Strategies applied in vietnames english translation of proper names in số đỏ dumb luck by vu trong phung

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER STRATEGIES APPLIED IN VIETNAMES -ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF PROPER NAMES IN "SỐ ĐỎ" (DUMB LUCK) BY VU TRONG PHUNG Supervisor : Nguyễn Thành Vân (M.A) Student : Bùi Thu Hương QH2010.F E21 Hà Nội, 2014 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC ÁP DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DỊCH CÁC TÊN RIÊNG TỪ TIẾNG VIỆT SANG TIẾNG ANH TRONG TÁC PHẨM “SỐ ĐỎ” CỦA VŨ TRỌNG PHỤNG Supervisor : Ths Nguyễn Thành Vân Student : Bùi Thu Hương Khóa : QH2010.F E21 Hanoi, 2014 i DECLARATION I hereby state that I : Bui Thu Huong, QH2010.F1.E21, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirement of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origins of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purpose of the study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan and the reproduction of the paper Hanoi, 2014 Bui Thu Huong ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mr Nguyen Thanh Van, for his precious guidance, valuable advice as well as his encouragement which were the decisive factors assisting me in finishing the paper on the right track My sincere thanks also go to my friends Dong Thi Ngoc, Hoang Thi Thu Yen, Duong Thi Ngoc Anh, Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, Pham Lan Phuong for their special helps in the data analysis process Without them, this study cannot have been completed I am also grateful to my classmates for their helpful comments, wholehearted encouragement throughout the process of this paper Finally, I appreciate the support and care from my family and my friends from the beginning to the end of the research i ABSTRACT Contrary to popular view, proper names translation is a non-trivial question Many scholars and translators claim that proper names not need to be translated, especially names of literary characters However, proper names are not noninformative; they include a lot of useful information and help to provide some simple information for audiences In fact, translation of proper names has not been accorded the appropriate attention These factors encourage the researcher to carry out this study with the objectives of having a look at translation strategies applied in proper names of literary characters The novel “Số đỏ” and its translated version “Dumb Luck” were chosen as the object of this study and document analysis along with the general interview guide approach were adopted as research methods 25 proper names selected after purposive sampling process Regarding translation strategies, the most dominant strategy in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English was literal translation ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i ABSTRACT .ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims and objectives Significance of the study Scope of the study Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Translation theory 2.1.1 Definition of translation 2.1.2 Translation procedures 2.2 Proper names 2.2.1 Definition of proper names 2.2.2 Types of proper names 2.2.3 Proper names translation 10 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 12 3.1 The research approach 12 3.2 Design of the study 12 iii 3.3 Phase one 13 3.3.1 Sampling 13 3.3.2 Data collection method 13 3.3.3 Data collection procedures 14 3.3.4 Data analysis procedures 15 3.4 Phase two 15 3.4.1 Sampling 15 3.4.2 Data collection method 15 3.4.3 Data collection procedures 16 3.4.4 Data analysis procedures 17 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 19 4.1 Research question 1: What are the satirical meanings behind the proper names in “Số đỏ”? 19 4.1.1 Social context in “Số đỏ” 19 4.1.2 Main characters in the novel 19 4.1.3 The satirical meanings behind some names of characters in 22 “Số đỏ” 22 4.2 Research question 2: Which strategies applied by Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English in “Số đỏ”? ……………………………………………………………………………… 24 4.2.1 Document analysis 24 4.2.2 Interview analysis 28 4.2.3 Summary 29 4.3 Critical discussion……………………… …………………………………29 iv CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 31 5.1 An overview about the research and its findings 31 5.2 Limitation of the study and possible areas for future research 31 5.3 Contribution and significance of the research 32 REFERENCES 33 APPENDIX 36 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SL: Source language TL: Target language vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1 Types of proper names……………………………… Table 4.1 The satirical meaning behind some proper names of the characters in “Số đỏ”……………………….…20 Table 4.2 The use of translation procedures in Vietnamese-English translation of proper names in “Số đỏ”………………………… 24 Table 4.3 Proper names translated by literal…………………….25 Table 4.4 Proper names translated by couplet………………… 25 Table 4.5 Types of combination couplet translation procedure…26 Table 4.6 Proper names translated by transference…………… 27 Table 4.7 Proper names translated by cultural equivalent……….27 Figure 4.2 The use of translation procedures in Vietnamese-English translation of proper names in”Số đỏ”………………………………………….