(Luận văn thạc sĩ) substitution as a grammatical cohesive device in english narrative in comparision with its translation into vietnamese m a thesis linguistics

A VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NÔNG VĂN HẢI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép nhƣ phƣơng tiện liên kết ngữ pháp văntrần thuật tiếng Anh so sánh với dịch sang tiếng Việt) M.A Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI, 2011 B VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NÔNG VĂN HẢI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép nhƣ phƣơng tiện liên kết ngữ pháp văn trần thuật tiếng Anh so sánh với dịch sang tiếng Việt) M.A Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Dr DƢƠNG THỊ NỤ HANOI, 2011 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS PAGES DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES VI PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 RATIONALE AIMS OF THE STUDY SCOPE OF THE STUDY METHODS OF THE STUDY DESIGN OF THE STUDY PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .5 1.1 Discourse 1.1.1 The Concept of Discourse……………………… …………………… 1.1.2 Spoken and written discourse ……………… ……………………… 1.1.3 Narrative Discourse ………………………………………………… 1.1.4 Discourse Analysis ………………………….……………………… 1.2 Cohesion .10 1.2.1 The concept of cohesion ……………….…………………………… 10 1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence …………………………………………… 11 v 1.2.3 Types of Cohesion …………… ………………………………… 12 1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion ………………………… …………………… 14 1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion …………………………… ………………… 20 1.3 Overview of translation 21 1.3.1 The Concept of Translation ……… ……………………………… 21 1.3.2 Important factors of Translation ……………… ………………… 21 1.3.3 The basis of translation ……………………………………… …… 22 1.3.4 Source Language and Target Language ……………… …………… 22 2.1 English Substitution Devices 23 2.2 Vietnamese Solutions to the English Substitution Devices 26 2.2.1 Cohesive Devices ……………………………………………… … 28 2.2.1.1 Grammatical Cohesion Devices ……………………………………… 28 2.2.1.2 Lexical Cohesion Devices ……………………………………… 31 2.3 Translation Techniques 32 PART C: CONCLUSION 33 REFERENCE: 35 vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table Type of cohesion Table Grammatical and Lexical cohesion Table Occurrences and frequency of cohesive items of substitution in Corpus A Table Occurrence and frequency of Vietnamese solutions to the English substitution device Figure 1: Reference PART A: INTRODUCTION RATIONALE Discourse Analysis, or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written and spoken language use or any significant semiotic event From the beginning of its appearance, Discourse Analysis has taken up in a variety of social science disciplines It is now a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language in use and therefore of great importance to language teaching In the early days, language teaching has been concerned with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; however, it was not until Discourse Analysis turned up that our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gain successful communication was raised Literature, which plays a very important role in our spiritual life, has been greatly developing as a consequence of the high living standards As a matter of fact, there have been more and more people choosing to work in the literary field and their efforts have created so many famous works It is open to questions as to which factors have to be taken into consideration to make a successful work How important are those factors to the completion of a coherent and cohesive text? Added to this, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence are actually regarded as the crucial aspects of language usage Cohesion is considered one of the most challenging aspects of translation, as any language has its own unique manners in which it employs cohesive devices in the creation of a cohesive text Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships between persons and events; these patterns may not be ignored in a language if the readers understand what the translator wants to convey The topic of cohesion has always appeared as the most useful constituent of discourse analysis that is applied to translation English and Vietnamese have different grammars and vocabulary structures, and it is only natural that they pose great difficulties and challenges for a translator to deal with, especially in the field of literature Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have encouraged the author to conduct the study entitled “Substitution as a Grammatical Cohesive Device in English Narrative in Comparison with Its Translation into Vietnamese” I hope that this study may help teachers and learners of foreign language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical cohesive devices AIMS OF THE STUDY Based on the detailed classification of cohesive devices in English of Halliday and Hasan (1976), this study provides a close analysis of a particular grammatically cohesive device employed in English and its equivalence in the Vietnamese translation This paper aims to study from a quantitative and a qualitative point of view the possible shifts of cohesion in translation in literary texts and solutions adapted to the Vietnamese translation Furthermore, this study compares the translation strategies that translators use in transferring substitution from an English literary text to its Vietnamese translation This may pose great