Unnatural mistakes in english vietnamese translation difficulties and solutions

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH --- GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES UNNATURAL MISTAKES IN ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTION Supervi

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH

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GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

UNNATURAL MISTAKES IN ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION

DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTION

Supervisor : Nguyễn Thị Vân Đông, PhD

Student : Nguyễn Thị Thu Trang Date of birth : 26/03/1993

UNNATURAL MISTAKES IN ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE

TRANSLATION DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS

Supervisor : Nguyễn Thị Vân Đông, PhD Student : Nguyễn Thi Thu Trang Date of birth : 26/03/1993

HANOI, 2015

DECLARATION

Title: Unnatural Mistakes in English – Vietnamese Translation-

Difficulties and Solutions

I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced

by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis I want to thank the Faculty of English, Ha Noi Open University for giving me permission to commence this thesis in the first instance and to do the necessary research work

I am deeply indebted to my supervisor Mrs Nguyễn Thị Vân Đông whose reference materials, support, stimulating suggestions and encouragement helped me in all stages of this research for and writing of this thesis

My classmates from class K18A1 supported me a great deal and I want

to thank them for all their support, cooperation and valuable suggestions I would like to express my sincere appreciation to other fellow students of the Faculty of English for providing me their translation exercises and assignments to use as references Especially, I am obliged to my friends who looked closely at the final version of the thesis for English style and grammar, correcting both and offering suggestions for improvement

Finally, I cannot fully express my gratitude to all the people whose direct and indirect supports helped me complete my thesis in time

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

PART A 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and Purposes of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 3

5 Design of the study 3

PART B : DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Translation definition 4

1.2 Kinds of translation 5

1.3 Translation process 7

1.4 Naturalness and unnaturalness in translation 9

CHAPTER 2 UNNATURAL MISTAKES IN ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION 12

2.1 Linguistic aspects 12

2.1.1 At word level 12

2.1.1.1 Loss of connotative meaning 12

2.1.1.3 Word-for-word translation 16

2.1.1.4 Plural form 17

2.1.2 At phrase level 19

2.1.2.1 Word order 19

2.1.2.2 Noun phrase 20

2.1.3 At sentence level 22

2.1.3.1 Passive voice 22

2.1.3.2 Relative clause 25

2.1.3.3 Past tense: 28

2.2 Cultural Aspects 30

2.2.1 Translation of Simile 31

2.2.2 Translation of Metaphor 33

2.2.3 Translation of Proverb 34

CHAPTER 3 CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS OF UNNATURALNESS 36

3.1.1 Subjective reasons 36

3.1.1.1 Inadequate language competence 36

3.1.1.2 Inadequate cultural background 36

3.1.2 Objective reasons 37

3.1.2.1 Linguistic differences between Vietnamese and English 37

3.1.2.2 Cultural differences among nations 39

3.2 Solutions to avoid unnaturalness 39

3.2.1 Linguistic problems 39

3.2.1.1 Choose the right words 39

3.2.1.2 Choose the right structure 40

3.2.2 Cultural problems 40

PART C 42

CONCLUSION 42

REFERENCES 43

LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1.1 Nida’s Translation Process

Figure 1.2 Larson’s Translation Process

Table 2.1 Words with same denotation but different connotations

Table 2.2 Translations with vocabulary errors

Table 2.3 Different translations of “output”

Table 2.4 Word-for-word translation errors

Table 2.5 Plural errors

Table 2.6 Errors with passive voice

Table 2.7 Errors with passive voice (1)

Table 2.8 Students’ Translation of sentences with Relative clauses

Table 2.9 “đã” in past tense translations

Table 2.10 Differences between English and Vietnamese similes

Table 2.11 Coincidences in English and Vietnamese similes

Table 2.12 English and Vietnamese metaphors

Table 2.13 English proverbs and Vietnamese equivalence

Table 3.1 The difference about nuance of expression

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

SL: Source Language

TL: Target Language

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Human beings, throughout history, have made an effort to take advantage of various methods of communication with the intention of utilizing the knowledge of other nations and endeavoring to preserve this knowledge for the coming generations As the most effective methods of communication, language has been employed to satisfy the very need of communication The predicament that may emerge as an obstacle in the way

of communication seems to be the fact of dissimilarity of languages throughout the world In today's world, communication between different nations with different languages is feasible through translation

Throughout the past years and up till now, translation theorists and language researchers have been doing their best to define translation; to draw

up its limits as to put forward its foundations to figure out the accurate way for carrying out an effective translation

Certainly, almost no translation is perfect even when the general message is conveyed This is due to the many linguistic and cultural differences between one language and another Perfecting the practice of translation has been a great desire of generations of translators all over the world There have been several senior translators devoting their life to finding ways to overcome difficulties in their work In other words, they have tried to figure out and resolve common pitfalls that make a translation unnatural and sometimes even incomprehensible

2 Aims and Purposes of the study

The primary aim of the report is to give students of English, the

would-be translators, an overview of the frequently seen type of mistakes in Vietnamese translation that may take their translations unnatural and incomprehensible so that they are fully aware of and able to avoid them The report also aims at finding causes of translation unnaturalness and then suggesting some possible strategies to overcome the problems The targeted subjects of this report are mainly student; nevertheless, all people who are interested in translation work cab consider of a useful reference helping improve their translating skill In addition, the report touches upon a field of study that is still rather insufficient in Vietnam for further discussion by other researches

English-3 Scope of the study

The transferring of written texts from one language into another requires high accuracy and smoothness This is because translation tasks allow considerable time for translators to find the best substitutions while interpreters hardly have time to consider the wording and structure carefully Inaccuracy and unnaturalness in translation, therefore, need to be studied more cautiously than those in interpretation

Moreover, the thesis concentrates on analyzing in details the English Vietnamese translation, which is much more popular in Vietnam today than Vietnamese - English translation It touches upon translations of this kind by students of English as well as translators for Vietnamese magazines, newspapers and publishers This is due to the fact that not only translations by students but, worryingly, those by some contemporary professional translators

-in Vietnam can be dubbed unnatural This is a mistake we need to elim-inate

or at least reduce to the minimum level with a view to purifying our mother tongue and providing readers with the best possible sources of knowledge and enjoyment This is of importance to the development of Vietnamese culture and society in the future The thesis may mention the theoretical base in each

of its parts, but it concentrates largely on dealing with translation in practice

In Vietnam, there have been quite little research work like this and most of the publications are for internal circulation in universities only For that reason, this thesis is mostly based on the combination and analysis of minute details picked from these publications and available materials acquired from personal sources and surveys from juniors at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University

4 Methods of the study

In order to achieve the above aims, this report has been carried out with the following approaches: basing on the theory and principles of translation, major characteristics of a good translation, the results of the interviews, and the survey to collect information from students

5 Design of the study

This study is organized in three parts: Part A is the introduction, which includes the brief information about the study Next part is the development, which consists of Literature Review indicating some information about translation along with analysis of students’ mistakes and solutions to these errors Additionally, the entire thesis will be summarized in the Conclusion-

Part C Finally, part D is the references of this study

PART B : DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Translation definition

Translation is a science, an art, and a skill It is a science in the sense

that it necessitates complete knowledge of the structure and make-up of the two languages concerned It is an art since it requires artistic talent to reconstruct the original text in the form of a product that is presentable to the reader who is not supposed to be familiar with the original It is also a skill because it entails the ability to smooth over any difficulty in the translation, and the ability to provide the translation of something that has no equal in the target language

Translation is, in Enani's (1997) view, a modern science at the interface

of philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and sociology Literary translation in particular is relevant to all these sciences, audio-visual arts, as well as cultural and intellectual study

Translation is, in Chabban's words (1984:5), "a finicky job," as it has not

yet been reduced to strict scientific rules, and it allows for the differences that are known to exist between different personalities Translation is a heavily subjective art, especially when it deals with matters outside the realm of science where precisely defined concepts are more often expressed by certain

generally accepted terms Translation may be defined as follows: the

replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL). (Catford 1965:20)

Unlike such vivid sayings of famous figures, Bùi Tiến Bảo and Đặng Xuân dThu in their “Interpreting and Translation Course Book”(1997) point

out another interesting way for the definition ‘‘Translation is rendering a

written text into another language in the way that the author intended the text”

As can be seen, translation has been variously defined and ideas on translation are diversified and contradictory To some people, the concept of

translation is so complex that “No simple theory or set of rules can ever

suffice to provide meaningful answers to what has [been] described as

‘probably the most complex type of event yet produced in the evolution of the cosmos” (Brislin 1976:79)