….24 vii costumes that culture show a lot of body parts such as breast, thigh This act against the tradition Cô Tuyết Miss Snow Pure Be proud of the To critize, fool fact that she is and condemn a still a half virgin miscellaneous culture and the depravation in some women who call them “modern” themselves Xuân tóc đỏ Red-haired Lucky Xuân He is so lucky To criticize, fool that he turns from and condemn a a ball boy to a disorderly national hero only society, and in five months imbalanced value All things contribute to the social status of a jerk like Xuân 23 4.2 Research question 2: Which strategies applied by Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English in “Số đỏ”? 4.2.1 Document analysis Data analysis revealed that four out of sixteen procedures were employed in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English in “Số đỏ” The number of proper names translated by each strategy was converted into percentages and presented in the table and pie chart below Type of translation Frequency Percentage Literal 13 52% Couplet 36% Transference 8% Cultural equivalent 4% TOTAL 25 100% procedures Transference 8% Cultural equivalent 4% Literal Couplet 36% Literal 52% Couplet Transference Cultural Equivalent Table and Figure 4.2: The use of translation procedures in Vietnamese-English translation of proper names in “Số đỏ” 24 The table and figure 4.1 show the use of translation procedures proposed by Newmark in Zinoman‟s translation of proper names in “Số đỏ” from Vietnamese to English Literal, couplet, transference, cultural equivalent are the four translation procedures employed by translator Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman during the translation process As can be seen in the table and the pie chart, the most dominant strategy in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English was literal with 52% (13 proper names) of the proper names translated by this method The literally translated proper names were close to source language Some proper names can be listed in the table below: Table 4.3 Proper names translated by literal Vietnamese proper English proper names names (Ông / bà) Văn Minh (Mr / Mrs) Civilization Bác sĩ Trực Ngôn Dr Straight Talk Cô Tuyết Miss Snow The percentage of 36% made couplet the second most commonly used strategy.Some examples are given in the table below: Table 4.4 Proper names translated by couplet Vietnamese proper names English proper names Xuân tóc đỏ Red-haired Xuân Bà Phó Đoan Mrs Deputy Customs Officer Cụ cố Hồng Granpa Hồng 25 Given that couplet means combining two procedures to translate a word or expression, couplet applied to translate proper names could be different To have a closer look at the translation procedures in couplet, the researcher keeps working with the figures about the use of translation procedures but under a small scale – in couplet procedure The results are set out below: Table 4.5 Types of combination in couplet translation procedure Types of couplet Frequency Percentage Literal + Transference 88,8% Componential analysis + Reduction 11,2% 100% TOTAL Literal and transference is a most frequent combination when translator wants to applies couplet procedure The greatest purpose of applying literal translation procedure is to maintain the implication of author in the source text, especially in some names conveying satirical meaning such as names in “Số đỏ” Transference procedure is mainly applied to dealt with proper nouns such as “Xuân”, “Hồng”, “Tân”, etc The author combines transference procedure to translate proper names because these proper names still contain some elements such as description, titles, etc In the case of the name “Bà Phó Đoan”, the strategy that the translator author employed to translate is Componential analysis + Reduction The reason of the translators‟ choice is quite vague, the translators choose to omit word “Đoan” in the source language, and only remains the title of the character; “Đoan” plays a crucial role in the name of this character though “Đoan” reflects conflict between affected shield of the character and her real characters “Đoan” mean “serious” and “Marital Fidelity” in Vietnamese; however, what she expresses is totally different 26 Transference was employed to translate 8% of the proper names It seemed that proper names were rarely translated by only this strategy If the translator applies transference translation procedure, it is always a combination between reference and another translation procedure It is pretty intelligible because diacritics which not exist in English Diacritics are used to indicate the tones of Vietnamese Therefore, to naturalize translated version from Vietnamese to English, Vietnamese diacritics are often omitted However, in several circumstances, the translators still remain words in the source language to be loyal to implication of author In fact, transference procedure is often combined with another procedure This could maintain the characteristics of SL such as diacritics in Vietnamese, while, another procedure along with transference can translate other information in the proper names to make proper names to be closer to TL Some examples are given in the tables below: Table 4.6 Proper names translated by transference Vietnamese proper names English proper names (Ông) Joseph Thiết (Mr) Joseph Thiết (Ông) Victor Ban (Mr) Victor Ban Finally, the least utilized strategies