A TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF US FINANCIAL & ACCOUNTING APPLICATION SOFTWARE

thạc sỹ, luận văn, ngoại ngữ, tiếng anh, khóa luận, chuyên đề

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES _******** _

A TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF US FINANCIAL & ACCOUNTING APPLICATION SOFTWARE

(ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƯỢNG DỊCH THUẬT BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT CÁC

PHẦN MỀM ỨNG DỤNG VỀ TÀI CHÍNH-KẾ TOÁN MỸ)

M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics

SUPERVISOR: Assoc Prof Dr LE HUNG TIEN

HANOI 2008

Single terms as acronyms 25

Chapter III: COMPARISON OF THE TRANSLATION WITH

THE ORIGINAL

32

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

1 Screenshot of Enterprise Complete Business Application Suite

2 Screenshot of example form of US F&A Application Software

3 Term Type Classification

This study investigates translation quality assessment of the Vietnamese version of USFinancial and Accounting application software translated by the pool of 20 translatorscoming from VNLocalize, a big localization company in Vietnam with its head office inHanoi

The introduction gives a rationale for the study and sets up aims, scope and methods ofthe study

Chapter I present the study’s theoretical background It introduces the issues relevant tothe study including translation, translation equivalence, translation quality assessment,technical language and terminology

Chapter II analyzes the source language text with focus on the pragmatic accuracy, or inother word the accuracy of meaning in context, of the US F& A application software.The emphasis of the analysis will be on terminology meaning accuracy Part of theanalysis will also deal with form of the SL text The main group of terms will be dividedaccording to their meaning and the sub group of terms will be divided according to theirform

Chapter III compares the original text with the translation and explores how thetranslation has solved issues in the original text based on mostly the meaning and partlythe form aspects of the original text and then evaluation of the translation will be stated.The conclusion summarizes the issues addressed in the study and gives suggestions forfurther study

I also take this opportunity to thank all my lecturers in the Post Graduate Department atCollege of Foreign Language, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for many of theirinteresting lectures, which have surely contributed to the foundation of my thesis.

I owe my debt of gratitude to my big managers Bettina Richard and Jeewon Kim fromOracle Worldwide Product Translation Group (WPTG) who encouraged me to continue

my MA study after my accident by giving me favorable working condition

Finally, I would like to show my deep gratitude to my parents, my son and my sister fortheir support, encouragement and understanding and even my father's pushing, withoutwhich my thesis would not have been accomplished

Hanoi, March, 2008

Tran Thi Cam Tu

SL: Source Language

TL: Target Language

F& A: Finance and Accounting

UI: User Interface

IT: Information Technology

N: Noun

GL: General Ledger

To verify the huge scope and complexity of the translation project, I would like to have abrief introduction about what US financial and accounting software is Looking at thegraph in Appendix 1, we can see financial and accounting software is one softwareamong many other software that enterprises use such as Human Resource, ResourcePlanning, Purchasing etc to boost the process of their business activities by replacing theprevious manual process with modern IT process now The form (screen) in Appendix 2will describe part of the automatic payment process we can use with the financial andaccounting application software.

Before now, there have been researches about Translation Quality Assessment like thestudy by Julian House, Amos, Postgate, Newmark However, no researches about

Translation Quality Assessment for Software Translation have been done, according tothe researcher’s best knowledge from the finding in different sources like professional

translation web sites like translationjournal.com or other local sources Even, it is very

difficult to find document about language quality of software language, which is a verychallenging domain covering a huge number of terminologies in different industries like

IT, finance and accounting

The general approach of the study is to research translation quality assessment for USF&A accounting application software, finding out what are the language qualities of thesource text with specialization in computing and F&A terminology, comparing thetranslation with the source text to decide how the translation have solved issues in thesource text and an evaluation of the translation will be made

1 REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC

The first reason that makes me to propose for the research is that few researchers havedone about translation quality assessment In addition, as mentioned in the introduction,

no researches about Translation Quality Assessment for Software Translation has beendone, according to the researcher’s knowledge from the finding in different sources like

professional translation web sites like translationjournal.com or other local sources.