difficulties and problems because of the difference between the two languages In order to achieve the aim of the study, some following research questions are raised What are the possible shifts of cohesion within the text of translation in the field of literature? What are the main problems that may occur in translation through the use of substitution? What are the possible solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation of a literary text? SCOPE OF THE STUDY As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for the author to refer to all of its characteristics Thus, within this study, the author just mentions some background knowledge about Discourse Analysis as well as coherence and cohesion Halliday and Hasan (1976) make a detailed classification of the cohesive devices in English These authors distinguish between grammatical and lexical cohesion According to them, grammatical cohesion embraces four different devices: Reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction This study will only focus on analyzing how substitution is used as a device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative and its translated version into Vietnamese METHODS OF THE STUDY To carry out this study, two literary corpora were used They were identified as Corpus A and Corpus B The former was composed of the original texts written in English entitled “pride and prejudice” and it was made up of 121.728 words The latter consisted of 141.370 words which was the Vietnamese translated version of those very same texts The literary text was chosen for analysis because it is a famous literary work of Jane Austen Added to this, I have read both the original and the Vietnamese translated version for several times and find this story very interesting to make an analysis Both corpora have a digital format and are available on the internet Detailed information about the translations was not available In the study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted for analysis And the analysis was conducted in the following steps - Firstly, make an identification in corpus A of the substitution devices employed in English based one the classification theory of Halliday and Hasan The identification of such items was carried out with the help of a concordance programme named Antconc 3.2.3w - Then, locate the equivalent linguistic expressions in Corpus B - Finally, discuss and analyze the solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation DESIGN OF THE STUDY This study is divided into three main parts Part A is the introduction which includes rationale, aim, scope, method and design of the study Then Part B is the development which consists of chapters in which chapter one is about the theoretical background of the study and chapter two is the analysis of substitution as the device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative in comparison with its Vietnamese translated version Part C is the conclusion which describes a summary of the present study with some interesting findings PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Discourse 1.1.1 The Concept of Discourse There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse Halliday (1985) defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process” According to Crystal (1992) discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative” Cook (1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive” In other words, as Brown and Yule state, discourse is language material, either spoken or written, in actual uses by speakers (and writers) of the language Since its introduction to modern science the term “discourse” has taken various, sometimes very broad, meanings In order to specify which of the numerous senses is analyzed in the following dissertation it has to be defined Originally the word “discourse” comes from Latin “discursu”' which denoted “conversation, speech” Thus understood, however, discourse refers to too wide an area of human life, therefore only discourse from the vantage point of linguistics, and especially applied linguistics, is explained here There is no agreement among linguists as to the use of the term discourse in that some use it in reference to texts, while others claim it denotes speech which is for instance illustrated by the following definition: "Discourse: a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative" (Crystal 1992:25) On the other 22 process of translation i.e the target text must be equivalent in a compatible way to the original one There are two approaches to translation “formal equivalence” which implies the literal translation, however; it also deals with idioms and grammatical structures that are used in the original text And “dynamic equivalence” that implies the meaning or the message that the writer wants to convey Here, the translator focuses on thought rather than translating the text word by word 1.3.4 Source Language and Target Language The language of the original text is called “source language”, and the language into which a text is converted called “target language” Let us consider the following example: a She is getting married next month b Tháng sau cô kết hôn The sentence “a” represents the source language which is English, and the sentence “b” represents the target language which is Vietnamese So, the terms “source” and “target” are used attributively It is understood that translation is not standing alone without the concepts of cohesion and coherence; as a process of studying the lexicon, the grammatical structures, and