In the modern life, English has become the most widely used language all over the world. It is considered as the medium of communication in many different fields such as science, technology, aviation, international sport, diplomacy, and so on. Therefore, English translations have played a prominent part in globalization, and international integration in recent years. Thanks to English translated versions, countries are able to have mutual understanding and a sense of global citizenship in this multilingual world. Moreover, English translation makes people understand each other more in the process of diplomatic relations and economic cooperation and other fields in todays era when countries tend to integrate for the whole development. As a result, English translation has gradually become an indispensable and pressing tool which set the path for the global success of individuals, organizations, and even businesses in the modern time when society is more developed and competition is relentless. Therefore, nowadays when Vietnam becomes one of the members of World Trade Organization, it is necessary for Vietnamese students of English to have expert translation skill in order to meet the demand of integration into the world economy and exchange of culture with other countries. Nowadays, social and cultural documents display many linguistic peculiarities, as well as social and cultural aspects of our lives and, thus, we can assert that cultural translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures. Translating these texts, however, is not an easy task, since it certainly poses many problems for the translator. One of the problems a translator can face arises from the fact that word choices. Some words or phrases denoting objects, facts, phenomena, etc, are so deeply rooted in their source culture (SC) and so specific (and perhaps exclusive or unique) to the culture that produced them that they have no equivalent in the target culture (TC), because they are unknown, or because they are not yet codified in the target language (TL). Word choices in translating is an important thing so it requires translators while translating carefully.However, in reality, VietnameseEnglish translation skill is not easy for Vietnamese students to master, so learners cant avoid mistakes in their translating practice. Perhaps, because of some influence on the differences about cultures or their own limited language ability, etc, Vietnamese students of English in general still have mistakes on grammar, word choices and so on in translating, and special in translating cultural texts from Vietnamese into English. Students in K12 English Linguistics are no exception. They made a lot of mistakeserrors in choosing vocabulary when translating texts. For those reasons, I decided to choose the study “Common errors on word choices in translating cultural texts of the fourth year English linguistics students at Hung Vuong University” with the aim of identifying common Vietnamese–English translation errors made by these students and thereby, proposing suggestions to improve the current practice.
1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Nguyen Thi To Loan, M.A for her guidance and encouragement during my study I’m very grateful for being accepted as her student in this subject and I really appreciate all her help and suggestions on various drafts of this graduate paper Without her valuable advice and support, this research could not have been completed on schedule I would also like to express my full appreciation to all teachers at the Foreign Language Faculty of Hung Vuong University who helped me so much in my data collection Besides, I want to use this opportunity to express my deepest thanks to all 45 members of class K12 – English Linguistics for having cooperated in providing valuable information in the survey as well as doing the test If it hadn’t been for their help, I wouldn’t have finished my graduation paper with great success Additionally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my dear friends for their help and warm encouragement throughout my hard times carrying out the study Without them, I could not have overcome such times and concentrated on my study Finally, I am greatly indebted to my family, especially my loving parents for their continuous support during my study Their love and encouragement helped me overcome the difficult times during the study I could not have been able to complete this project without their intense devotion ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to investigate the common errors in word choice in Vietnamese – English cutural translation committed by fourth - year English majors, Department of Foreign Languages, Hung Vuong University and to propose some specific recommendations for students Together with the attempt to fulfill the graduation paper, the following processes were made: Firstly, the researcher gave theoretical background about translation, translation methods, errors, and some common errors committed by Vietnamese translation when translating from Vietnamese into English Secondly, the researcher presented the methodology of the study together with giving a test and implementing a survey by delivering the questionnaire to students of class K12 – English Linguistics After that, the researcher carried out the interview to lecturers of Department of Foreign languages in Hung Vuong University Having collected the data from the test results, survey questionnaire and the interview found that students make various lexical errors in Vietnamese – English translation Some common lexical errors of students when translating and the causes of the errors were also identified Based on the result of the interview, the researcher gives some recommendations for English major students as well as lecturers of English to improve students’ translation skills and help them get better translation