With investigation on qualities employed in the source text of US F&A application, theresearcher hopes to bring about clearer view on the nature of a technical text, which willresult in better translation

Secondly, the researcher hopes that this study will be of some help to languagereviewers, especially the reviewers for application software translation, which is verychallenging task because application software is a new industry in Vietnam and theapplication software translation is even a newer industry with a huge bulk ofterminologies of different specialized fields

Finally, I choose to write about Translation Criticism because I am now working as alanguage specialist for a global software translation organization with the main

responsibility to do translation review and give feedback to the translators about theerrors they encounter Therefore, I especially enjoy the topic.

2 AIMS OF STUDY

The study covers the following aims:

a To discover what language qualities the SL text of US F&A application software has

based on the language qualities of a technical language text

b To assess the translation quality of the translated version of US F&A application

software, in terms of the aspects discovered from theories raised by different scholarsincluding Julian House; Peter Newmark; Baker, M., yet he translation quality

assessment will be mainly based on the theory of Newmark in A Textbook of

Translation (1988).

c To provide a translation quality assessment tool, especially in technical translation, fortranslation teachers and students, technical translation editors/reviewers in general andsoftware translation editors/reviewers in particular

3 SCOPE OF STUDY

The object of the study is Translation Quality Assessment of the US F&A application

software conducted mainly based on the approach proposed by Newmark in A Textbook

of Translation (1988) Yet, due to the limited time and length of the thesis, the

researcher only focuses on three steps: (1) the source text analysis, emphasizing on itslanguage quality, which has the characteristic of technical language; (2) comparing thetranslation with the original based on the qualities found in step (1); and (3) theevaluation of the translation Therefore, this should be treated as a pilot research project

If time and the scope allow, a longer and more detailed research would be conducted,viewing the SL text and the translation comparison from more different languagepeculiars

Other focus of the study is technical language, software language and terminologycovering finance, accounting and IT terms

Research questions:

a What are the qualities of SL text in US F&A application software?

b What are the main problems in translation and how have the translators dealt with

them?

c What should be included in the evaluation of the translation?

4 RESEARCH METHOD AND DATA

A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods is used in this study Thequalitative research is used to analyze the characteristics of the source text and how thetranslation has solved the issues in SL text The analysis of the source text will be based

on the theoretical backgrounds on translation concepts, translation equivalence, technicallanguage, terminology and most important of all is translation quality assessment

following Newmark's approach (1988) on Translation Criticism in A Textbook of

Translation Quantitative method is used to count percentage of appearance of each

group of terminology, percentage of translation errors compared to the correcttranslation

The data for the study will be taken from 15 forms (screens) of the F& A applicationsoftware and their corresponding forms in the translation

From this viewpoint, we can see that translation quality assessment touches a lot ofareas, the nature of a good translation, the nature of relationship between a source textand the translation text, which in other words can be called translation equivalence and

of cause the central issue would be translation quality assessment

To understand the theoretical background for these issues in translation qualityassessment, the researcher would introduce literature review of translation, translationequivalence, and translation quality assessment, and technical language Especially, due

to the fact that there is a huge volume of terms in the SL text, then a part of theoreticalbackground is to deal with terminology

I.1.1 Definition of translation

In Stolze's view, a 'good' translation can only come about when the translator identifieshim/herself fully with the text to be translated

In Approaches to Translation, Newmark (1982, p7) states "Translation is a craft

consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language

by the same message and/or statement in another language".

Followings are the definitions presented in What is translation and how does it work? retrieved from http://www.geocities.com/alberth_kendari/what_is_translation.htm:

According to Bell, R.T (1991, p5), "Translation is the expression in another language (orTL) of what has been expressed in another, SL, preserving semantic and stylisticequivalence'

Translation is the procedure which leads from a written SL text to an optimally

equivalent TL text, and which requires the syntactic, semantic, stylistic and text pragmatic comprehension by the translator of the original text

(Wilss, 1982)

Translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one language by a

representation of another equivalent in a second language

(Hartman & Stock, 1972)

Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural

equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in

terms of style (Nida & Taber, 1974)

It is observed that the above definitions by different scholars in different times includethe two significant factors: the qualities of the original text covering meaning, style,syntactic and pragmatic issues and the equivalence in the translation

I.1.2 Types of Translation

This part will introduce three types of translation; namely technical translation,meaning-based and form-based translation; which are closely related to the translation of

SL text presented in this thesis

a Technical translation

Newmark (1991, p151) as cited in Yen, V T T (2007), in an attempt to distinguish

technical translation from institutional translation, claims that technical translation is

one part of specialized translation, potentially non-cultural, therefore, universal.

