A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONALVERSIONS OF TRINH CONG SON’SSONGS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC ANDSYNTACTIC FEATURES

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF DANANG LƯƠNG VĂN NHÂN A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONAL VERSIONS OF TRINH CONG SON’S SONGS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC FEATURES Subject Area : THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Code : 60.22.15 M.A THESIS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Supervisor: TRƯƠNG BẠCH LÊ, Ph.D Danang, 2011 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the present thesis “A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONAL VERSIONS OF TRINH CONG SON’S SONGS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC FEATURES” is my own work This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree in any other institution Da Nang, 2011 Lương Văn Nhân ABSTRACT Trinh Cong Son has been the close and friendly name to many people Sometimes, he is the CONFIDANT to share the feelings of sadness and happiness by singing his marvelous songs whose lyrics are weaved by brilliant but simple and meaningful words which take a lot of time to understand some phrases and sentences in more than 500 songs of this talent musician His music is so strange! Sweet floating sadness! It insinuates the human heart to make a cool and sparkling lake with holy melodies Has it got the “SONISM” when people are drunk with his thinking? + “Cuộc đời có mà hững hờ.” (Mưa hồng) + “Vì tơi sống? Vì Đất nước cần trái tim.” (Mỗi ngày chọn niềm vui) More than 70 of his songs have been translated into many languages, such as: English, French, Japanese, etc because translators love Son’s songs very much and want to share and introduce those songs to friends around the world However, according to Professor Buu Y, a famous translator and a close friend of Trinh Cong Son, right before translating Son’s songs, translators surrender Translating is only for the sake of love for his music Many English translational versions of Vân Mai, Trần Duy Tính, Như Quỳnh, and Khương Duy, etc or some foreigners, such as: Richard Fuller, Patrick Gallagher, John C Schafer and Jason Gibbs, etc try to convey Son’s ideas in his songs Those English translational versions only help us understand the general meaning but are too difficult to sing like Vietnamese versions Translating Trinh Cong Son’s songs is an attractive trend Besides that, there has not been any certain research on this problem in the light of linguistics My research, by standing on the point of view in Translation strategies of Newmark, Baker and Catford to study the semantic and syntactic features of 14 songs taken from Trịnh Công Sơn – The collection of everlasting songs Music press 1997 (Trịnh Công Sơn – Tuyển tập ca không năm tháng Nxb Âm Nhạc 1997) The research also puts forward some suggesting English translational versions to set the implications after studying those songs TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF CHARTS ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.5 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1.1 What is translation? 2.1.2 What is equivalence? 1 3 3 6 2.1.3 Types of equivalence 10 2.1.4 What is literary translation? 16 2.1.5 Vietnam - English translation 17 2.2 TRANSLATION PROCEDURES/STRATEGIES AND METHODS 19 2.2.1 Translation procedures 19 2.2.2 Translation methods 25 2.2.3 Translation of songs 2.3 TRINH CONG SON’S BIOGRAPHY 2.3.1 Writings about Trinh Cong Son and his music 27 28 29 2.3.2 Translations of Trinh Cong Son’s songs CHAPTER 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURES 3.1 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 30 32 32 3.1.1 Aims 32 3.1.2 Objectives 32 3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 3.3 METHODS OF RESEARCH 3.4 DATA COLLECTION AND DESCRIPTION 3.5 RESEARCH PROCEDURES 33 33 34 34 3.6 SUMMARY CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 SEMANTIC FEATURES 4.1.1 Translation by using omission 35 36 36 36 4.1.1.1 Full omission 36 4.1.1.2 Partial omission 41 4.1.2 Translation by using a more neutral/less expressive word 45 4.1.3 Translation by using a more general word 50 4.1.4 Translation by using expansion 53 4.1.5 Translation by using co-hyponym 56 4.1.6 Translation by paraphrase using unrelated word 57 4.1.7 Translation by using meronymy 4.2 FREQUENCY OF SEMANTIC TRANSLATION STRATEGIES 59 59 4.3 SYNTACTIC FEATURES 61 4.3.1 Structural-shifts 62 4.3.2 Intra-system shifts 69 4.3.3 Class-shifts 72 4.4 FREQUENCY OF SYNTACTIC TRANSLATION STRATEGIES 83 4.5 SUMMARY 84 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS 5.1 SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS 5.2 IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSLATION 5.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 5.4 SAMPLE OF SUGGESTED TRANSLATIONS & SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 5.4.1 Suggested translations of songs 86 86 88 91 91 91 5.4.2 Suggestions for further study REFERENCES 94 95 CORPORA 100 QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI APPENDIX LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Adj Adjective AP Adjective phrase Adv Adverb AdvP Adverb phrase Conj Conjunction Link Linking N Noun NP Noun phrase Pro Pronoun Prep Preposition Prep.P Prepositional phrase QW Question word SL Source language ST Source text TL Target language TT Target text V Verb VP Verb phrase LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: The tokens and percentage of semantic strategies 60 Table 4.2: The tokens and percentage of syntactic strategies 83 LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4.1: The percentage of semantic strategies 61 Chart 4.2: The percentage of syntactic strategies 84 * Exclaimative  Clause * VP  Prep.P/ V-ing.P/ Clause/ N * NP  Adj.P/ Prep.P/ N * Adj.P  VP/ Prep.P * V  Adj/ Adv.P * Clause  VP/ NP + Intra-system shifts: * Vietnamese in singular  English in plural + Structural shifts: * VO  OV * N + Adj  Adj + N * QW + S + Aux + V  QW + Aux + S + Adj + V *V+SS+V * S + V + Adj  Adj + S + V * SVOO  OSVO * SVO  SOV * VOS  OSV *SVAdj  