performance, especially in cutural translations LIST OF TABLES PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale .1 1.2 Previous researches 1.2.1 In the world 1.2.2 In Vietnam 1.2.3 Gaps of previous researches 1.3 Research purposes 1.4 Research questions .5 1.5 Settings of the research 1.6 Significanceoftheresearch 1.7 Scope of the research 1.8 Design of the research PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An overview on translation 1.1.1 Definition of Translation 1.1.2 Translation strategies 1.1.3 Factors affecting translation process .19 1.1.4 Translation methods 23 1.2 Translation errors 25 1.2.1 Errors .25 1.2.2 Translation errors 25 1.2.3 Classification of translation errors 26 1.2.4 Common errors in translation 29 1.3 An overview on cultural texts 34 1.3.1 The definition of culture 34 1.3.2 The definition and features of culture texts 36 1.3.3 The relation between translation and culture 39 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY .42 2.1 Participants 42 2.2 Methods of the study 42 2.2.1 Qualitative research methods 42 2.2.2 The quantitative method 42 2.3 2.3.1 Data collection instruments .42 Test 42 2.3.2 Questionnaires 43 2.3.3 Interview 44 2.4 Research procedure 44 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 46 3.1 The results from test 46 3.1.1 Error 1: Word collocation 47 3.1.2 Error 2: Misuse of preposition 47 3.1.3 Error 3: Misuse of synonyms .48 3.1.4 Error 4: Misuse of part of speech 49 3.1.5 Error 5: Name of organization 49 3.2 The results from questionnaires .50 3.2.1 The students’ attitude towards translation and word choice in translating culture texts 50 3.2.2 The students’ difficulties and common errors in translating Vietnamese- English texts 52 3.2.4 3.3 Suggestions to improve the students’ translation 56 The result from interview 57 3.3.1 The result from question 58 3.3.2 The result from question 58 3.3.3 The result from question 58 3.3.4 The result from question 59 3.4 Discussions 60 3.4.1 Common errors in word choice made by 4th year students 60 3.4.2 The causes of errors made by the students 60 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING STUDENTS’ TRANSLATION PERFORMANCE 62 4.1 Build up vocabulary – improve background knowledge 62 4.1.1 Using Word Cards 62 4.1.3 Create vocabulary notebook – enhance vocabulary 65 4.2 More translation practice 66 PART III: CONCLUSION 68 Summary 68 Suggestions .68 Implications 70 Limitations of the study 70 Suggestions for the further study 70 REFERENCES 72 LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 2.1: Errors and codes of errors 43 Table 2.2: Contents of the questionnaires 44 Table 3.1: The errors in the students’ translation test 46 Table 3.1: The students’ attitude towards translation and word choice in translating culture texts .50 Table 3.2: Difficulties in types of translation texts 52 Table 3.3: Topics of cultural translation texts that the students easily commit error 53 Chart 3.1:Student’common errors in word choice in translating cutural texts from Vietnamese into English 54 Chart 3.2: The causes for errors in word choice by students .55 Table 3.4: Suggestions to improve the students’ translation .56 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS N0 Codes Name of codes E1 Error of word collocation E2 Error of preposition E3 Error of synonyms E4 Error of parts of speech E5 Name of organization SC Source culture SL source language SLC ST source text 10 TC target culture 11 TL target language source language culture PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale In the modern life, English has become the most widely used language all over the world It is considered as the medium of communication in many different fields such as science, technology, aviation, international sport, diplomacy, and so on Therefore, English translations have played a prominent part in globalization, and international integration in recent years Thanks to English translated versions, countries are able to have mutual understanding and a sense of global citizenship in this multilingual world Moreover, English translation makes people understand each other more in the process of diplomatic relations and economic cooperation and other fields in today's era when countries tend to integrate for the whole development As a result, English translation has gradually become an indispensable and pressing tool which set the path for the global success of individuals, organizations, and even businesses in the modern time when society is more developed and competition is relentless Therefore, nowadays when Vietnam becomes one of the members of World Trade Organization, it is necessary for Vietnamese students of English to have expert translation skill in order to meet the demand of integration into the world economy and exchange of culture with other countries Nowadays, social and cultural documents display many linguistic peculiarities, as well as social and cultural aspects of our lives and, thus, we can assert that cultural translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures Translating these texts, however, is not an easy task, since it certainly poses many problems for the translator One of the problems a translator can face arises from the fact that word choices Some words or phrases denoting objects, facts, phenomena, etc, are so deeply rooted in their source culture (SC) and so specific (and perhaps exclusive or unique) to the culture that produced them that they have no equivalent in the target culture (TC), because they are unknown, or because they are not yet codified in the target language (TL) Word choices in translating is an important thing so it requires translators while translating carefully.However, in reality, Vietnamese-English translation skill is not easy for Vietnamese students to master, so learners can't avoid mistakes in their translating practice Perhaps, because of some influence