According to Sofer (1991, cited in Thuy, V.T.T 2003), the translation of a text may be

called technical when it requires specialized terms in a particular field.

Newmark (1995, p152) suggests that there are three varieties or levels of technical

language: (a) academic style associated with academic papers, (2) professional style

which refers to formal terms used by experts and (3) the popular one including familiar alternative terms.

According to Thuy, V T T (2005), a significant problem in technical translation is thedistinction between technical and descriptive terms The original SL writer may use adescriptive term for a technical object for three reasons (1) the object is new and has notgot a name; (2) the descriptive term is being used as a familiar alternative, to avoidrepetition; (3) the descriptive term is being used to make a contrast with another one.According to Newmark, where a SL technical term has no known TL equivalent, adescriptive term should be used

b Form-based and Meaning-based translation

Treatments of the two text properties, form and meaning, is the main distinction betweenthe two main types of translations: the form-based and the meaning-based ones (Larson,

1984, cited by Binh, V.T.T.)

Form-based translations, known as literal translations, attempt to follow the form of thesource language text Meaning-based translations, or idiomatic translations, make everyeffort to communicate to text receivers the meaning of the source language text in thenatural forms of the target language (Larson, 1984)

In practice, translation is a mixture of a literal transfer of the grammatical units a longwith some idiomatic translation of the meaning of the text.

Larson gives more details of these two types of translation in the following part:

Translation is basically a change of form When we speak the form of a language, we arereferring to the actual words, phrases, clauses, sentences or paragraphs, which arespoken or written

Translation consists of transferring the meaning of the source language into the receptorlanguage This is done by going from the form of the first language to the form of asecond language by way of semantic structure It is the meaning which is beingtransferred and must be held constant, only the form changes Translation, then, consists

of studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation and culturalcontext of the source language text, analyzing it in order to determine its meaning, andthen reconstructing this same meaning using the lexicon and grammatical structurewhich are appropriate in the receptor language and its cultural context

With regard to meaning, Larson states that most words have more than one meaning.There will be a primary meaning – the one which usually comes to mind when the word

is said in isolation and secondary meanings – the additional meanings which a word has

in context with other words

I.2 Translation Equivalence

From the definitions of translations by different scholars, it is clear that equivalence isthe central issue in translation studies

Andrew Chesterman, in "Readings in Translation Theories" (p100), describes that there are "various categories of equivalence that have been proposed in the literature of

translation theory: content equivalence (often also: content invariance), stylistic

equivalence, formal equivalence, functional equivalence, textural equivalence, communicative equivalence, pragmatic equivalence".

From the view point of Juliane House (1977, p25), meaning equivalence is the most

essential in translation: "The essence of translation lies in the preservation of 'meaning'

across two different languages"

"SL and TL texts or items are translation equivalents when they are interchangeable in agiven situation", (Catfort, 1965, p49)

Newmark (1995, p48) states that "The overriding purpose of any translation should be

to achieve 'equivalent effect', i.e to produce the same effect (or one as close as possible)

on the readership of the translation as was obtained on the readership of the original" In

this statement, Newmark emphasizes the importance of functional equivalence as "theoverriding purpose of any translation"

Koller cited in Readings in Translation Theory (Chesterman, A., 1989) views

equivalence in term of the maintenance of the SL and TT quality According to him

(1979), the equivalence requirement of a translation to its origin is as follows: " Quality

(qualities) X in the source language text must be preserved." The qualities can be

understood as the different characteristics the source text has, which must be preserved

in the translation text These characteristics may include the style, meaning, readershipand purpose of the text

According to Baker, equivalence at word level covers a number of factors relatingnumber, gender, and part of speech She claims that different grammatical structures inthe SL and TL may cause remarkable changes in the way the information or message iscarried across (noun phrase in SL can be translated as verb phrase in TT)

