is background theories which focuses on definitions, methods, procedures of translation in general and technical translation in particular

ABSTRACT This paper reports the problems that need to be addressed in the process of translating industrial machinery names into the import contract and gives some suggestions for solving the problem Participants in the study are employees of the Sales Department of Lac Hong Joint Stock Company who must directly translate the import contract Ten of the company's 2011 to 2014 contracts were used for research data Then, the researcher uses a qualitative descriptive method to analyze the data The four main problems raised in the paper include: difficulty in adding information, difficulty in removing words, difficulty in choosing words and difficulties when translators lack technical knowledge 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to all people who gave me the possibility to complete this research I want to thank the English Faculty – Thuong Mai University for giving me permission to commences this thesis in the first instance and to the necessary research work I am deeply indebted to my supervisor Mrs Nguyen Thuy Linh whose reference materials, support, stimulating suggestions and encouragements helped me in all stages of this research for and writing of this research All the member from Lac Hong Joint Stock Company where I conducted the research supported me a great deal and I want to thank them for all their support, cooperation and valuable suggestions I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my friends who looked closely at the final version of the thesis foe English style and grammar, correcting both and offering suggestions for improvement Finally, I can not fully express my gratitude to all the people whose direct and indirect support helped me complete my research in time Hanoi April 18 , 2018 Student Tran Thanh Binh 2 TABLE OF CONTENT 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS JSC Joint Stock Company ESP English for Special Purpose EST English for Science and Technology EBE English for Business and Economics ESS English for Social Studies No Number Co.,Ltd Company limited TL Target Language SL Source Language V Verb O Object CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1: Rationale Currently, Vietnam’s economy has strongly integrated into global, there is a large number of policies which is carrying out to develop Vietnam’s economy Globalization is promoting a large number of companies to expand their business beyond their nation and become the international companies A study by JPMorgan Chase found that 61 percent of medium-market companies are activating in international markets in 2013, compared with 58 percent in 2012 and 43 percent in 2011 respectively The reality that employees and companies dealing with customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners who are on abroad are becoming more and more popular The question is how to deal with customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners who not share the same language with you In this case, knowing international languages becomes very important and necessary Nowadays in the world, English is being used extensively and is considered as the common language in all global transactions Proficient use of English skills has become an effective tool for gaining good opportunities in the workplace as well as in trade negotiations It is an essential factor that helps business get opportunities in the new market and seek for partners or customers However, language is an extremely abstract and vast field Every industry, every field uses its own words that no one can know all For this reason, translators appear as intermediaries to help solve problems in how the parties who not share the same language understand each other Interpretation as well as interpreters play a very important role in the development of the world economy as well as exchanges and cooperation among countries By playing such an important role, the translator needs to possess a high level of understanding in the language and above all acquire complex translation skills However there are many fields of translation and maybe the most difficult is technical translation It has been estimated that technical translation accounts for some 90% of the world’s total translation output each year This is unsurprising given the importance attached to the availability of technical information in a variety of languages, motivated partly by the increasingly international focus of many companies Coupled with increasing international co-operation in scientific, technological and industrial activity, it is clear to see why technical translation is one of the most significant employers of translators In contrast, translators sometimes find it difficult in translating these terms especially machine names Translating machine names is quite difficult, it requires translators to translate specialized terms exactly Meanwhile, the terms are very difficult because there are many loan words which are originated from Latin Unfortunately, the translation of the machine is indispensable term in any contract of machine transactions With employees who work in companies with foreign transactions in general and companies in the field of machinery in particular, contact and contract translation are unavoidable As a result, the study of machine translation in the contract was selected with the hope that nontechnical people would find it easier to understand and translate these terms 1.2: Previous study: Only a few researchers writing in the field of technical translation deal specifically with the texts attached to heavy industrial machine The majority of the available study describes the main features of translation generally and the technical type of translation when they get more specific on specialized types of translations Hence, the researchers believe that the area selected for this research is part of an immature type of dealing