were cultural equivalent It was employed to translate 4% of the proper names Given that the social background in “Số đỏ” is in the French colonial era, the translators had no choice but to change the word in source language “Tây” into “French” in target language Although “Tây” in Vietnamese refer to all Western countries, the translator still had to use “French” instead of other words 27 Table 4.7 Proper names translated by cultural equivalent Vietnamese proper names English proper names Ông Cẩm Tây The French captain 4.2.2 Interview analysis When asked whether the translators applied strategies to translate proper names from Vietnamese to English, the translators‟ reply were unexpected They admitted that they had not aimed to apply any specific translation procedure in the translation process They attempted to be careful in word choice to fully convey meanings of Vietnamese proper names to English They tried their best to make their translation faithful to the originals and loyal to the original version Nguyen Nguyet Cam responded to the question about strategies applied in translating some names such “Mr Văn Minh”, or “”bác sĩ Trực Ngôn” which imply some satirical meanings She again said that they acknowledge the satirical meanings behind these names; however they still simply translated meanings from Vietnamese to English without targeting to apply any special translation procedure Peter Zinoman said that they invested so much time to research the origins of all characters in the original novel of Vu phung, he even wrote pretty detail about the origins of some characters in the novel of Vu phung, and suggested some materials for readers to find out more information about these characters However, all proper names were translated by arbitrarily Responding to the question why there is an inconsistence in the translators‟ works that almost proper names are translated into English, while, some names remained as in original version such as: “Xuân” instead of translating into “Fall”, “Tân” instead of “Young”, “Hồng” instead of “Pink”, while other similar names were translated into English such as “Mr Two” instead of “Ơng Hai”, “Bá sĩ Trực Ngơn” was translated into “Dr Straight talk”, the translators shared 28 that all their translation was mainly based on arbitrarily, they also pointed out that the inconsistence in their translation proves that their translation based on feeling The researcher after that wrote an email to ask more some questions why the translator did not translate word “Đoan” in “Bà Phó Đoan” into English, they even omit this word However, the researcher did not receive reply from the translators 4.2.3 Summary In this chapter, all the findings of the study are set out and discussed within the framework of the two main research questions In short, all the questions are fairly answered, which brings a significant support for the research The translators are absolutely faithful to the original proper names Therefore, the most dominant strategy in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English is literal The purpose of this choice is to maintain the implication of author in the source text In some cases, the translators combine two different translation procedures to translate some names However, the literal translation is still the major translation procedure The translator did not aim to apply any translation strategies in translating Vietnamese proper names to English proper names There is an inconsistence in translating some proper names Some names are fully translated into English, others are not The explanation from the translators is their translation partly based on feeling; therefore, all translations are not absolutely consisted Besides the advantages of the research, it is necessary to mention in shortcomings such as weak evidence, the lack of answer from the translator Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman Due to the number of sample in the novel is not high; therefore the validity of the result analysis might be not enough persuasive Besides, the lack of answer about the translators omit element in translating name “Bà Phó Đoan” makes result analysis still surfacial 29 4.3 Critical discussion The findings from analyzing process bring the research matters into light The first phase one and a half of the second phase were achieved successfully However, the short talk with translator Peter Zinoman ends with a quite disappointing result It turns out that, answers from translators Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman did not have any contribution to the process of identifying translation procedure applied in translation of proper names in “Số đỏ” Although the short interview did not happen in the way the research expected, an advice of translator Peter Zinoman can be useful to further study He said that the number of proper names in another novel of Vu Trong Phung “Kĩ nghệ lấy Tây” is much more than those in “Số đỏ” To get better population and samples, the latter researcher can combine two novels and conduct a study of proper names 30 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION This chapter presents addresses the results delivered from the thesis and draws a conclusion on the work of the researcher It also estimates the possibility of further research in the future The chapter ends with the