twentiethcentury is the age of translation All fields of human lives such as economy,education, politics, tourism and so on use the specialized materials whichneed to be translated from the original language to another language With thetrend of integration and enhancing international economy, Translation helpspeople overcome the barriers of multi-cultural and global communication asNewmark says that “Translation facilitates mutual understanding amongdifferent and conflicting racial, ethnic, religious and cultural groups.”Especially when Viet Nam has become member of World TradeOrganization, the demand to have expert translation is necessary andsignificant It is true that all of the contracts, emails, agreements, orconventions, etc., in English need to be translated exactly and effectively toavoid some regrettable misunderstandings

Italo Calvino, an Italian journalist, short story writer, novelist, and essayist

has a comment on the importance of translation that "Without translation Iwould be limited to the borders of my own country The translator is my mostimportant ally He introduces me to the world." Without translation,all theclassic works of humanity, ancient civilizations along with endless source ofknowledge will be unknown.Through the process of translation translatorscan expand our knowledge as Stuart says that “Translation can support for thewriting process, especially at lower levels Research has shown that learnersseem able to access more information in their own language, which they canthen translate.”

1.3 Translation equivalence

House (1997) states the notion of equivalence is the conceptual basis oftranslation According to Catford, “Translation equivalence occurs when an

SL (source language) and TL (target language) texts or items are related to (atleast some of) the same relevant features of situation substance.”(as cited inBroek, 1978) Halverson (1997) says that equivalence is the relationshipexisting between two entities, and the relationship is described as one ofsimilarity in terms of any of a number of potential qualities Although thereare many concepts of equivalence translation, theorists share the same ideas

in finding the effective equivalence between SL and TL

Koller (1979) divides into five types of equivalence:

 Denotative equivalence: The SL and the TL words refer to the samething in the real world It is an equivalence of the extra linguisticcontent of a text

 Connotative equivalence: This type of equivalence provides additionalvalue and is achieved by the translator’s choice of synonymous words

or creating new forms in TL

Equivalence plays a crucial role in translation which is also the matter ofestablishing equivalence between S.L and T.L Catford (1965) states that “thecentral problem of translation practice is that of finding TL equivalents andthe central task of translation theory is therefore that of defining the natureand conditions of translation equivalence” ( p 21) He realizes that there aretwo factors which affected the equivalence i.e linguistic and cultural factors,leading to two kinds of equivalents i.e linguistic and cultural equivalents.This finding of Caford is very significant for linguistic scholars when theyidentify the difficulties in translation

1.5 Common difficulties in Vietnamese-English translation

1.5.1 Difficulties in linguistic

Words and choices of word meanings

The difference of vocabulary system sometimes creates many confusingfor translators A word in the source language has many meanings, and sochoosing suitable and appropriate words for the target language text can behard work.Newmark said that: “a word denoting an object, an institution, or ifsuch exists, a psychological characteristics peculiar to the source languageculture is always more or less untranslatable.” (quotes in Weston 1983:207)

In fact,the equivalence of an institution, a division, a concept, or a term may

be not found in the target language When you translate a text fromVietnamese to English and vice versa, it is often the case that there is nodirect equivalences can be found in English for Vietnamese words.Translators may encounter a new concept in general, and a difficult one tounderstand and explain it in many languages Or it may be that the concept isknown or readily understood but there is no specific English word to express

it Another difficulty is that, in addition, some words have specialconnotations that are not conveyed by the English word for the same thing

In some cases, it may be appropriate or necessary for translators toexamine the English context and decide which Vietnamese word is suitable.This usually involves choosing among several different words, as there aremany English words that can be correspond to the general category ormeaning expressed by the Vietnamese terms For example, the Vietnameseword“đàn” can be collocated with many different nouns such as “cá”(fish), “chim” (bird), “sư tử” (lion), “gia súc” (cattle) On the contrary, inEnglish there are many words meaning “đàn” as follows: “flock”, “herd”,