with the translation There is a notable obstacle that translators encounter in providing an equivalence to recent technical terms coined in English To illustrate, various studies have shed light on the ineffectiveness of specialized dictionaries use, and the futility of commonly recommended strategies On the problems of translating specialized terms from English, Homaidan (2004) in his study on “Problems in translating some specialized computer terms” which was conducted by qualitative method identifies many translational problems resulting from polysemy and synonymy and leading to ambiguity, misunderstanding, confusion as well as mistranslation Accordingly, Homaidan advocates the use of loan words from the source language, in-text paraphrasing or explanation in a glossary besides coinage of new target text terms as strategies to be adopted in troublesome cases In a traditional view of translation process, for example, in Vinay and Darbelnet's ‘A methodology for translation’ (1995), a number of strategies for text transfer are introduced to account for translation procedures However, their view is problematic and not in line with my stance for two reasons First of all, in Vinay and Darbelnet’s view, only a 'drafting' phase is assumed to represent a whole translation process, and neither a start-up nor a revision stage is considered The second reason is that their categories are only concerned with transferring procedures from the source language to the target language; no influence from the target text is taken into account The translation methods in their list are, in fact, ordered hierarchically, starting at the top with 'borrowing', which may be described as the most literal translation (or ‘direct’ in their definition), and ending at the bottom with 'adaptation', free or ‘oblique’ translation However, this ordering does not explain that the translators’ strategy switches according to the change of transfer phase from drafting to the revision stage In this regard, the scope covered in this present study is a wider range of the transfer process In the study named “A study of the translation process through translators' interim products”, Masaru Yamada from Kansai University has revealed the fact that the process of translation is not monolithic nor in harmony with the Interpretive model where the translator de-verbalizes the text and re-expresses it all at once by means of re-verbalization Rather, in conformity with the Monitor model, the production process proceeds segment by segment, guided by the source language syntactic order For this reason, renditions that are produced during the drafting phase seem, overall, closer to literal translation And then, the production stage is shifted to the revision phase, the translator’s focus is placed more on beyond-sentence level or discourse As a result of textual manipulation in this phase, the product becomes ‘free’ translation (free from the source text constraints) Although the behavioral patters may vary depending on the text type or genre of the source text (i.e literary text might require for translators more time to scan the text during pre-drafting phase), a certain extent of generalization can be made out of this study result Also thanks to screen recording technology, recording this entire dynamics in change of process is made possible With that, we are able to capture all of the detailed translating activities However, one question that remains untouched, however, is the reasons for these behaviors He has suggested that further investigation needs be conducted for full explanation on the cause of behaviors It is also interesting to see how development of technology shapes translators’ behavior Because in recent years, it is becoming very common to make use of computer-aided translation and translation memory system in the actual practice, the effect of those tools on the translation process is also another area of study that needs to be addressed What are factors which influence the translation? Mohamed Ali Elsiddig Ibrahim and Ahmed Mohammed Abdulrahman Mansor concluse in their research “Factors influencing the quality of translation” that : “The quality of translation depends on a number of factors, some of which, may be beyond the researcher’s control” The study also identifies the factors which affect on translation’s quality, showing the kind of these factors, introducing factors in details The quality of translation is influenced mainly by three factors: the competence, the autobiography and what called the material circumstances of the translator, that is the position the translator holds For these purpose, research questions are posed That study of the Investigating factors influencing the quality of translation, shedding light on the nature of these factors, as well as the nature of evaluating these the influencing of the factor They have said that “Translator must have knowledge of the language and the culture of the people under study and fluency in the language”, too In research “Technical translation challenges” of Kugai K B from Kiev National University of Technology and Design, he divided the difficulties in translation into two groups: internal difficulties and external difficulties The internal difficulties are problems like the issues of recognition outlined above, they come from within the translation studies community itself Such problems relate to the way in which translation study has evolved over the decades and the way in which this evolution has not always concerned itself with technical translation Internal problems also arise from the ways in which researchers in this area and in translation study as a whole produce definitions and models as a way of going about their work A second category of challenges comes from outside both translation study and translation practice Such external challenges relate to factors, circumstances and constraints which arise in the world in which technical translation takes place but which are not of technical