In much more elaborate view point, Kade (1968) and other writers on lexicalequivalence, in particular the area of terminology, classify translation equivalence asfollows:

1 One-to-one: There is a single expression in the TL for a single expression in the SL.

2 One-to-many: There is more than one expression in the TL for a single SL one

3 Many-to-one: There is more than one expression in the SL, but there is only a singleexpression in the TL that is equivalent to them

4 Whole-to-part/Part-to-whole: A TL expression is only equivalent to part of theconcept designated by a single expression in the SL, or the equivalent in the TL has abroader meaning than the concept in the SL

5 One-to-zero: There is no expression in the TL for a single expression in the SL

Koller (1979) stated the following five types of equivalence referring to the lexicalmeaning equivalence: (1) Denotative equivalence: the SL and TL words refer to thesame thing in the real world, (2) Connotative equivalence: this type of equivalenceprovides additional values besides denotative value and is achieved by the translator'schoice of synonymous words or expressions, (3) Text-normative equivalence: the SLand the TL words are used in the same or similar context in their respective languages,(4) Pragmatic equivalence: With readership orientation, the SL and TL words have thesame effect on their respective readers, and (5) Formal equivalence: This aims toproduce an "analogy of form" in the translation by exploiting the formal possibilities ofthe TL or even by creating new forms if necessary

Baker, M (1992) views the concept of equivalence differently by discussing the notion

of non-equivalence at word level and above word level, grammatical equivalence,textual equivalence and pragmatic equivalence

 Non-equivalence at word level means that the target language has no directequivalent for a word which occurs in the source text Common problems of non-equivalence then involve such cases as culture-specific concepts, the SL concept

is not lexicalized in the target language, the SL word is semantically complex,

the SL and TL make different distinctions in meaning, the TL lacks a ordinate, the TL lacks a specific term, differences in physical or interpersonalperspective, differences in expressive meaning, difference in form, difference infrequency and purpose of using specific forms, the use of loan words in thesource text.

super- Non-equivalence above word level is closely related to the differences in thecollocational patterning of the SL and TL, which creates potential pitfalls andcan pose various problems in translation

 Grammatical equivalence is more concerned with the differences in thegrammatical structures of the SL and TL, which often result in some change inthe information content of the message during the process of translation Thischange may take the form of adding to the target text information which is notexpressed in the source text This can happen when the TL has a grammaticalcategory which SL lacks Likewise, the change in the information content of themessage may be in the form of omitting information specified in the source text

If the TL lacks a grammatical category which exists in the SL, the informationexpressed by that category may have to be ignored

 Textual equivalence is achieved through the realization of cohesion, or cohesivedevices such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesionfrom the source text into the target text

 Pragmatic equivalence is realized by means of studying and translatingcoherence and implicature from the SL to the TL

Larson, M.L (1984) points out "there will be concepts in the source text which are

known (shared) in the receptor language, but which will be translated by a non-literal equivalent, second there will be concepts in the source language which are unknown in the receptor language" In both cases, new terms must be invented for the translation.

To clarify further, the author states "even though most of the concepts which occurs in a

particular text are also found in the receptor language, they are expressed in different ways There is an extensive core of meaning components which are shared between languages However, total matching can not be assumed".

The notion of non-equivalence is very significant to this thesis as it will present differenterror categories, many of which are linked to non-equivalence issue

I.3 Translation Quality Assessment

I.3.1 Definition of Translation Quality Assessment

Translation quality assessment is named as translation criticism by Newmark In his

book, A Textbook of Translation (p184), "Translation criticism is an essential link

between translation theory and its practice."

Friederich (1963, p350) says that "quality in translation rests largely on the translator's

precise understanding of whatever it is that the original writer wants to convey".

Friederich's view emphasizes the meaning accuracy in guaranteeing quality intranslation

Another scholar, Savory, with his famous translation principles, also emphasizes the role

of accurate reflection of source text in translation in the following statement "A

translation must give the words of the original/ A translation must give the ideas of the original".

It is noticed that understanding the original text qualities is the key significance intranslation quality assessment

I.3.2 Aspects of Translation Quality Assessment

Newmark, P., in A Textbook of Translation (1988, p184), states that "you can assess the

translation by its standard of referential and pragmatic accuracy."

According to House, J (p.21), "It is imperative to develop an objective method of

determining the particular semantic, stylistic, functional, pragmatic qualities of source text, and then try to determine whether and to what extent the translation matches these characteristics".

I.3.3 Steps in Translation Quality Assessment

House, J states that translation quality assessment has two steps including analysis ofsource text in term of semantic, stylistic, functional and pragmatic qualities andcomparing it to the translation text

According to Koller, there are 3 main stages in translation quality assessment including

(1) Source text criticism, (2) Translation comparison and (3) Evaluation of translation.Newmark (1988, p.184) gives more detailed steps, stating that any comprehensivecriticism of a translation has to cover five topics: (1) a brief analysis of the SL text stress

on its intention and its functional aspects; (2) the translator's interpretation of the SLtext's purpose, his translation method and the translation's likely readership; (3) aselective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with the original; (4)

an evaluation of the translation; (5) where appropriate, an assessment of likely place ofthe translation in the target language culture or discipline

It is recognized that translation quality assessment includes the three key stepsincluding: (1) analysis of the SL text; (2) translation comparison and (3) evaluation ofthe translation, which has been called by Julian House as "statement of quality"

In more detailed description of translation quality assessment, Newmark (1988) statesthat in the source text language analysis, the language quality is assessed and comparingthe translation with the original is to find out the reference and pragmatic accuracy of thetranslation And in order to make the equivalent comparison, it is important that thetranslation is compared to the criteria found in the SL text For this reason, the referenceand pragmatic aspects will be analyzed in the SL text Reference and pragmatics refer to

the meaning in specific kinds of speech situations (Introducing English Semantics,

Kreidler, C.L.; 2001, p.18)

In the following chapters, translation quality assessment will be conducted based on theabove theory by Peter Newmark The source text analysis will find out the typicalpragmatic features, or in other words the source text's meaning in specific context, withfocus on terminology SL form will be a sub-factor to be presented in the analysisbecause there are issues in the translation as well In the later stage, these peculiars will

be compared to the translation

The SL text of US F&A accounting application is technical language; therefore, in thefollowing part of the literature review, the researcher would like to present the quality oftechnical language

I.4 Technical Language

US F&A application software covers the technical language in two domains includinginformation technology, financial and accounting Therefore, the following part willdescribe technical language in general and then information technology and financingand accounting terminology will be detailed afterwards

Technical language is any language that laypeople are not exposed to on a regular basis.This includes legal, medical, taxation, financial language, etc It refers to both technicalterminology and technical documents, thereby including vocabulary, grammar, sentencestructure, and document organization Technical language can be found in legislation,contracts, policy, consent forms, and even in newspaper articles(Understanding Technical Language:A Literature Review, Retrieved fromhttp://www.aalec.ca/uploads/Understanding%20Technical%20Language.pdf)

Aslo described in the above link, linguistic factors of technical language encompassbarriers such as technical terminology, jargon, passive sentences, lengthy sentences, etc.Together, these factors make it very difficult for the general public to access technicallanguage.

According to Newmark, P (1988, p16), "in a non literary text, the denotations of a word

normally come before its connotation"

Newmark (1988, p151) presents technical style as "jazzed up and popularized, it is

usually free from emotive language, connotations, sound effects and originally metaphor"

Newmark (1988, p.152) says “the best approach to an opaquely technical text is to

underline what to be its key terms" Obviously from this definition, terminology will be

most important feature in technical text Therefore, the researcher would like to presentliterature review for terminology with focus on information technology, financial andaccounting terminology

I.4.1 Terminology

Terminology in technical text is said to primarily distinguish it from other languagestyles

Giap, N T (1999, p207-278) states "Terminology is a special part of language It

contains fixed words or phrases, which are exact names of concepts and objects in human specialized fields".

According to Wikipedia, "Terminology is the study of terms and their use — of words

and compound words that are used in specific contexts", (Retrieved on Feb 20, 2008,

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology) From this definition, we find that

terminology focus on words, not phrases, clauses or sentences

Further description is found in Wikipedia: Terminology also denotes a more formal

discipline which systematically studies the labeling or designating of concepts particular

to one or more subject fields or domains of human activity, through research andanalysis of terms in context, for the purpose of documenting and promoting correctusage" It is clearer that terminology is not the description of words in general but thewords that labeling concepts in certain subject fields

Kennedy, C & Bothitho, R (1984), cited in Thuy, V T T, discuss that terms can behighly technical or sub-technical Highly technical terms account for an intrinsic part ofthe learning of the discipline itself Meanwhile, sub-technical terms are words which arenot specific to a subject speciality but occur regularly in scientific and technical texts,

such as view, cancel, accumulate etc It is the case of sub-technical terms that is related

to neologisms "defined as newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that

acquire new sense" "Accumulate", for example, is defined in non-technical dictionary as

"chồng chất, chất đống", but its specialist meaning is "tích lũy" such as "accumulated

encumbrance" is translated as "dự chi tích lũy".

I.4.2 Information technology terms

According to the observation made by Thuy, V T T (2005), information technologyterms have two categories: single and compound terms

a Single terms

Single terms are made of one word, a verb or a noun, and involve a number ofneologisms which can be new coinages or acronyms There are a lot of single terms in

computer text, such as commands in menu or button like hide, cancel, delete, file, filter,

view, back, go, preferences, format, refresh, submit etc They are mostly in form of

nouns and verbs The above examples are mostly verbs, which appear more common

More illustrations of noun single terms are tool, font, folder, directory.

b Compound terms

Larson (1984, p.182) defines that "Words combine to form compounds in many

languages A compound is a new word which is created by stringing together simple words, which are constituent parts".

A compound term, according to Collin Cobuild (1990) is a fixed expression which ismade up of more than one word (N + N or Adj + Noun)

Many terms in IT text are noun phrases Most of them have one thing in common: thelast word in the chain says what the thing is, while the preceding word or group of wordsdescribes the thing, which is termed "classifier" This order is opposite in Vietnamese

E.g: Journal entries will be translated into Vietnamese as Nh ập bút toán

In other cases, the preceding adjectives, which may be in present participle or past

participle form, modifies a noun to create compound terms such as posted journal (bút

toán đã kết sổ), beginning balance (số dư đầu kỳ), closed period (kỳ đã đóng) etc.

I.4.3 Application Software Terminology

From Oracle News Brief titled Fusion Applications Development News Brief, the

following definition is given: A term is any text used in the UI (User Interface) such asfield name, button label, check box, a heading, etc that:

 Consists of one or more words (such as, "Account", "Start Date")

 Represents a concept in a particular knowledge domain or a concept that isreused throughout the application suite (such as "Save", "Description", "BusinessUnit")

According to Wikipedia: The user interface (or Human Machine Interface) is the

aggregate of means by which people—the users—interact with the system - a particular

machine, device, computer program or other complex tools The user interface providesmeans of: (1) Input, allowing the users to manipulate a system, and (2) Output, allowingthe system to produce the effects of the users' manipulation

The reason why I quote the above definitions from Oracle News Brief is that thisresearch deals a lot with terminologies in IT and finance & accounting which appear inuser interface To have a clearer idea about IT and financial & accounting, the followingparts will deal with such

I.4.4 Financial and Accounting terms

Based on the definition of Giap, N T, financial and accounting terms can be defined asfixed words or phrases naming exact concepts or objects in finance and accounting

I.5 Summary of the Chapter’s Finding

This chapter has presented most typical theoretical issues laying the foundation for thetranslation quality assessment of US F&A application software in the later part of thethesis

With regard to technical translation, it is specialized and requires specialized terms in aparticular field Therefore, the key part in analyzing a technical SL text will deal withterminology This is divided into two major groups including highly technical and subtechnical terms and sub groups including single and compound terms In order to deliverquality in translation, it is important that the qualities in SL text, with focus on meaningaccuracy, must be preserved in the translation

Translation quality assessment basically includes the three key steps including: (1)analysis of the SL text; (2) translation comparison and (3) evaluation of the translation,which has been called by Julian House as "statement of quality"

CHAPTER II SOURCE-TEXT ANALYSIS

Newmark, P describes that “In your analysis of the SL text, you may include a statement

of the author's purpose that is the attitude he takes towards the topic; characterization

of the readership; an indication of its category and type You assess the quality of language to determine the translator's degree of licence, assuming for example that he can reduce cliché to natural language in informative but not in authoritative texts You briefly state the topic or themes, but do not precise the text and do not 'plot-monger'".

Based on the theory of Newmark, P., this chapter will include statement of the author'spurpose, characterization of the readership, the topic, ST language quality which willinvestigate the linguistic properties of the source text in US F&A application software interm of meaning and form The decision to analyze the source text in term of meaningand form is that the researcher observes that certain group of forms and meanings aretranslated well, with low number of errors or even free from errors, while the othergroups usually cause difficulties for the translators leading them to translation errors

The focus of the analysis will be on meaning because "form is secondary to content"

(Nida)

II.1 The author's purpose

The author's purpose in US F&A application software is to be instructive, like manyother IT application software, which includes a series of commands, instructions,notifications and messages for users

II.2 Characteristic of the readership

Readership are the end-users who use F& A application software in their day to dayoperations at work They are normally finance and accounting professionals located in

local and central areas including Ministry of Finance staff These users have knowledge

of information technology

The readers' purpose is to understand all the correct commands in Vietnamese that thesoftware instructs, so that they can perform certain functions of the software exactly

II.3 The topic

The topic of the source language is decided by the key words appearing in each form.Accoring to Midred L.Larson (1984, p.177), key words are words which are used overand over in the text and are crucial to the theme or topic under discussion A text mayhave several key words The translator must identify the key words and as much aspossible use a single receptor language lexical item on each occurrence of the keyword."

Each form from the survey has its own topic, most of the topics are represented by the

form names including Apply Prepayment (Áp thanh toán trước), Apply Holds (Áp treo),

Payment General (Tổng quan về Thanh toán), View Invoice Payment (Thanh toán Hóa đơn), Matching Payables (Đối chiếu Các khoản phải trả), Matching Shipment (Đối chiếu Lô hàng), Work Order (Thứ tự Công việc), Encumbrance (Dự chi), Balances (Các số dư), Funds (Quỹ), Fixed Assets (Tài sản Cố định) There are few exceptional

forms, like FNDSRUN which is a kind of coded name that the software writers assigned

to it From the content which includes " Format", "Layout", "Style", "Template" and "Output files"

as key terms, therefore the main topic is "file layout".

II.4 Language Qualities of Source Text

According to the presentation in literature review, technical style is "jazzed up and

popularized, it is usually free from emotive language, connotations, sound effects and originally metaphor", (Peter Newmark (1988, p151) Therefore, the author proposes that

"the best approach to an opaquely technical text is to underline what to be its key terms"

As terminology will be most important feature in technical text, the first part of sourcetext analysis will be investigating what types of terminologies there are in US F&Aapplication software, what kind of meanings they have, whether primary or secondarymeaning and then they will be divided into sub groups according to their forms as single

or compound terms

II.4.1 Features of SL terms

According to An, L H (2003:74), there are various views about terminology Somelinguistics consider terminology as the general and highly specific technical terms anddevided them into groups including: general terms, general technical terms and specifictechnical terms Some linguistics consider terminology only as the specific technical

terms Achmanova states "Terminology contain specific words of a production industry

or a scientific field" (1966:474).

Baker (1998) puts that "Terms differ from words in that they are endowed with a

special form of reference, namely that they refer to discrete conceptual entities, properties, activities or relations which constitute the knowledge space of a particular subject field".

Giap, N.T (1998) and Lang, L.V (1977) present that since terminology is not allowed tocarry the speaker's attitude, figurative sense, compliment or criticism, it should possessthe following quantities: accurateness, systematicism, internationalism, popularity andnationality

Based on the surveyed results, the researcher finds that there are two kinds ofterminology, namely sub technical terms and highly technical terms like what An, L H.(2003) has pointed out

The other finding is that the number of noun terminology accounts for a high percentage

of the total terms According to statistic features of Steinfeld, Yosselson and Markow(1976) as cited by An, L.H (2003), the number of noun terminology has a highoccurrence proportion of 44 percent There are several causes leading to that fact:

 The objects and phenomena in the world are various and human always wish tounderstand and describe them

 The objects and phenomena in the world are complicated; therefore there are rarecases where they are described in one word.

In the analysis of the source text, the researcher will divide the terms first according totheir meaning aspects covering sub technical terms and highly technical terms And ineach of these two groups, there are sub groups of terms divided according to their forms

a Sub Technical Terms

Sub-technical terms are words which are not specific to a subject speciality but occurregularly in scientific and technical texts This type of terms may appear in differentcomponents of the F&A application software

This group of terms can be viewed easily from different modules of the software Theyhave meanings that are not highly technical, which can be easily understood by non-professional people And according to meaning-based translation (Larson) presented inthe theoretical background, these sub technical terms normally have primary sense – theone which usually comes to mind when the word is said in isolation

The below table will present these sub technical terms.

From the above examples, we can see that the sub-technical terms are mostly singleterms and mostly are nouns, some of them derive from verbs Two of examples shown in

the above table derive from verbs including payment (thanh toán) and approval (phê

duyệt).

Other examples from surveyed result falling in this category are supplier (nhà cung

cấp), correction (điều chỉnh), approver (người phê duyệt), requester (người yêu cầu)

According to the researcher's survey, sub technical terms as singular nouns have veryhigh rate of appearance Of the total 46 terms of this category, 37 terms are nouns,accounting for over 80% (See appendix no.3)

Compared to nouns the number of sub technical terms as verb in singular form is muchsmaller, over 19% - over 80% respectively Following are examples of these terms:

clear (xóa), cancel (hủy), find (tìm), help (trợ giúp), preview (xem trước), copy (sao chép).

In addition, the researcher observes that a number of these 9 verbs are repeated twice or

even more like "cancel" ( repeated 4 times) and "help" (repeated twice).

b Highly Technical Terms

Highly technical terminology is the specialized vocabulary of a field These terms have

specific definitions within the field, which is not necessarily the same as their meaning

in common use" (Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_terminology on

April 10)

Clearer detailed analysis is given below in en.Wikipedia.org:

Technical terminology exists in a continuum of formality Precise technical terms andtheir definitions are formally recognized, documented, and taught by educators in the

field Technical terminology evolves due to the need for experts in a field tocommunicate with precision.

In US F&A application software, highly technical terms occure quite frequently It isobserved that highly technical terms normally do not have primary meaning butsecondary meaning, which is not the meaning in common use Their meanings have highprecision in the field

The following examples will show those terms which have different meaning in technical contexts

sub-Example 1

"Cost" means "Nguyên giá" in Asset Management, which is one component of the US

F&A application software This term has the sub-technical meaning, which is more

common, as "Chi phí".

"Chargeback" has the highly finance specialised meaning as "Công nợ tính lại", while

"charge" has normal meaning as "Phí" or "Tính phí".

Different from sub technical terms, which are mainly single terms, highly technicalterms fall in two categories including single terms and compound terms

 Single Terms

Single Terms as Nouns, Verbs and Past Participles

There are single terms acting as highly technical terms They loose their primary senseand their secondary senses remain In addition, they have different meanings in various

component of the application software "Release”, for example, is a term with multiple meanings It is commonly known as "Xuất", "Thả" Technically, it is translated as “Giải

phóng” when appearing in “Release Hold” (Giải phóng treo), “Hợp đồng thực hiện”

when it appears in Purchasing component with the definition as "An actual order of

goods or services you issue against a blanket purchase order"

Similarly, “Invoice” can have both meanings in Vietnamese as “Hóa đơn” in most of the components with its definition as "A document that you create in Oracle Receivables

that lists amounts owed for the purchases of goods or services This document also lists any tax and freight charges" and “Yêu cầu thanh toán” when it appears in Public Sector

Budgeting component when it is defined as "A summarized list of charges, including

payment terms, invoice item information, and other information that is sent to a customer for payment".

Although, the number of nouns as single terms in this highly technical group is smallerthan in in sub technical group, they have the same rule of occurrence, which takes up thehighest percentage compared with other members of the same group Of the total 39terms in this category, 16 are nouns, accounting for 41%

Examples:

It is a significant phenomenon that highly technical terms have multiple meanings asshown in most cases in the above table In addition, the problem that causes more