the communication situation of the source language text; by analyzing it in order to determine the meaning Each language might have different systems of cohesive devices that help in creating meaning in relation to the broader concept of coherence, and the relationships expressed should be relevant to each other 23 CHAPTER 2: SUBSTITUTION AS A DEVICE OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATED VERSION INTO VIETNAMESE As I have mentioned above, two literary corpora were used for the present study They were identified as corpus A and corpus B Corpus A was composed of the original texts written in English and it was made up of 121.728 words It is a famous novel of Jane Austen with the title “Pride and Prejudice” Corpus B was the Vietnamese translated version of those very same texts and it consisted of 141.370 words Both corpora have a digital format and are available on the internet However, detailed information about the translation was not available There are a number of factors that makes this novel a great success According to Halliday & Hasan (1976), cohesion is considered one of the key elements to make a very important contribution to a good writing Thus, how English literature makes use of substitution as a device of grammatical cohesion and the mechanisms employed in its translation into Vietnamese? The following analysis attempts to answer all these questions as well as points out some majors findings of grammatical cohesion in the novel “Pride and Prejudice” 2.1 English Substitution Devices Halliday and Hasan (1976: 91) have listed the items that occur as substitution as follows: Nominal (one, ones, same), Verbal: (do), Clausal (so, not) It cannot be denied that substitution proves to be a useful device of grammatical cohesion which has been made use of in a great deal number of literary works The analysis of Corpus A, regarding the items employed as substitution devices in English, produced the results reproduced in Table 131 cases of substitution were located in the texts, which represented 1.07 per 1,000 words of the corpus In relation to the three different types of substitution identified, nominal and verbal substitutions had a quite similar frequency, whereas there was a higher employment of the clausal type As regards the cohesive items, was the most 24 common one in nominal substitution However, so was the most widely employed in general Items Occurrences One 16 Ones Same 12 Do 32 Clausal So 40 Substitution Not 25 Nominal Substitution Verbal Substitution Total Frequency (per 1000 words) 0.13 34 0.04 0.09 32 65 0.26 0.32 0.20 Table Occurrences and frequency of cohesive items of substitution in Corpus A Through sixty-one chapters of the novel, substitution makes a total of 131 times of occurrences (100%) Of these, Nominal substitution ranks second with 34 times – accounting for 26.0 % Verbal substitution, which appears 32 times, ranks third with a proportion of 24.4 % The last one, clausal substitution, used the most frequently, can be found widespread the novel, which accounts for 49.6 % Nominal substitutes are “one”, “ones” and “same”, among which “one” and “ones” always function as a Head of a nominal group and can substitute for a Head of a nominal group And the appearance of substitute “same” ranks second among the nominal substitutes Following are some examples of “one”, “ones” and “same” as nominal substitution: (1) Take your choice, but you must be satisfied with only one (2) He has been accused of many faults at different times, but THIS is the true one In order not to repeat the word, substitutions are used in (1) and (2) “One” in (1) is a substitute for “choice” and “one” in (2) is a substitute for “fault” 25 (3) Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all (4) Perhaps by and by I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones Similarly, we can obviously see “ones” as the substitutes for “men” and “balls” in (3) and (4) (5) Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same; and Mrs Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation with Miss Bennet (6) Elizabeth was secretly forming a desperate resolution; and perhaps he might be doing the same As for verbal substitution, substitutionary word “do” proves to be best used to avoid repeating the verb(s) appearing in the previous text and therefore makes it brief Examples of verbal substitution are as follows: (7) Kitty and Lydia take his defection much more to heart than I (8) I believe no one feels the loss of friends so much as I (9) But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did.‟ Instead of repeating the verb phrase “take his defection” unnecessarily, the author chooses to use “do” in (7) Hence, “do” is a substitute for “take” – known as verbal substitution Also, “do” in (8) is a substitute for “feel” and “did” in (9) substitutes for “state” As far as clausal substitution is concerned, so was the most widely employed in general (10) "When I wrote that letter," replied Darcy, "I believed myself perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit." "The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end so 26 (11) “I hope we may often meet again." Elizabeth smiled "Lizzy, you must not so.” It can be clearly seen that, substitution appears very often in the English text which proves that it is an effective means of grammatical cohesion Its biggest contribution to the success of this novel is that the sentence becomes shorter, easier to understand and all the unnecessary repetition is avoided 2.2 Vietnamese Solutions to the