translation itself They might include various professional and technical challenges posed by changing work practices, technologies and legal issues which govern the environment in which technical translations are produced There may even be input from other disciplines such as technical communication and psychology which further our understanding of technical translation while at the same time challenge our conceptions of what translators Now let us try to examine various challenges, both internal and external, and make an attempt to outline their implications for technical translation Imankulova Radha Nuriddinovna in his research “The problems of technical translation” divided the problems into three groups: problems in the translation process of technical terms, problems with the source text and language problems About problems in the translation process, there are some particular problems: problems of ambiguity, lack of knowledge of technical terms Another problem is the grammar because there are several constructions of grammar poorly understood, in the sense that it isn't clear how they should be represented, or what rules should be used to describe them The words that are really hard to translate are frequently the small, common words, whose precise meaning depends heavily on context Besides, some words are untranslatable when one wishes to remain in the same grammatical category The second group is the problems with the source text such as text is difficult to read or illegible text, text is spelled incorrectly or printed incorrectly Final difficulty is related on neologisms, unsolved acronyms and abbreviations and proper name of people, organizations, and places Pham Thanh Binh (2010) has written a particular interesting study analyzing equivalence at word level in English and the translations in Vietnamese After examines some typical English – Vietnamese conceptual and lexical semantic fields so as to prove the existence of remarkable differences between English and Vietnamese, he pointed out six reasons for the existence of non-equivalence at word level between English and Vietnamese These reasons are: - No equivalent words between languages, especially culture- specific concepts The source language word expresses a concept totally unknown in target language -Concepts are known but no equivalent words in TL The source language concept is not lexicalized in the target language -The target language lacks a superordinate It may have a specific word but no general word -The target language lacks a hyponym -Differences in expressive meaning -Differences in physical and interpersonal perspective 10 The second difficulty here is the opposite of the first If in the first difficulty the translator must add information to the specific name of the machine, then in this second difficulty, the translator sometimes has to diminish the information to ensure the short and at the same time give priority to the information which more needed We can see this problem in Example 3, example and example But the choice of the solution for deciding what to exclude from words in the text is similar to the solution of deciding which additional information to text The third difficulty should be mentioned here is the choice of Vietnamese meaning to the most suitable In fact, an English word can be equivalent to many words in Vietnamese, so choosing the most appropriate word from those words is quite difficult As we can see in Example 4, "stationary" translates into Vietnamese as "cố định" but when inserted into the phrase translators have decided to use the word "tĩnh" The suggestion for this problem is that you should look at the dictionary in both English into Vietnamese and Vietnamese into English This means that when we look at the meaning of a certain word, we should look the singular of the preceding words in the order from English to Vietnamese, then bring the words have been translated from Vietnamese to English to compare result This will give you the most accurate definition of the newly searched word Next step you can use the support tools to translate the whole phrase to understand its literal meaning However, it is worth noting here that, since these are all terms related to engineering, in particular the construction industry, sometimes the translation tools will not produce results or the result is wrong So you need to compare the result in step one and the result of step two so that you can see the similarity and difference from which to choose the most suitable This solution takes a lot of time but is the easiest solution for choosing the mean of the word The last limitation can be seen in the main examples is that even if it only translates a phrase, it must incorporate a variety of translation strategies As in 43 Example 2, when translating from "TOHO Drilling Machine Model K1-B1900ST with anti-explosive type" to " Máy khoan thăm dò địa chất Model K1B-1900ST kiểu phòng nổ KY120 hãng Toho Chikakoki sản xuất" , the translator had combined three strategic services: use of more specific word, preserved with proper names and paraphrase With this difficulty, unfortunately, there are no effective proposals The use of appropriate strategies depends on the translator's flexibility and the specific situation of the translation Finally, the underlying cause for all these difficulties is the lack of experience in the engineering field For English graduates in general, the knowledge they hold and the scope they study are largely in academic English or business English Vocabulary in engineering or mechanics is very difficult even for those who graduate in English So the most appropriate solution for contract translators in particular and the company in general is to build a dictionary related to machinery in the company This dictionaries may be constructed from pre-existing contracts or from available materials in the company or from seminar on machinery Building this dictionary can be considered as the longest, most sustainable and effective solution