1.2 Kinds of translation

According to Larson (1984: 15) translation is classified into two main

types, namely form-based translation and meaning-based translation

Forms-based translation attempts to follow the form of the source language (SL) and

it is known as literal translation, while meaning-based translation makes every effort to communicate the meaning of the SL text in the natural forms of the receptor language Such translation is called idiomatic translation A literal translation sounds like nonsense and has little communication value (Larson, 1984: 15) The literal translation can be understood if the general grammatical form of the two languages is similar Larson (1984: 16) says that idiomatic translations use the natural forms of the receptor language both in the grammatical constructions and in the choices of lexical items A truly idiomatic translation does not sound like translation It sounds like it was written originally in the receptor language Therefore, a good translator will try to translate idiomatically This is his/her goal

Catford (1978: 21) divides the three aspects of translation differently, those are: extent, level, and ranks

Based on the extent, the types of translation are:

- Full translation, it is a type of translation in which the entire SL text is reproduced by the TL text materials

- Partial translation, there are only some parts of the SL text to be translated into the TL text

In terms of level, the types of translation are:

-Total translation, the TL material replaces all levels of the SL text

- Restricted translation, it is the replacement of SL textual material with equivalent TL material at only one level; whether at the phonological level, graphological level, or at the level of grammar and lexis

In terms of rank, translation is divided into:

- Rank-bound translation, it means that the selection of TL text equivalent is limited at only one rank, such as word-for-word equivalence, morpheme-for-morpheme equivalence, etc

- Unbounded translation, it can move freely up and down the rank-scale

In his famous essay, On Linguistic Aspect of Translation, Jacobson in

Leonardi (2000) identifies three kinds of translation: intralingua translation (monolingual translation), Interlingua translation (bilingual or multilingual translation), and intersemiotic translation (verbal sign into non-verbal sign) Intralingua translation refers to a translation in which verbal signs are interpreted by means of other signs of the same language It happens within

the same language (monolingual) Interlingua translation is the one, which

refers to different languages whether it is bilingual or multilingual

Inter-semiotic translation refers to an interpretation of verbal signs by means of

other signs of non-verbal sign systems

1.3 Translation process

The process of translation can be defined as the activity of translation

The translation process usually is used by a translator as a guide in translating

text from the source language into the target language

Nida and Taber explained simple and generally about the process of

translation Nida and Taber (1974: 33) introduce three stages in the process of

translation This process begins by analyzing SL into grammatical and

semantic structure of the TL, transferring the meaning and at last by

reconstructing the grammatical and semantic structure into the appropriate TL

forms in order to create an equivalent TT

Figure 1.1 Nida’s Translation Process

From Nida and Taber explanation it can be concluded that translation has process, a translator must have knowledge about the elements of two languages Such as, grammatical and semantic structure, process of translation

is done for finding the equivalence meaning from source language (SL) to target language (TL)

Larson described about the process or steps of translation in her book entitled Meaning-Based translation; and here is the overview of the translation task:

Figure 1.2 Larson’s Translation Process

Based on the diagram, it can be found that there are three major steps in the process of translation Firstly, a translator needs to discover the meaning

of the message in the source language (there is a text to be translated) After the translator gets the meaning, the process of determining the meaning that related to the communicated is needed Finally, a translator needs to re-explain or re-express the meaning (the message) in target language using the translation equivalent

1.4 Naturalness and unnaturalness in translation

Nida and Taber (1969) consider a translation a good one when it does not show to be translation Venuti explain the same concept by the term

‘invisibility’ However, followers of fidelity theory, such as Gutt (1991), reject both scholars Beekman and Callow (1983) have offered another criterion for assigning the naturalness of translation Their definition is based

on the term ‘ease’ They say there is correlation between ease of understanding the meaning of a text and the level of naturalness, which it has

In his preface to Tianyanlun, Yan Fu (1853 – 1921), a Chinese scholar

famous for introducing Western thoughts into China during the late 19th century, explained the three problems in achieving an ideal translation: the

“faithfulness to the original text (xin), communication of the ideas (da), and literary elegance (ya)” (Wright, 2001, p 4)

Both Benjamin and Yan Fu, though belonging to two different cultures, agree that the translator should have the ability to not only thoroughly understand the source language text and convey the same understanding in the target language but also make his “re-creation” sound natural and pure enough to be accepted by readers of the target language However, for some reasons, the translator may fail to fulfill his tasks and the outcome turns out to

be a rough combination of words

In his article “Principles of Correspondence”, Eugene Nida discusses translation from the perspective of equivalence, formal and dynamic While formal equivalence means the closest possible match of form and content between source-text and target-text, dynamic equivalence stands for the

closest natural equivalent to the source-language message, thus the equivalence of effect on reader of target-text