English Substitution Devices After the analysis of the types of substitution in the English texts and the frequency of the items employed to develop them, we studied the equivalent solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translated version (Corpus B) And the following table can illustrate the findings of Vietnamese solutions to the English substitution devices Frequency Occurrence Total (per 1000 words) Reference 16 Substitution 32 Ellipsis 70 Lexical Synonyms Cohesion Repetition Reduction Reformulation 12 Grammatical Cohesive Device Cohesion Translation Techniques 0.11 118 0.23 0.50 12 17 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.08 Table Occurrence and frequency of Vietnamese solutions to the English substitution device Two different solutions were adopted for the translation of the English texts for the cases of substitution: the employment of cohesive devices and the use of translation techniques As the results showed, the former option was much more 27 common than the latter one, in particular grammatical cohesion Two different types of cohesive devices were identified: grammatical and lexical When selecting the cohesive device, substitution has not always been the alternative Furthermore, only 32 cases of substitution were identified in the Vietnamese translations whereas in the rest of the cases, 137, another solution was adopted A close analysis of those mechanisms employed in the translation is depicted as follows 2.2.1 Cohesive Devices 2.2.1.1 Grammatical Cohesion Devices A Ellipsis Telemans (2001-2002) states, “Ellipsis is the omission of elements normally required by the grammar which the speaker/writer assumes are obvious from the context and therefore need not be raised” Ellipsis is like substitution since both involve referring back to something earlier in the text While a particular word in substitution refers back, in ellipsis there is a “gap” in the text which refers back Similar to substitution, it is classified into nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis In the analysis of Corpus B, Ellipsis was seen the most frequent cohesion device, with 70 cases out of 118 (12) "My dear Mr Bennet," said Ơng thân u, ơng có biết tin his lady to him one day, "have you có người thuê Netherfield Park heard that Netherfield Park is let at chưa? Ông Bennet trả lời ông last?" Mr Bennet replied that he chưa biết had not (13) "Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring?" said - Có phải tiểu thư Darcy lớn Miss thêm nhiều từ mùa xuân qua Bingley; "will she be as tall as I không? Liệu ta có cao tơi am?" "I think she will.” khơng? - Tơi nghĩ có lẽ 28 (14) Indeed you must go, for it will Thật ông phải đi, không be impossible for US to visit him if mẹ khơng có lý đến you not ông không B Substitution Substitution was the second most popular grammatical cohesive device in these translations There were three particular items employed for this aim which have their equivalents in English: / the same (see example 15), chịu, như/ (16, 17, 18) and vậy, thế/ so (19, 20, 21) Verbal substitution was the most frequent with 14 out of 32 cases The other 18 instances were equally distributed between nominal and clausal types (15) Elizabeth was secretly Elizabeth thầm lặng chuẩn forming a desperate resolution; bị cho chủ ý; có lẽ Darcy and perhaps he might be doing the same Your mother will never (16) Mẹ khơng nhìn mặt see you again if you NOT không chịu lấy anh marry Mr Collins, and I will Collins, bố khơng nhìn mặt never see you again if you chịu (lấy anh Collins) DO." "I believe no one feels (17) Tôi tin cảm nhận the loss of friends so much as I việc xa lìa người thân tơi (cảm nhận) Do your sisters play and (18) sing?" "One of them does." Các chị em có học mơn nghệ thuật khơng? - Có người (học) We were always good (19) friends; and now we Chúng ta bạn tốt với nhau, are - Đúng Những better." True " Are the others người khác có khỏi nhà không? - 29 coming out?" "I not know Tôi Bà Bennet Lydia Mrs Bennet and Lydia are lên xe để Meryton Vì vậy, cô chị thân going thương, nghe ông cậu bà mợ in the carriage to Meryton And so, my dear nói xem Pemberley sister, I find, from our uncle and aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley The following example illustrates the use of so and its Vietnamese equivalent in a nominal substitution (20) "She seems a very pleasant - Xem chừng cô dễ mến - À young woman." "Oh! dear, yes; thế, anh phải công nhận cô but you must own she is very không đẹp Chính phu nhân Lucas plain Lady Lucas herself has thường nói vậy, cảm thấy often said so, and envied me ganh tỵ với Jane nhà Jane's beauty (21) "The letter, perhaps, began in Có lẽ thư bắt đầu cay đắng, bitterness, but it did not end phần cuối khơng so.” C Reference Reference is a relationship in meaning The fact shows that reference to the situation is the prior form of reference, and that reference to another item within the text is a secondary or derived form of this relation This is more clearly illustrated in Halliday (1985:312): “It seems quite unlikely that reference first evolved as an “exophoric” relation: that is, as a means of linking “outwards” to some person or object in the environment” In other words, reference to assumed, shared worlds outside of the text is exophoric Exophoric reference contributes to the creation of the text, in that it links the language with the context of situation, but 30 it does not contribute to the integration of one passage with another so that the two together form the parts of the same text It is not