on the differences about cultures or their own limited language ability, etc, Vietnamese students of English in general still have mistakes on grammar, word choices and so on in translating, and special in translating cultural texts from Vietnamese into English Students in K12 English Linguistics are no exception They made a lot of mistakes/errors in choosing vocabulary when translating texts For those reasons, I decided to choose the study “Common errors on word choices in translating cultural texts of the fourth year English linguistics students at Hung Vuong University” with the aim of identifying common Vietnamese–English translation errors made by these students and thereby, proposing suggestions to improve the current practice 1.2 Previous researches 1.2.1 In the world Translation is a complex process where fragile balance is achieved between the equivalence of the text translated and the linguistic means chosen In reality, translation from one language into another language is a complex work In the translation processing, translators may make mistakes so there are many researchers studying on these problems They can be seen in the following studies: Mossop, B (1989) in his study about “Objective and cultural norm of translation” describes translation errors as “a given rendering will be deemed to be no translation if it fails to conform to the concept of translation predominant in the target culture” He identifies translation errors in terms of cultural norm and formal equivalence It means that the definition of translation error by Mossop includes the achievement of formal equivalence but excludes other critical factors such as smoothness, readability, and consistency in translational product A more thorough notion of error is proposed by Pym A (1992) in the studyabout “Translation and text transfer: An Essay on the principles of intercultural communication” This scholar supposes that translation errors may be attributed to lack of comprehension, misuse of time, inappropriateness to readership, language, pragmatics, culture, over-translation, under-translation, discursive or semantic inadequacy Krzysztof, H (1992), in his resarch about “Translation: A Cognitive Communicative Approach” divides translation errors into four main types: errors of syntagmatic surface translation, errors of mistaken interpretation, realization errors and meta-translation errors The first type includes equivalents, false friends, calques and unjustified borrowings The second type covers misreading syntagms and wrong interpretation of verb frame, misinterpret scenes and scripts and misreading the text modality The third type covers TL errors, wrong evaluation of recipients’ knowledge and insufficient of knowledge of subjectmatter The final type comprises translation technique, additions, omissions, two versions, too many or too few footnotes, a wrong translation strategy, corrections and changing the text’s intertextuality Nevertheless, this approach is complicated and troublesome for researchers to figure out translations errors of professional translators in general and undergraduates in particular Wang Baorong (2009) in his research about “Translating publicity texts in the light of the skopos theory: Problems and suggestions” arrives at a mutual conclusion that translation errors should be classified into three main types including pragmatic translation errors, cultural translation errors and linguistic translation errors Pragmatic translation errors are caused by practical issues such as a lack of receiver orientation and background knowledge Cultural translation errors are related to equivalent problems and methods to deal with cultural words Linguistic errors occur due to the lack of the proficiency of the translator 1.2.2 In Vietnam Duong T.T.H and Nguyen T.C.X (2010) intheir studies about “The study Common mistakes in learning translation subject by the second-year English majors at Dong Thap University” found out that Vietnamese students of English in general still have mistakes on grammar, word choices and so on in translating Vietnamese texts into English The study also revealed that lack of vocabulary causes many problems in translation process, frequently; students could not choose the right word in the context or use the right term Nguyen T.T.H andTrieu T.H (2015) intheir studies about “Vietnamese – English Translation Errors Made by Second Year Translation - Major Students: An Initial Step towards Enhancing Translation Standards” pointed out that lexical choice posed the biggest challenges to students, and gave suggestions for improving students’ performance The study “Errors in the translation of topic-comment structures of Vietnamese into English” conducted by Pham (2005) aimed to investigate what kind of errors the students made in translating topic – comment structure The participants of the study were ninety-five students from English translation classes in their first, second, third, and fourth years of the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam The results showed that students made five types of errors including omission of subject, repetition of subject, inappropriate choice of subject, no logical connection between subject and predicate, and inappropriate connection between subject and passive verbs The omission of subject was the most frequent type of error among all types of errors relating to the sentence’s subject Huynh Thanh Thuy (2012) studied “An analysis of common errors on verb tenses and word choices in Vietnamese-English translation made by the secondyear English majors at Dong Thap University” aimed to find out the common errors on verb tense and word choice in Vietnamese – English translation made by the second-year English major students at Dong Thap University The participants of the study were the second-year students of English majors at the 58 Can you propose some suggestions to overcome this situation? 