“pack”, “school”, “pride”etc In these cases, aVietnamese word alone is notenough to determine for the appropriate English translationand it is necessary

to put it in the phrase and specific context

A flock of birds/ sheep: đàn chim/ cừu

A herd of cattle/ buffaloes: đàn gia súc/ trâu

A pack of dogs/ calves: đàn chó/ bê

A school of fish/ chickens: đàn cá/ gà

A pride of lions: đàn sư tử

Therefore, translators have to learn by heart to avoid misusing

In other cases, it is appropriate to use a more general word to translateVietnamese with no specific English equivalent For instance, Vietnamese

have many words or phrases with different shades of green/blue such as: xanh thẳm, xanh rợn, xanh um, xanh biếc, xanh lá mạ, xanh cổ vịt, xanh lam, xanh

da trời, xanh lá cây…, but English has only two words (blue = xanh lá cây/green = xanh da trời)

Reduplication (từ láy) is found widely in Vietnamese They are formed

by repeating a part of a word to form new words, altering the meaning of theoriginal word Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease theintensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (likealliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech

It is very difficult to translate reduplicative words from Vietnamese into otherlanguages because it requires the equivalence of form and the semanticnuances.For example, Vietnamese has the word “đo đỏ” translated as

“somewhat red” in English Another example, the words “héo hon”, “héo hắt”, “heo héo”in Vietnamese are translated as “wither” (onlymeans

“héo”)in English.It can be easily seen that English words only express the

meaning of the words, and they have not shown the intensity of theadjective.Therefore, due to the fact that Vietnamese has a much greatlyabundant vocabulary stock, it poses challenging difficulties in choosing itsEnglish equivalence

Sometimes, we cannot find equivalent English words for Vietnameseones It is just an explanation of word meaning, not translate Here are sometypical examples:

“lơ láo” = “look lost and out of one’s element”

“mơn mơn” = “Freshly tender, freshly young/ In the prime of youth”

In short, words play a crucial role for any language learners tobuild their own vocabulary system to get advantages in their languagelearning Vocabulary is the fundamental component of communication Themore vocabulary you have, the more advantages for you to obtain effectivecommunication Paying attention to meanings of word and using words incontext exactly will help translatorscreate a good translated text

 Using suitable grammar and grammatical structure in the target language to transfer the ideas

The differences ofgrammar or grammatical structure also cause thedifficulties for translators.Insufficient knowledge on either of the two areasmay lead to poor quality of translation If compared to other languages,English is a very flexible language It goes by very strict structures while theVietnamese language is much more flexible by the way it does not always userules

 Word order

There are rules, which tell us how to put the words together Every languagehas its own order words in the sentence and we must respect that Thefollowing example is used to illustrate more about the differences betweenword orders in Vietnamese and English

Vietnamese: “Cô ấy là một người bạntốt.”

understand the rules of word order hardly avoid the mistakes – wrong Englishword orders For example, they may translate the “Cô ấy là một người bạntốt” as “She is a friend good.”

Sometimes, there are similarities between Vietnamese and English in wordorder Relative pronoun and object structures are typical examples

- Mô-za là nhạc sĩ (mà) tôi yêu thích nhất.

= Mozart is the musican (whom) I admire.

- Người phụ nữ tôi trông thấy trong công viên đang cho chim bồ câu ăn

= The woman I saw in the park was feeding the pigeons.

 Tense

In English, there are many tenses being used with a particular structure In case, an untrue tense is used, readers cannot understand or

misunderstand its meaning

For instance: “Anh ấy đang học tiếng anh”

It can be translated as: “He is studying English now”

The tense of the verb is the present progressive tense, it shows anaction taking place in the moment of speaking.To express tense in English,

we must change the verb- form while there are no rules of using thedifferent verb forms to express the time when an action happens inVietnamese With the present progressive tense above, it can be proved thatEnglish has a very clear distinction between tenses whereas tense is notusually required in Vietnamese For Vietnamese, past tense is indicated by

adding the word “đã”, present progressive tense by the word “đang”, and future tense is indicated by the word “sẽ”.