sum – up of the thesis‟s contribution and significance to translation field 5.1 An overview about the research and its findings The research is devoted to study about strategies applied in Vietnamese-English translation of proper names in “Số đỏ” by Vu Trong Phung After analyzing 25 proper names collected from the original text of the book, the researcher can report some main findings of the research: - Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman employ four translation procedures as defined by Peter Newmark to translate proper names in “Số đỏ” - Among the translation procedures, the most dominant strategy in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English is literal - One third of the proper names were translated by couplet, in which the combination of transference, which dealt with proper nouns and literal procedure - Satirical meaning behind names in “Số đỏ” was preserved and transferred into English However, there is only one proper name which is not remained as same as the source language It is the name of Mrs Deputy Customs Officer (“bà Phó Đoan” in Vietnamese version), and the researcher cannot explain the reason 5.2 Limitation of the study and possible areas for future research In spite of considerable efforts of the researcher, certain limitations are inevitable, which opens suggestions for further investigation on the issue Firstly, limitation can be found in the informant Because of the time constraint in the short talk, geography constraint, the rigorous schedule under which this study was conducted, the researcher had little choice but to adopt the general interview guide approach Although the researcher acknowledges the disadvantages of this approach, she still applies it into her study 31 Besides, one of the major shortcomings is due to the limited resources, namely the researcher‟s time and expertise Hence, the researcher has chosen to focus on the things that are easy to describe, including translation procedures More complicated issues such as quality assessment of the translation, cultural constraints in language transfer involving satire, proper names including names of places, newspaper, etc in general could not be dealt with Thus, there is still a considerable gap for future conducted on such complicated issues In addition, shortcoming of the current study is that the number of proper names of literary characters in the novel “Số đỏ” is only 25 It was not so large that it can provide overall picture of translation procedures employed in translating all Vietnamese proper names into English proper names Therefore, any attempt to conduct a research on larger-scale samples should be encouraged and appreciated Other researchers can use suggestions from the translator Peter Zinoman for further study He said that it would be better if there is a study which can combine all proper names of literary characters in “Số đỏ” and “Kĩ nghệ lấy Tây”, because the number of proper names of literary characters in “Kĩ nghệ lấy Tây” is larger than those in “Số đỏ” Once proper names of literary characters in two novels can be combined, the researcher would have an enough large population and sample for the study 5.3 Contribution and significance of the research Despite limit of time, effort and scope, the study has partly shed a light on the translation of proper names of literary characters Thanks to findings from the data analysis, some necessary lessons have been drawn to make the initial foundation for the future advances in the field of translating proper names 32 REFERENCES  Aixelá, J F., 1996 Culture-Specific Items in Translation In: R Alvarez and M Carmen, ed Translation, Power, Subversion Clevendon: Multilingual Matters < http://www.kalbos.lt/zurnalai/15_numeris/06.pdf> [Accessed 27 March 2014]  Apostolova, G., 2004 Liternet 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VIETNAMESE ENGLISH (Bà) Phó đoan (Mrs.) Deputy Customs Officer (Cô) Janettte Miss Janette (Cô) Nga Ms Moon (Cụ lang) Phế Dr Lung (Cụ lang) Tỳ Dr Spleen (Cụ) Tuần Vi Provincial governor Vi (Ông bà) Văn minh (Mr and Mrs.) Civilization (Ông) Hai Mr Two (Ông) Joseph Thiết (Mr.) Joseph Thiết 10 (Ông) Phán dây thép A senior postal clerk 11 (Ơng) Típ Phờ Nờ (Mr.) ILL (Tơi u phụ nữ) ( I love ladies) 12 (Ông) Victor Ban (Mr.) Victor Ban 13 Bác sĩ Trực Ngôn Dr Straight talk 14 Câu phước Little master Blessing 15 Cậu tú Tân Young Mr Tân 16 Cơ Hồng Hơn Mrs Sunset 17 Cô Tuyết Miss Snow 18 Cụ cố Hồng Granpa Hồng 19 Đức Kim Thượng Our Majesty 20 Ông Cẩm Tây The French captain 21 Ông phán mọc sừng Horned senior clerk 36 22 Sư Tăng Phú Monk Brother Tăng Phú 23 Thầy Min Officer Min 24 Thầy Min toa Officer Min toa 25 Xuân tóc đỏ Red -haired Xuân 37 ... meanings behind proper names in ? ?Số đỏ? ??? Which strategies are applied by Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman in translating proper names from Vietnamese to English in ? ?Số đỏ? ??? Significance of. .. to study about strategies applied in Vietnamese -English translation of proper names in ? ?Số đỏ? ?? by Vu Trong Phung After analyzing 25 proper names collected from the original text of the book, the... characters in ? ?Số đỏ? ??……………………….…20 Table 4.2 The use of translation procedures in Vietnamese -English translation of proper names in ? ?Số đỏ? ??………………………… 24 Table 4.3 Proper names translated by literal…………………….25