3.3.1 The result from question From the teacher's responses, it can be included that most of the students have positive attitude towards learning translation in class and know the importance of learning translation However, students haven't really focused on self-study at home to improve their professional skills, also passive in self-study 3.3.2 The result from question About word choices, the students use English words to transfers Vietnamese ideas incorrectly and inexactly They not read the whole text to understand the true meaning of the text and just transfer word by word a Vietnamese text into English Especially in using synonyms of words, words they used are not suitable with the context of the translation text, so it makes funnies sentences which are called English for the Vietnamese Choosing prepositions to use is also their language weaknesses 3.3.3 The result from question According to the results of the interview to teachers, the causes of errors were divided into three groups including objective causes, subjective causes, and other causes For the objective causes of translation errors, the teacher stated that the difference between English and Vietnamese They explained that English went by very strict rules while Vietnamese was much more flexible Besides, cultural differences were mentioned as reasons leading to students’ translation errors The teacher added that translation was not only a linguistic transformation of texts but also a rendering process of cultural concepts from one language to another They also said that Asian culture in general and Vietnamese culture, in particular, had few things in common with Western and American culture In addition to objective errors, students‟ errors might also result from subjective causes As mentioned during interviewing time, objective causes included students‟ insufficient linguistic competence in English and Vietnamese, as well as their insufficient cultural knowledge The results of interviews with teachers showed that students‟ insufficient linguistic knowledge 59 might be the vocabulary and grammatical structure knowledge Students‟ insufficient cultural background was considered as one of the causes leading to translation errors since students did not know much about English speaking countries’ cultures Teachers also mentioned that students even did not master Vietnamese culture well Besides subjective causes and objective errors, some other causes were also stated by teacher participants These causes were students’ inappropriate translation strategies, interference of Vietnamese, misunderstanding, students’ carelessness In terms of students’inappropriate choice of translation strategies, teachers asserted that students usually applied word for word translation strategy In this sense, students followed closely the form of the source language without paying attention to the form of the target language 3.3.4 The result from question Basing on the frequency of linguistic errors in translation test, the author interviewed the two teachers to get some suggestions The result of question about suggestions to overcome the above-mentioned errors is pointed out as following: Suggestions for students: - Fully attend the classes held by lecturer and actively involve in checking session with lecturer - Spend more time on studying cultural translation at home - Revise and memorize the knowledge teacher provided in class - Read more references, newspapers, magazines, etc.and listen to more news, knowledge about culture - Overcome the lack of motivation Suggestions for teachers: - Open short-term courses in order to enrich students’ language competence such as grammar, vocabulary and writing skill 60 - Strengthen courses, meetings, and workshops that focus on exploring cultural knowledge in both source language and target language - Provide students with useful dictionaries or materials related to culture - Give students opportunities for practicing translation, especially jobs related to cultural speciality during their study 3.4 Discussions Basing on data collected from the questionnaire, the interview questions and the test papers, there are some causes of problems in Vietnamese-English translation of the students found as follow: 3.4.1 Common errors in word choice made by 4th year students According to results of the research, the most of students usually made errors in word collocation, misuse of preposition These two errors accounted for the highest percentage of student' errors, which might infer that students' insufficient knowledge about word collocation could lead to errors in collocation Other reasons of the error type could also be the interference of Vietnamese, and students' translation strategies Misuse of synonym was also found in the study Some students depended largely on the meaning in the dictionary without paying attention to the context In fact, the pairs of synonyms share at least one sense in common but they not share all their senses To some extent, these synonyms can hardly substitute for each other, which students usually forget In addition, Misuse of part of speech, and name of organization are two basic errors that students make in translating documents 3.4.2 The causes of errors made by the students In brief, this chapter has so far presented and discussed the results of the study The results from the study indicated that the students made word choice errors included errors in word collocation, misuse of synonyms, misuse of preposition, misuse of part of speech, and name of organization 61 According to the results of the interview and questionnaire to teacher participants, there were three groups of the causes of the students’ errors They were objective causes, subjective errors, and other causes The objective causes were the difference between English and Vietnamese, and inadequate culture background The subjective causes were students’ insufficient linguistic competence in English and Vietnamese, and lack of cultural background knowledge The other causes of students’ errors were students’ inappropriate translation strategies, interference of Vietnamese, misunderstanding, and students’ carelessness Therefore, the next chapter comes recommendations for improving students’ translation performance to the 62 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING STUDENTS’ TRANSLATION PERFORMANCE The chapter provides some recommendations for improving student’s translation skills 4.1 Build up vocabulary – improve background knowledge 4.1.1 Using Word Cards The most effective of these strategies is learning from word cards Learning words from cards involves writing a word on one side of a small card (about 1” x 2”) and writing its first language translation on the other side The cards are kept in packs held together by a rubber band, and when the learner has a few free moments, he goes through the cards recalling the meanings This way of learning vocabulary is just one of the first steps in learning a word There are several reasons for this First, there is more to knowing a word than knowing its translation Second, learning a word is usually a cumulative process rather than a onetime event Finally, words not only have to be known, they have to be readily available for use However, learning the translation of a new word is a very good step towards knowing that word Research on vocabulary learning provides useful indications of how learning from vocabulary cards can be done most effectively (Nation 2001) Students should be taught to follow these instructions when using word cards: Write the word to be learned on one side of the card and its translation on the other side Each time you use the card, look at the new word and try to recall its meaning Since the word and its meaning are not written side by side, the meaning must be retrieved from memory Each retrieva l strengthens the connection between the form of the word and its meaning (Baddeley 1990) Seeing them both together does not this Initially start with small packs of cards—about 15 or 20 words Difficult items should be learned in small groups to allow more repetition and more thoughtful processing As the learning gets easier increase the size of the pack 63 More than 50 seems to be unmanageable simply for keeping the cards together and getting through them at one time Space the repetitions The best spacing is to go through the cards a few minutes after first looking at them, and then an hour or so later, and then the next day, and then a week later, and then a couple of weeks later This spacing is much more effective than massing the repetitions together into an hour of study The total time taken may be the same but the result is different Spaced repetition results in longer lasting learning For words which are difficult to learn, use depth of processing techniques like the key word technique Other helpful techniques are thinking of the word in language contexts and situational contexts, breaking the word into word parts, or using a simple picture The more associations you can make with an item, the better it will be remembered Make sure that words of similar spelling or of related meaning are not together in the same pack of cards This means days of the week should not be all learned at the same time The same applies to months of the year, numbers, opposites, words with similar meanings, and words with the same superordinate such as items of clothing, names of fruit, parts of the body, and things in the kitchen These items interfere with each other and make learning much more difficult (Nation 2000) Keep changing the order of the words in the pack This will avoid serial learning where the meaning of one word reminds you of the meaning of the next word in the pack Say the word aloud to yourself This helps the form to enter long term memory Also write collocates of the words on the card where this is helpful This particularly applies to verbs Some words are most usefully learned in a phrase 4.1.2 Studying Word Parts 64 Studying word parts is another way to build vocabulary and another way of linking the form of a word and its meaning Let’s say that the student wants to learn the word “collocate” First the student needs to find out what the word means by looking it up in the dictionary or asking someone Secondly, the learner needs to look at the word to see if it has any known parts In collocate the double “l” is a good clue to where word parts meet “Collacate” has three parts: com—loc—ate Com- means “together” or “with,” and loc means “place.” Thirdly, the student needs to restate the meaning of the word so that it contains the meaning of the word parts: “to collocate means to be placed together typically with another word.” This restatement of the meaning may sometimes be a bit clumsy, but its value is that it strongly connects the meaning of the word to its parts When the word is seen again, its meaning will be more readily recalled Note the following things about this technique: It is a way of remembering the meaning of words, not of guessing their meaning Using word parts to guess meaning has a low success rate To use the technique the students must know the most useful prefixes There are only about 20 very common ones that are needed to begin with Students must have some practice in recognizing them in words and must be able to look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary and restate it using the meaning of the prefix Teachers can help students gain this knowledge Because about 60% of the words of English come from French, Latin or Greek, many words have prefixes and suffixes This technique of using word parts can thus be used very often Unfortunately students’ dictionaries not give the etymology of words and thus high intermediate and advanced students may find it useful to have a dictionary that does this 65 4.1.3 Create vocabulary notebook – enhance vocabulary Reading is effective ways to get exposed to new words Write down the unfamiliar word encountered while reading in a notebook to retain the word in your memory better However, when you take note a word, you should analyze its: - The meaning(s) of the word - The written form of the word - The thesaurus of the word - The collocations of the word - The register of the word - The associations of the word - The frequency of the word For example: Resist (verb) /rɪˈzɪst/ Meaning: a to fight against something or someone that is attacking you eg: The soldiers resisted (the enemy attacks) for two days b to refuse to accept or be changed by something: eg: The party leader resisted demands for his resignation c to stop yourself from doing something that you want to do: eg: I can never resist temptation/chocolate/the urge to laugh Written form: Resist (verb) -> Resistance (noun) -> Resistant ( adj) Synonym and antonym Synonym Dwell Antonym Be Active Subsist Energize Abide Move Be Stand Inhere Lie Repose 66 Rest Be contained in Be expressed by Be found in Collocation: Resist (verb) ADV: fiercely, firmly, resolutely, strenuously, strongly, vigorously Successfully: They successfully resisted pressure from their competitors to increase prices Naturally: People naturally resist change Stubbornly/passively: The civil population passively resisted Physically/at first, initially, so far: He has so far resisted pressure to resign VERB + RESIST: be able/unable to, can/could (hardly), can't/couldn't (easily) She could hardly resist the urge to turn and run Trends in the national economy confront firms with pressures they cannot easily resist | can/could never, can/could no longer | be difficult to, be hard to, be impossible to | try to | manage to | be determined to | be helpless to, be powerless to She was powerless to resist the attraction that she felt to him | tend to PHRASES: the strength to resist sth Making clear a word help you avoid errors on word choice, find just the right word, and help English students expand their vocabulary 4.2 More translation practice Although Vietnamese-English translation is really not easy, the students are able to be good at this when they practice more Texts in some WebPages can be translated such as www.newstimes.com, www.tratu.vn, www.voanews.com, and www.english.us In addition, the students can watch the program “A path to translation” on VTV2 to learn more about translation 67 Furthermore, before translating a Vietnamese text into English, it is better for the students to apply steps below, which are extracted from the book “Translation 1&2” (NguyễnVănTuấn, 2006) Steps in a translation project Before translating a Vietnamese text into English, it is important for the students to have in mind the total translation project and what is involved in producing a good translation Step 1: Exegesis Exegesis is used to refer to the process of discovering the meaning of the sentences of a Vietnamese text which is to be translated into English The Vietnamese text must be fully understood Once the students comprehend the Vietnamese text, they can use proper language to translate the text into English Step 2: Transfer and initial draft After a careful analysis of the Vietnamese text, as indicated above, the students should begin drafting The transfer results in the initial draft In preparing this draft, the students are transferring the content of the text from Vietnamese into English Step 3: Evaluation The purpose of evaluation is to avoid spelling and grammar errors, which are caused by the student’s carelessness Step 4: Revise After evaluation is done carefully, the first draft will need to be revised In short, in this section, the researcher also proposed main solutions for students to help students overcome these difficulties and improve the quality of translations 68 PART III: CONCLUSION This chapter reaches a conclusion on the issues being sought It then focuses on implications, limitation, and some suggestions for the teachers and the students Finally, a few recommendations for further study are also discussed Summary The study focuses on researching common errors in word choice of the fourth-year English linguistics students in translating cultural documents from Vietnamese into English The research is conducted at Foreign Languages Department, Hung Vuong University With the help from two lecturers who are teaching translation at FLD and 40 students in K12 English Linguistics, three research instruments (test, questionnaire, and interview) were used to find out common errors in word choice in Vietnamese – English cultural translation In this study, the researcher presented literature review of translation, the importance of translation, translation methods, translation errors, common errors, cultural texts The researcher analyzed and summarized common errors in word choice as: word collocation, parts of speech, preposition, name of organizations, and synonyms Then, the data is collected and analyzed in details The result showed that how much the errors that students made On that ground, some proposals are suggested to deal with these errors.Limitations of the researchIn the light of main findings of the current study and concluded in the earlier part, some suggestions were especially offered to teachers and students to help improve translation teaching and learning at the University Suggestions In the light of main findings of the current study and concluded in the earlier part, some suggestions were especially offered to teachers and students to help improve translation teaching and learning at the University Suggestions for Teachers In the time to come, Vietnam will further integrate into the world economy and culture This progress requires translations of high quality, especially from 69 English to Vietnamese and vice versa Thus, more studies should be carried out to identify and how to cope with common mistakes in these translations Besides, studies on what can be called a pure Vietnamese language and how to maintain it through the processes of translation should be implemented These studies are supposed to bring readers an overview of the contemporary situation of Vietnamese translated works, its strengths and limitations, and how to improve it Digging into current publications to find common pitfalls that may harm the quality of translations is recommended Research should touch upon translation of all writing styles, be it literary, journalistic, or official In conclusion, I want to significantly contribute to the study of Vietnamese - English translations in universities and on the media through this graduation paper In my opinion, it can be considered a companion of all people who are seeking to improve their Vietnamese - English translation skills as well as the quality of their translations Hopefully, readers of this thesis can find it useful in their future work and study or at least see it as a reference worth looking at Suggestions for students In the light of main findings concluded earlier in this chapter, this part of the chapter offers some suggestions to help students improve their translation performance According to the results of the current study, students also made common errors in word choice in translation Therefore, to reduce the errors made by students in translation, it is suggested that regular reading is an effective way to help students enlarge vocabularies When the students read, they can see a lot of words being used in certain context As a result, they can know and memorize words In addition, students should try to frequently use and review their newly learned words in many ways as possible Moreover, students should make up as many associations and connection as possible When learning a new word, students should relate this word to the words that they have already learned Connecting the new word with its family words can help them easily remember and enlarge their vocabulary knowledge Furthermore, there are also some 70 recommendations to help students avoid misuse of synonyms They should carefully take the synonyms into consideration before using them It would be better for them to consider the differences of pairs of synonyms when translating Using collocation dictionary help you know exactly which word you can combine Implications From the findings of the study, some implications were initiated as follows: - Provide useful knowledge for all of English learners to get better understanding about translation in general and cultural texts in particular - Provide examples about errors in word choice when translating cultural texts from Vietnamese into English Suggest some solutions to overcome the difficults Limitations of the study After finishing the study, the author realized some limitations as following First of all, the scope of the study is quiet narrow Due to the author only focuses on 40 students in K12 English Linguistics The author has not expanded the research on more participants yet Therefore, the result of the study also does not embrace Department students’ general situation Secondly, the research just used one test in order to find out the linguistic errors Therefore, the result may reflect a part of the reality only Third, the research studied on common error in word choice in translating cultural texts from Vietnamese into English There are other errors in translating cultural texts which have not studied At last, the proposals are still on theory because the researcher has not done experimental research on students yet Consequently, the effectiveness of the proposals has not been assessed Suggestions for the further study The current study investigated common errors in Vietnamese-English cultural translation made by fourth-year English major students at Hung Vuong University There were 40 students from K12 English Linguistics class and 71 translation-teaching teachers participating in the study This part of the chapter offers some recommendations for further research in the field of study First, the interview with student participants should be applied to find out the causes of errors in translation made by students in the further research Consequently, the information will be more justified and reliable Next, the current study was only conducted at Hung Vuong University with the participants of 40 students from an English major class and teachers It is believed that if the sample size were larger, the results would be more remarkable Therefore, the further researches should be conducted in a larger amount of participants 72 REFERENCES Mai Thị Thu Thảo (2016), Nghiên Cứu Tìm Hiểu Những Khó Khăn Trong Lựa Chọn Từ Khi Dịch Văn Bản Chủ Đề Chính Trị Của Sinh Viên Năm Thứ Ba, Ngành Đai Học Ngôn Ngữ Anh, Khoa Ngoại Ngữ, Trường Đại Học Hùng Vương Nguyen Van Tuan (2006), Hue University, Hue, Translation 1&2 Nguyễn Hải Hà-Chu Thị Huyền Mi- Trần Thị Bích Ngọc (2015), Common Mistakes In Translation Practices By Students: A Case Study In Felte, Ulis, Vnu Nguyễn Thị Thu Hằng, Triệu Thu Hằng (2015), Vietnamese – English Translation Errors Made by Second Year Translation Major Students: An Initial Step towards Enhancing Translation Standards Mateusz SZAL (2014), Translating Cultural Elements in Specialised Texts Ana Fernández Guerra (2012), Translating culture: problems, strategies and 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year. .. for their future ideal job 1.7 Scope of the research The graduation paper focuses on finding out common errors on word choices in translating cultural texts from Vietnamese into English of the fourthyear... presents theoretical background of translation, translation strategies, factors affecting translation process, translation methods, translation errors, classification of translation errors, common errors