 Difference parts of speech

There is often no equivalent in the target language for a particular form

in the source text For example:

Example:

- Bọn trẻ chơi ngoài vườn

= The children play out the garden (incorrect)

= The children play in the garden (correct)

- Anh ta nói bằng tiếng Anh

= He speaks by English (incorrect)

= He speaks in English (correct)

- Họ bơi dưới sông

They swim under the river (incorrect)

They swim in the river (correct)

From the above mentioned examples, it can be seen that the translator tended to choose the English preposition basing on Vietnamese meaning without paying attention to their variations

 Voice:

Vietnamese tend to use active sentences in their speech while the passivevoice is used very frequently in English, which poses some problems fortranslators For example:

The following sentence is considered to have grammatical error becausethe translator misused the voice

“Đổi mới giáo dục là con đường tất yếu, nhưng đổi mới như thế nào vẫn còn là một câu hỏi đặt ra cho nhiều nhà giáo dục học.”

= Educational innovation is absolutely essential, but how should it innovate is still a big question which pose for many educators

The errors of this example are the verb “innovate” and “pose” which are

in active form It must be in passive form “be innovated” and “is posed”because education cannot innovate by itself and question cannot itselfpose for educators Therefore, the Vietnamese sentence should be translatedas:

“Educational innovation is absolutely essential, but how should it be innovated is still a big question posed for many translators.”

In Vietnamese, there are some cases where you see the word “bị”,

“được”, but they are not passive sentences in English at all

Example:

- Anh ấy bị ngã = He falls.

- Tôi bị ho= I have a cough.

Though both English and Vietnamese have similar notions of numberand countability, each language expresses in very different ways In English,number is expressed as a grammatical category that is they are different ingrammatical forms for the singular and plural nouns The final letter “_s”represents plurality in English It occurs in the grammar as a suffix of thenouns or verbs or both In Vietnamese, some plural makers such as “các”,

“những”, “tất cả”, “mọi”, “mỗi”, etc can be used in addition to the noun

“Các” generally means all of a given category of thing, whereas “những”refers only to some of the total number of things being discussed “Mỗi”emphasizes the identity of the individual members of the category withoutconnoting anything of their totality, while “mọi” expresses both individuality

of the items and the totality of the category However,number is often notexpressed at all Sometimes, no such distinction in Vietnamese is madegrammatically

Example: Phụ nữ = can mean either woman or women

Đàn ông = can mean either man or men

Trẻ em = can mean either child or children.

Some words that can be countable in Vietnamese but are uncountable inEnglish that makes translator confuse sometimes Here after are examples ofsome of them such as information, advice, furniture, potential, equipment, etc

In short, grammatical structures in English are so complicated and noteasy to master There is no way to master it without practice It requires thelearners have to find on effective way of learning to study and practicemore if they want to limit grammar errors in using English in general andspecially in studying translation subject to become a professional translator.

1.5.3 Difficulties in understanding culture

There are universal cultures that can exist in every community.When talkingabout the separation of the two relatives, it can be easy for everyone tounderstand the meaning of the sentence by the familiar metaphor images

(sunny day, rainy day, the moon, the sun)

“Hai ta như ngày nắng tránh ngày mưa

Như mặt trăng mặt trời cách trở.”

But if we say:

“Hai ta như sen mùa hạ, cúc mùa thu

Tháng mười hoa hồng, tháng năm hoa nhãn.”

Or:

“Hai ta như sao Hôm sao Mai không cùng ở”

Only Vietnamese can deeply understand the meaning of the versesbecause these comparative images exist in Vietnamese only

In the world, there are two cultures which create a big difference: Orientalculture (Vietnam) and Western culture (England) Each nation has its owncharacteristics of geography, history, physical life, etc which are reflected inthe language clearly, especially in vocabulary of each ethnic group Thesource language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in thetarget culture For example, Vietnam is located in the tropical monsoon withcomplex terrain, and it is famous for the ancient agriculture Therefore,things, events, phenomena and concepts related to that characteristics that

reflect markedly in the name, production tools, rice processing like “cày sâu cuốc bẫm, gieo mạ, làm cỏ, gầu giai, gầu sòng, bón thúc, bón đón đòng, xay,

giã, giần, sàng, thúng, mủng, nong, nia, sọt, gạo tẻ, nếp cẩm, tám xoan, tấm, cám, trấu; bánh đa, bánh đúc, bánh chưng, bánh dầy, bánh giò, bánh khúc, bánh cốm…” Besides,there are words about the customs of marriage(dạm ngõ, ăn hỏi, thách cưới, nộp cheo…) and religion, creed (đình, chùa, miếu,

am, phủ, điện thờ, bàn thờ, ngai, bài vị, mẫu thoải, chúa thượng ngàn…) For

Vietnamese people, these words and phrases are very popular, but they areextremely strange to Westerners Therefore, it is very difficult for translators

to translate these words into other languages because the target language has

no similar culture, even there is no corresponding words

Another example, when British refer to the word "pub" (a place wherealcoholic drinks can be bought and drunk) as a traditional culture It is an oldand antique place with dear images In the pub, they might have no music, orthey do have music but it’s very quiet, for a cozy comfortable atmosphere Incontrast, "pub" in Vietnamese means "bar" - a noisy place and the musicmight be really loud to encourage people to have fun, drink a lot and makepeople dance Overall, “bar” has long created a negative impression withsocial evils in people’s mind

Moreover, it is very hard for translators to translate idioms and fixedexpression fromVietnamese into English It is sometimes possible to find aEnglish idiom or expression with a similar meaning to an Vietnamese idiom

or expression For example, the idiom “xa mặt cách lòng”is translated intoEnglish as “out of sight, out of mind”, or the idiom “im lặng là vàng” is alsotranslated as “Silence is gold” However, sometimes no English idiom orexpression with a similar meaning to this Vietnamese idiom can be found For example:

- “Ai giàu ba họ, ai khó ba đời”

= “Every dog has its day

= “The longest day must have an end”

= “The morning sun never lasts a day”

It is also possible and usually easier to find a English idiom with asimilar meaning to an Vietnamese idiom, but which is expressed differently.One typical example for this is the translation for “Nhập gia tùy tục”, which istranslated as “When in Rome, do as Romans do”

After going through a careful analysis about cultural differences betweenthe two countries, a conclusion could be drawn, that is culture can partlyaffects translation process Misunderstanding of culture can lead to badtranslation product and sometimes makes it funnyand even insulting toreaders of the target language “There is the existence of this dividing linebetween linguistic and cultural challenges facing translators He thinks thatdifferences between cultures cause many more severe complications than dodifferences in language structure.” (Nida, 2000) Therefore, translators shouldmake it easy for readers to see and understand the text in terms of their owncultural background

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this chapter is to present the methodology used in thisthesis It consists of research participants, data collection instruments andresearch procedure.

2.1 Participants

2.1.1 The researchers

The study is carried out by Dang Thi Hong Gam, the fourth-year student

of English A class K13, Foreign Language Department, Haiphong University

2.1.2 The subjects

The subjects of the thesis are the fourth- year students of English major2012- 2016 curriculum at Haiphong University This year is the second yearfor them to study Vietnamese-Englishtranslation subject They have finished

2 courses relating translation before (Translation Practice 1 and TranslationPractice 2)

2.2 Data collection instruments

2.2.1 Questionnaire

The questionnaire is designed carefully to help students realize the status

of studying Vietnamese-English translation and their difficulties in studyingthis subject In this study, the questionnaire consists of 8 questions written inEnglish

The aims of those questions can be described as follow: The first partconcluding four questions (question (1), (2), and (3) were designed to seek thestudent’s attitude towards translation subject in general The next twoquestions (question (4) and (5) were used to find out the student’s difficulties

in their Vietnamese-English translation In order to know how students dowhen they encounter a Vietnamese-English text,question (6) was designed toclarify that The two last questions (question (7) and (8)were asked to indicatethe methods that the students usually apply to improve their translation skill

2.2.2 Interview question