text-internal, not of contribution to the cohesion of a text; however, it helps to make sense in the context The use of reference inside the grammatical cohesion devices was not widespread in Corpus B Personal (22) and demonstrative (23, 24, 25) were the two types of referential cohesion identified in this analysis and both of them had a similar distribution (22) "My dear Mr Bennet," said his Ông thân u, ơng có biết tin có lady to him one day, "have you người thuê Netherfield Park chưa? Ông heard that Netherfield Park is Bennet trả lời ông chưa biết let at last?" Mr Bennet replied that he had not (23) And Mrs Long does not come Bà Long trở lại ngày trước đấy, back till the day before; so it nên bà giới thiệu anh ấy, bà will be impossible for her to chưa quen biết introduce him, for she will not know him herself (24) (25) Lady Lucas herself has often Chính phu nhân Lucas thường nói said so, and envied me Jane's vậy, cảm thấy ganh tỵ với Jane beauty nhà Mr Bingley had soon made Chẳng Bingley làm quen với himself acquainted with all the người quan trọng phòng principal people in the room 2.2.1.2 Lexical Cohesion Devices Understanding comprehensively the usage and functions of the lexical cohesive devices will help the writer to create effectively coherent While topical and logical cohesion of a text expresses a coherent text in an overall level, cohesive 31 devices point out they are parts of the text and combine together to develop the structure of a text in detail One thing that makes the text coherent is repeating important words or phrases According to Tran Ngoc Them (1985: 106) “Lexical reiteration is a form of lexical cohesion in which the two cohesive items refer to the same entity and event” As defined by Halliday & Hasan (1976: 319) “Reiteration is the repetition of a lexical item, or the occurrence of a synonym of some kinds, in the context of reference; that is, where the two occurrences, have the same reference Typically, therefore, a reiterated lexical item is accompanied by a reference item, usually “the” or a demonstrative The complex consisting of “the” plus reiterated lexical item is therefore cohesive by reference But since reiteration is itself cohesive in its own right, as shown by the fact that cohesion takes place even where there is no referential relation” A text is coherent, it means that all of its sentences refer to the same object, certain events; therefore, lexical repetition represents the only device to realize such texts Reiteration as a form involving the repetition of lexical items, the use of a general word of a preceding item and the number of thing in between – the use of synonym, near synonym, or super-ordinate In relation to lexical cohesion, Halliday and Hasan distinguish between reiteration and collocation The sample studied only provided us with examples of two types of reiteration: same word (repetition) and synonym (or near synonym) Repetition is an essential device to have cohesion of texts We can connect sentences or paragraphs together by repeating certain key words from one sentence to the next or from one paragraph to the next This repetition of key words also helps to emphasize the main idea of a piece of writing Throughout English and Vietnamese narrative, it is easy to notice that synonymy is used here and there to make the text coherent Its aim is to avoid overusing a word or a phrase Tran Ngoc Them (31.1:137) defines synonymy as a cohesive device realized by different words or phrases conveying the same 32 meaning Synonyms can be nouns, adverbs or adjectives as both members of the pair are the same part of speech 2.3 Translation Techniques As mentioned before, some translation techniques were also used in Corpus B, namely those of reduction and reformulation The latter has been the most popular in the selected corpus Reduction is also called omission and it refers to the situation where a part of the source text is omitted In our study, the affected part was the one where a substitution item was included On the other hand, reformulation can be understood as the omission of the cohesive device An illustrative example of reduction can be seen in example 26, where the verbal substitution was omitted in the translation Example 27 shows the reformulation technique (26) "I believe no one feels the loss of friends so much as I Tơi tin khơng có cảm nhận việc xa lìa người thân tơi 33 PART C: CONCLUSION This is an analysis of the use of substitution in English literature and in its translation into Vietnamese From the findings, it could be seen that nominal and verbal substitutions were used commonly in English However clausal substitution was the most frequent types The Vietnamese translation of this mechanism was normally another grammatical device However, it was not substitution but ellipsis the most widely employed For Halliday and Hasan (1976:143) substitution and ellipsis have a common ground, presupposition In substitution, presupposition is explicit, there is an “explicit counter”, whereas in ellipsis nothing is inserted in the slot that it leaves They add that ellipsis can be regarded as substitution by zero We can establish a connection between this definition and the conclusions obtained by Blum-Kulka (2000:299-302) She states that the shift in cohesion affects the translations in one or both of the following aspects: in level of explicitness or/and in text meaning It is in the latter aspect that we find the mentioned relationship This author refers to the shifts in text meaning as “the explicit and implicit meaning potential of