AdjSV * Adj + N + Det  Det + Adj + N 5.2 IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSLATION According to Peter Newmark, translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text The purpose of translation is that the audience in the TL feel and reacts in the same ways as the audience in SL does However, to translate a language into another language effectively and transfer the percific messages into the target is always a very difficult task Especially, translating literary works is one of the most complex fields of translation because the literary works consist of many aspects, not only the lyrics in songs, the words in poetry, etc but also the melody, the tone and rhymth Therefore, to translate them well requires translators to have suitable methods In translation theory, there are two different main approaches: authorcenterd and second reader-centerd in which the latter approach is more likely to create equivalent effect and is more favored by translators However, how the reader-centerd translation is in fact bring translators many big challenges because it relates to factors such as linguistic context, situational context and cultural context Dealing with semantic and syntactic features, it is unacceptable to render them words by words Translators need to pay careful attention to semantic factors such as: + The omission: in the example below, to maintain the sound beats like Vietnamese lyric, the translator omits the phrase “lắng nghe” and the word “nằm”: (2) Lắng nghe Ø sông nằm The river Ø kể tells (its tale) [line 10, Appendix 1] + The expansion: sometimes, the translator adds words to support the meaning: (45) kể (con sông nằm kể) Tell its tale (the river tells its tale) [line 10, Appendix 1] + Meronymy: Instead of using correct English equivalent, the translator chooses “you” to describe “vai” = “shoulders”; “chân em”= “your feet” (63) vai (mây hờn ngủ quên vai) You (angry clouds asleep on you)  [line 6, Appendix 11] , etc especially to decide which the original meaning of a word is and which is the transferred meanings created by the way of which methods Besides linguistic factors, translators also need to be aware of the influence of music theory in composing songs The impact of music theory on choosing the procedure is shown in the two following cases: + The procedure of choosing the word which has the same sound beat in the song + The procedure of choosing translation methods to convey the writer’s ideas to get along with the melody and sound beat of the song Prompted by the influence of linguistic aspects and music theory, the choice of the most suitable strategy in each case requires translators to have careful and profound thinking, especially the strategies of choosing word to have the same sound beat and choosing translation methods to get along with the melody and sound beat of the song but conveying full ideas of the writer Therefore, it is necessary for translators not only to grasp linguistic associations but also to supplement musicial experience Moreover, translators also need to consider carefully the culture aspect Translation literary works in general and translation musical translation in particular is not an easy task so it requires the translators to learn and research carefully with their best efforts to grasp the text in SL and produce a TL text that bears a close resemblance to the SL text Thanks to this thesis, both amateur and professional translators have a chance to enrich their skills of music translation Moreover, they may facilitate vocabulary learning as well as develop their English vocabulary Simultaneously, they can know how to choose words and phrases to go with musical melodies and sound beats which help them improve and develop a great love in music later 5.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY - Because of the lack of time and reference materials, the study only focused on singable translational versions of Trinh Cong Son’s songs - Among the kind of semantic features classified by Newmark and Baker, the thesis only concerntrates on researching the word-classes when translating words from Vietnamese into English - As for syntactic features, the thesis paid attention to the four types of translation shifts classified by Catford whose suggested strategies only focus on grammatical structure which prevents us from revealing the transfer of patterns of experience in translating clauses and sentences if this part of the study had been conducted from the perspective of the systemic-functional grammar 5.4 SOME SUGGESTED TRANSLATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 5.4.1 Suggested translations Doing this thesis through studying the semantic and syntactic features by standing on the pointof view of Peter Newmark and Catford, the writer would like to suggest two English translational versions of two Trinh Cong Son’s songs which are TINH XA and TA ON 5.4.2 Suggestions for further reseach Whatever efforts have been made in conducting the research, there is still room our study Some notions of these occurred to me in the course of doing this reseach However, due to the lack of time I cannot present them all - Further reseach should focus on many other songs in the treasure of Trinh Cong Son with more than 500 songs - Further research should focus on the evaluation the English translational versions - Further reseach shouls also focus on translating songs of other famous Vietnamese musicians - Further reseach shouls also focus on 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defined as a translation principle according to which a translator seeks to translate the meaning of the original in such a way that the TL wording will trigger the same impact on the TC audience... written by Trinh Cong Son 1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study deals with investigating the procedures used in translating the semantic features of lexicon and the syntactic features of phrases and sentences... distinguishable meanings That is “translating”, the process (to translate), the activity rather than the tangible object A translation” is the product of the process of translating (e.g the translated