Another key to a truly natural translation for Nida is “what it avoids than what it actually states” If the translator avoids severe anomalies, then the reader feels at home with the context

Another factor that enhances the naturalness of translation, for Nida, is the level of experience and the capacity for decoding on the target audience’s part In that aspect, although this idea somewhat bears resemblance to Schleiermacher’s view of an educated reader, it’s obvious that the reason behind it is not of romantic purposes like creating an “ideal” reader platform but of appropriateness of the message, such as the texts intended for audience’s belonging to scientific world or the ones for more general audiences This brings us to the conclusion that the level of appropriateness may vary in accordance with not only the prospective readers’ capacity and ability of decoding but also their potential interest

- Newmark (1988) asserts that the process of translation operates in four levels Source text level: the source text itself and its immediate impression on the translator

- Referential level: the level of content of the text (technically the level of the conceptual representation)

- Cohesive level: the leve where you aim at making a cohesive target text (and analyze the cohesion of the source text)

- Level of naturalness: the level of constructing a natural target text in an

appropriate language.

Level of naturalness is target text oriented, focusing exclusively on the construction of the target text Random, unpredictable things that just seem unnatural in the target language makes things more complicated as naturalness often depends on the situation, such that something might seem natural in one context but unnatural in another Perhaps, the only way, to ensure naturalness is to read through your translation and spot unnaturally sounding parts and change them into something that sounds more natural This is something that most people skip when they do translations

Naturalness can be described as “a set of requirements for the target language used” (Shei, 2002) which makes the translation read naturally and fit the context Unnatural translation does not gravely spoil the general meaning

of the text; nonetheless, to some extent, it distorts the writer’s intention, disappoints readers for not meeting that set of requirements

In short, unnaturalness in translation can be understood as the failure to recreate a text “according to the writer's intention, the reader's expectation, and the appropriate norms of the target language”, making the translation imperfect and not literarily elegant (Newmark, 1988) This may be considered

a definition of translation unnaturalness, on which the following detailed analysis is based to judge the translations taken out from different sources

CHAPTER 2 UNNATURAL MISTAKES IN ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE

TRANSLATION

To translate well and accurately, a translator must understand clearly and intensively the Source language and Target language and the cultural characteristics of both languages before deciding the suitable way to translate the Target language However, sometimes translators may commit some errors, which make the work inaccurate or unnatural compared to the original

Unnaturalness can be analyzed from the linguistic angle with aspects of word,

phrase and sentences Besides, unnaturalness term could be also criticized for

using strange cultural background, which is foreign to target language readers

(Vietnamese) From the above factors, we can systematize unnatural English

-Vietnamese translations on two grounds, the linguistic and the cultural

2.1 Linguistic aspects

2.1.1 At word level

2.1.1.1 Loss of connotative meaning

When you look up a word in the dictionary, you will find its literal (denotative) meaning However, the emotions and associations connected to a word are known as connotative meaning

Understanding a word's literal (denotative) and suggestive (connotative) meanings is important for every writer Depending on the context, the connotation of a word can change the meaning of a sentence considerably

To understand better this concept, see the following table of denotation and connotation of meanings of some words with the same denotation

Vietnamese meaning

1 Limp To walk Slowly and difficultly Khập khiễng

3 Amble To walk Slowly in a relaxed way Đi nước kiệu

4 Wander To walk Slowly around a fixed

purpose or destination Thơ thẩn

6 Shuffle To walk Slowly without lifting

7 Sneak To walk Quietly and secretly Lén lút

8 Pace To walk Walk with regular steps Bước

9 Toddle To walk Shortly and unsteadily Chập chững

10 Swagger To walk Proudly and confidently Ngênh ngang

Table 2.1 Words with same denotation but different connotations

It is much simpler for translators to remember denotative meanings than complicated connotative ones As a result, in a rush situation without full researching, especially for students in an exam, when approaching a strange English word, inexperienced translators might immediately find the equivalent words that they have known so far without considering whether they are suitable with the context or not Thus, the inappropriate equivalence could affect writer’s intention or style badly

2.1.1.2 Inappropriate word choice

The choice of word, just as its name implies, is the choice and use of word, which is the first t o be affected in translation No matter in English or

in Vietnamese, polysemy is quite common to see Moreover, English and Vietnamese languages have great differences in cultural backgrounds, words may have opposite connotation, and social customs varies according to many aspects Translators must think about the meaning carefully, and find the corresponding expression in target language

Almost people instinctively have in mind a set of words they believe is

of proper use in certain situations However, in some circumstances, some inexperienced translators, especially students, when translating foreign language into mother tongue language may fail to realize the importance of finding the proper words that could confuse readers and change the intention and style of writer

This phenomenon is frequently seen in students’ translations The following table shows some examples of inappropriate word choices in third-year students’ translations:

Equivalent suggested translation

and helped bind

individual states

together (p.96)

bang của Mỹ lại với nhau

2 Americans are

bombarded with

television

commercials,

newspaper ads, direct

mail and sale calls

(p.79)

Người dân Mỹ bị ném

bom với những quảng

cáo trên Tivi, báo trí, trực tiếp qua thư từ và qua điện thoại

Những quảng cáo hàng hóa trên vô tuyến, trên báo trí, trực tiếp qua thư từ

và qua điện thoại cứ

liên tục đập vào tai

vào mắt người tiêu

dùng Mỹ

3 Otherwise, there are

few people and there

is little movement

(p.26)

Trái lại, có rất ít người ở

đây và ít chuyển động

Trái lại, nơi đất có

rất ít người qua lại

Table 2.2: Translations with vocabulary errors

In the example 1, obviously, “shape” and “bind” mean “hình thành” and

“ràng buộc” However, those translations are not suitable in the text on the term of Economy Similarly, in the example 2, “ném bom” seems to be more suitable to the War or Fight topic than the Marketing one In this sentence, the writer implies the frequency of advertisements; however, the student misunderstands his/her intention and uses the literal meaning For the last example, when talking about “few people and little movement”, its implication is “it người qua lại.” in Vietnamese

The following table is another example about word choice I gave 120 students a sentence: “The US economy also maintains a very high level of

output” (p.90) Among different translations of “output”, there are 6 popular

ones

Translations Năng

suất

Hiệu suất

Sản xuất

Sản lượng

Sản phẩm

Đầu

ra Other

Percentage

Table 2.3 : Different translations of “output”

As can be seen from the table, each student has their own definition of

“output” in a certain concept That indicates the confusing situation when choosing the proper word of almost students

2.1.1.3 Word-for-word translation

Most translators, even unskilled ones or translation learners, know that they should avoid the word-for-word translation Nevertheless, this is not a simple task especially when you are not very flexible in the use of words and parts of speech

Some sentences were given to students A part of them does not provide satisfactory translations

No English Vietnemese Equivalent suggested

translation

1

The man with the red

hat on his head is my

cousin

Người đàn ông với

chiếc mũ đỏ trên đầu

Table 2.4 Word-for-word translation errors

With the sentence:” The man with the red hat on his head is my cousin.”

35% of students keep the initial meaning of the word “with” – “với” without careful consideration about speech act The rest has relative similar results which are acceptable such as : “đội, mang ”

In the second example, because the translator does not change the part of speech, he/she should use the word “đến từ” instead of keeping “ở” (in) to avoid misunderstanding With a little change, the suggested one is much more Vietnamese

The purity of Vietnamese is fading because of unnatural translations such as ““Những chiếc lá trên một cành cây đang tỏ ra rung rinh trước những cơn gió” and “Đội tuyển bóng đá Việt Nam đã bị thua trước đội Mianma 30” (Dịch sai đang phá hỏng Tiếng Việt, Bùi Việt Bắc, 2005, p1)

2.1.1.4 Plural form

Another un-Vietnamese translation occurs when the translator encounters plural nouns in the English text English nouns are inflected for

grammatical number, meaning that if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural

In theory, Vietnamese quantifiers ( “các” and “những”… )are “used as plural noun markers to convey the notion of plurality” (Frank Trinh, 2002) However, using them automatically is unnatural to Vietnamese people

Students tend to be affected by the knowledge of their mother tongue when learning the target language Hence, due to differences in between English and Vietnamese noun plurality forms, it is easy for students to make mistakes when translating from English to Vietnamese

The following table shows some sentences:

1

Inhabitants of nearby Chinese

town are permitted to cross into

Vietnam for the day to shop

(p.30)

Người dân ở các thị xã Trung Quốc gần đó được phép vượt qua biên giới sang Việt Nam để mua bán trong ngày

2 Men use their eyebrows more

than women do (p.55)

Nam giới nhíu mày nhiều hơn nữ giới

3 It contains extracts of fish

cartilage (p.70)

Nó bao gồm chiết xuất từ sụn cá

Table 2.5: Plural errors

Somehow, a part of students are still inside the “prison” of the source language that they apply the principles of English plural form into