the source text changes through translations” and she follows “The choice involved in the types of cohesive markers used in a particular text can affect the texture (as being “loose” or “dense”) as well as the style and meaning of that text” According to this theory, the major use of ellipsis, as an equivalent to the English substitutive item, changes the texture of the Vietnamese translation That makes it looser than the original, at least in those particular parts of the text The reason for the results we have achieved in this study can be found in the different nature of these two languages, English is more rigid than Vietnamese We consider two important aspects that distinguish both languages and that condition them On the one hand, English requirement of the presence of subject in all sentences, on the other, lack of gender markers in nouns and adjectives in this very same language These inherent features of the language determine the type of 34 coherent devices that the language can employ The requirement of the subject in English makes the language use mechanisms such as substitution However, Vietnamese tends to incorporate the subject in the verbal endings and the explicitness of it is not so common This theory can explain the Vietnamese employment of ellipsis instead of substitution In fact, the results showed that the two main types of ellipsis in the Vietnamese translation were nominal and clausal On the other hand, the existence of gender markers in Vietnamese nouns and adjectives helps to establish the referent immediately This mechanism of the language prompts ellipsis since no more presuppositions are required in the text However, English language needs other type of mechanisms to deal with possible problems of ambiguity in the same situations The results of the present study illustrate how two different languages such as English and Vietnamese select different cohesive devices for the same linguistic situation However, although the analysis of these limited corpora does not provide a conclusive generalization about how substitution in English literary works is transferred into Vietnamese Every language has its own devices for establishing cohesive links Both language and text-type preferences must be taken into consideration in the process of translation This is just an exploratory study In order to corroborate the results of the study, further research in a larger corpus of English narratives and their translations would be necessary 35 REFERENCE: ENGLISH REFERENCE: Halliday, M.A.K (1985) Spoken and written language Oxford: Oxford University Press Halliday, M.A.K and Hasan, R (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman Halliday, M.A.K., (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar New York: Oxford University Press Inc Halliday, M.A.K and Hasan, R (1989) Language, Context and Text: Aspect of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective Victoria: Deakin University Press Brown, G., Yule, G., (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Baker, C (1992) Attitudes and language Multilingual Matters 83 Clevendon, Avon, England: Multilingual Matters Bloor T and Bloor M (1995) The functional analysis of English London, New York, etc: Arnold Crystal, D., (1992) Introduction to Linguistics London: Penguin Cook, G (1994) Discourse and Literature Oxford: Oxford University Press 10 De Beaugrande, R., (1980) Text, Discourse and Process London: Longman 11 Firth, J R (1957) Papers in Linguistics Oxford: Oxford University Press 12 Hoa, Nguyen (2000) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Hanoi: Vietnam National University Publishing House 13 Hornby, A (2000) Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary of Current English (sixth edition) Oxford: Oxford University Press 14 Mc Cathy, M (1991) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 36 15 Nunan, D (1993) Introducing Discourse Analysis Longman: Penguin 16 Telemans, G., (2001) Discourse analysis Unpublished, Hanoi: HNU, College of Foreign Languages 17 Yule, G 1996 The Study of Language Oxford: Oxford University Press 18 Blum-Kulka, S 2000 Shifts of Cohesion and Cohesence in Translation In the Translation Studies Reader 298-313 London: Routledge 19 Glosser G (1993) Narrative discourse in neurologically impaired and normal aging adults San Diego (C.A): Singular Publishing Group 20 Carter, K (1993) Computer aided design - back to the drawing board Proceedings of the International Symposium on Creativity and Cognition, Loughborough VIETNAMESE REFERENCE: Diệp Quang Ban (1998) Văn Bản Liên Kết Tiếng Việt Nhà xuất giáo dục, Hà Nội Hoàng Văn Vân (2000) Ngữ pháp Kinh Nghiệm Cú Tiếng Việt Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Nguyễn Hịa (2003) Phân tích Diễn Ngơn: Một Số Vấn Đề Lý Luận Phương Pháp Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Trần Ngọc Thêm (2000) Hệ Thống Liên Kết Văn Bản Tiếng Việt Nhà xuất giáo dục, Hà Nội ... as a device of grammatical cohesion and the mechanisms employed in its translation into Vietnamese? The following analysis attempts to answer all these questions as well as points out some majors... written language, it is important to maintain enough information, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization of sentences Grammatical metaphor: Written language presents rather... Cohesive Device in English Narrative in Comparison with Its Translation into Vietnamese? ?? I hope that this study may help teachers and learners of foreign language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical