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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 BY: TRAN THI CAM TU SUPERVISOR: Assoc Prof Dr LE HUNG TIEN HANOI 2008 TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABBREVIATIONS Part A: INTRODUCTION Reasons for Choosing The Topic Aims of Study Scope of Study Research Method and Data Part B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I.1 Translation I.1.1 Definition of Translation I.1.2 Types of Translation a Technical Translation b Form-based and Meaning-based translation I.2 Translation Equivalence I.3 Translation Quality Assessment I.3.1 Definition of Translation Quality Assessment I.3.2 Aspects of Translation Quality Assessment I.3.3 Steps in Translation Quality Assessment I.4 Technical Language I.4.1 Terminology I.4.2 Information Technology Terms a Single terms b Compound terms 3 5 5 6 11 11 12 12 13 14 15 15 16 I.4.3 Application Software Terms I.4.4 Financial and Accounting terms I.5 Summary of Chapter's Findings Chapter II: SOURCE -TEXT ANALYSIS II.1 The author's Purpose II.2 Characteristic of the Readership II.3 The Topic II.4 Language Qualities of Source Text II.4.1 Features of SL Terms a Sub-technical terms b Highly technical terms Single terms Single terms as nouns, verbs and past participles 16 17 17 18 18 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 23 Single terms as acronyms Compound terms Compound terms as noun phrases Compound terms as verb phrases II.4.2 Application Messeges II.5 Summary of Chapter's Findings Chapter III: COMPARISON OF THE TRANSLATION WITH THE ORIGINAL III.1 The Translation of The Topic III.2 The Translation of Terms III.2.1 Sub-technical Terms III.2.2 Highly Technical Terms Single terms Single terms as nouns, verbs and past participles Single terms as acronyms Compound terms The translation of Noun phrases The translation of Verb phrases III.2.3 The Translation of Application Messeges III.3 The Evaluation of the Translation III.4 Sumary of Chapter's Findings Part C: CONCLUSION Issues addressed in the study Suggestions for further study REFERENCES APPENDIX Screenshot of Enterprise Complete Business Application Suite Screenshot of example form of US F&A Application Software Term Type Classification 25 25 26 28 29 29 32 33 34 34 35 35 36 38 38 39 40 41 42 44 45 45 46 DECLARATION I declare that this MA Thesis, entitled A Translation Quality Assessment of The Vietnamese Version of US Financial & Accounting Application, is entirely the result of my own work The thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or tertiary institution, and to the best of my knowledge, neither does it contain material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text Signature Tran Thi Cam Tu DEABSTRACT This study investigates translation quality assessment of the Vietnamese version of US Financial and Accounting application software translated by the pool of 20 translators coming from VNLocalize, a big localization company in Vietnam with its head office in Hanoi The introduction gives a rationale for the study and sets up aims, scope and methods of the study Chapter I present the study’s theoretical background It introduces the issues relevant to the 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 in other 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 the analysis will also deal with form of the SL text The main group of terms will be divided according to their meaning and the sub group of terms will be divided according to their form Chapter III compares the original text with the translation and explores how the translation has solved issues in the original text based on mostly the meaning and partly the 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 for further study ACKNOWLEGEMENTS On the completion of this thesis, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Le Hung Tien for transferring me his specialized knowledge in translation, his inspiring me the love in translation studies as well as his valuable suggestions, advice and correction during my writing up the thesis I also wish to express my sincere thanks to my friend, Van Thi Thanh Binh M.A and Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, post-graduate student for their insightful comments and suggestions I also take this opportunity to thank all my lecturers in the Post Graduate Department at College of Foreign Language, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for many of their interesting 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 from Oracle 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 for their support, encouragement and understanding and even my father's pushing, without which my thesis would not have been accomplished Hanoi, March, 2008 Tran Thi Cam Tu ABBREVIATIONS SL: Source Language TL: Target Language F& A: Finance and Accounting UI: User Interface IT: Information Technology N: Noun GL: General Ledger PART A: INTRODUCTION Translating US F&A terms in application software into Vietnamese is in big need at the moment as there are numerous IT companies who are implementing the localization of US F&A software for both public sector like the Ministry of Finance and private one covering many enterprises FPT, for example, a famous IT company with thousands of employees can only take responsibility for a small portion of the translation In addition, many of the terms here are used in the F&A world which is a very hot industry in Vietnam at the moment, with the mushrooming participation of many foreign and domestic banks, financial organizations etc However, it is quite a challenging task as the size of the translation is very big and the big volume of terminologies both in information technology and in finance and accounting also causes a lot of difficulties Another reason is that localization, which means the translation of software products, is quite a new industry in Vietnam with very few translation companies operating in the field This new industry also implies another difficulty for the translators, which is the fact that many terms are new to the target language In such cases, we need to invent terminology in the translation for complex business flows that are mostly a new concept To verify the huge scope and complexity of the translation project, I would like to have a brief introduction about what US financial and accounting software is Looking at the graph in Appendix 1, we can see financial and accounting software is one software among many other software that enterprises use such as Human Resource, Resource Planning, Purchasing etc to boost the process of their business activities by replacing the previous manual process with modern IT process now The form (screen) in Appendix will describe part of the automatic payment process we can use with the financial and accounting application software Before now, there have been researches about Translation Quality Assessment like the study by Julian House, Amos, Postgate, Newmark However, no researches about Translation Quality Assessment for Software Translation have been done, according to the 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 very challenging 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 US F&A accounting application software, finding out what are the language qualities of the source text with specialization in computing and F&A terminology, comparing the translation with the source text to decide how the translation have solved issues in the source text and an evaluation of the translation will be made REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC The first reason that makes me to propose for the research is that few researchers have done about translation quality assessment In addition, as mentioned in the introduction, no researches about Translation Quality Assessment for Software Translation has been done, 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, the researcher hopes to bring about clearer view on the nature of a technical text, which will result in better translation Secondly, the researcher hopes that this study will be of some help to language reviewers, especially the reviewers for application software translation, which is very challenging task because application software is a new industry in Vietnam and the application software translation is even a newer industry with a huge bulk of terminologies of different specialized fields Finally, I choose to write about Translation Criticism because I am now working as a language specialist for a global software translation organization with the main responsibility to translation review and give feedback to the translators about the errors they encounter Therefore, I especially enjoy the topic ... 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, ... made in the text Signature Tran Thi Cam Tu DEABSTRACT This study investigates translation quality assessment of the Vietnamese version of US Financial and Accounting application software translated... Translation Equivalence I.3 Translation Quality Assessment I.3.1 Definition of Translation Quality Assessment I.3.2 Aspects of Translation Quality Assessment I.3.3 Steps in Translation Quality Assessment