to solve the difficulties encountered by employees in translating machine names in particular and contract translation in general Recommendations From the examples analyzed above, we can see some of the possible issues that can be proposed when translating machine names into contracts as follows First of all, be sure that the machine name terms in the contract contain the special machine number, for example: "Model Robex 320LC-7", "Model K1-B1900ST" or "MT 62 " For this information, when translated into Vietnamese we just need to remain unchanged because this is simply a symbol of the machine 44 However, we absolutely must not remove this component because it is a special mark to identify the product The second problem is that the name of the manufacturer For this information, we should consider buyer and seller terms in the contract If the seller is also a manufacturer, we can dismiss it to give priority to other information about the machine However, there are special cases when the manufacturer has many subsidiaries in many places, in order to specify the place of production we still have to keep the name of the manufacturer in the translation So the suggestion here is that if the original text contains the name of the manufacturer, we should not be removed, should not be translated in Vietnamese, either but should be kept in English What about the generic noun in the machine name? Typically, these nouns can be found in online dictionaries However, to specify a machine name, adding words to this noun is very important The specific information will be found in the product description The information usually includes: purpose of use, prominent characteristics, type of fuel used Finally is the grammatical structure When translating from English to Vietnamese we just need to reverse the order of words If in English the phrase is the word modifiers for nouns and then the main noun, then when translated into Vietnamese, we will translate the first word to the first and all remaining information will be after the main noun It is worth noting that when translating, we should use the free translation method to be closer to the Vietnamese because this translation will be used by Vietnamese users 45 CONCLUSION The thesis has examined the difficulties encountered by translators when translating machine names in import contracts By using eight import contracts of Lac Hong JSC, the study some conclusions on the commons difficulties, the translation strategies often used and some recommendations which are often seen in the process of translating the machine from English to Vietnamese During the translation process, the translator encounters difficulties in deciding whether to add or subtract information about the product in the translation, and the difficulty also arises from the translator's knowledge background Therefore, the most important suggestion is to build a reference database to improve the technical knowledge base for translators At the same time, the research also outlines some of the translation strategies commonly used in the translation process, especially the most commonly used method is free translation method However, due to limited knowledge and access to resources, research is inevitable with many shortcomings It is hoped that these shortcomings will be complemented and improved in the following studies on the process of translating machine names in import contracts 46 REFERENCES Homaidan, M (2004) Problems in translating some specialized computer terms Unpublished Master’s thesis, Yarmouk University: Jordan http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:431449/FULLTEXT07.pdf http://web.hanu.vn/dec/file.php/1/Non-equivalent-Binh.pdf http://www.rusnauka.com/14_NPRT_2010/Pedagogica/66850.doc.htm file:///C:/Users/Administrator/Downloads/5805-Article%20Text-10951-110-20130211.pdf https://scholar.najah.edu/sites/default/files/Amani%20Ashqar.pdf Factors influencing the quality of translation, Dr Mohamed Ali Elsiddig Ibrahim, Dr Ahmed Mohammed Abdulrahman Mansor, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language, College of Science and Arts AL-Baha University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Qualitative Descriptive Research: An Acceptable Design, Vickie A Lambert, Clinton E Lambert, Pacific Rim International Journal of Nursing Research Technical Translation Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation, JODY BYRNE, University of Sheffield, UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_translation Schäffner, C (2001) Skopos Theory In M Baker (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp.235-238) London/New York: Routledge Pinchuk, I (1977) Scientific and technical translation London: André Deutsch Nida, A & Taber R (1982) The Theory and Practice of Translation (2nd ed.) Newmark, P (1988) A Textbook of translation London: Prentice Hall 47 Newmark, P (2003) No Global Communication without Translation In Anderman, G & Rogers, M (eds.), Translation Today: Trends and Perspectives(pp.55-68) Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto & Sydney: Multilingual Matters Ltd Newmark, P (1981) Approaches to Translation Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press Byrne, J (2006) Technical translation: Usability strategies for translating technical documentation Baker, M (1992) In other words: Coursebook on translation New York and London: Routledge 48 ... study, purposes, methods, scope are presented CHAPTER II is background theories which focuses on definitions, methods, procedures of translation in general and technical translation in particular CHAPTER... transactions in general and companies in the field of machinery in particular, contact and contract translation are unavoidable As a result, the study of machine translation in the contract was... problems and difficulties of translation Before embarking on any discussion of the different theories and approaches to translation, certain translation definitions will be reviewed in the following