Equivalence in the translation of vietnamese cultural words in the book “wandering through vietnamese culture” by huu ngoc

Equivalence in the translation of vietnamese cultural words in the book “wandering through vietnamese culture” by huu ngoc

College of Foreign Languages (VHUN)Postgraduate Studies

BẠCH ÁNH HỒNG

EQUIVALENCE IN THE TRANSLATION OFVIETNAMESE CULTURAL WORDS IN THE BOOK“WANDERING THROUGH VIETNAMESE CULTURE”

BY HUU NGOC

(TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG CÁCH DỊCH CÁC TỪ CÓ YẾU TỔVĂN HÓA TRONG CUỐN SÁCH “WANDERING THROUGH

VIETNAMESE CULTURE” CỦA HỮU NGỌC)

Field: English LinguisticsCode: 602215

Course: K13

M.A Minor Thesis

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến

Hanoi, July 2007

This paper is a linguistic study on equivalences and the translation methods rendered toachieve the equivalent effects in a book written by the writer and translator, Huu Ngoc.More specifically, the chosen subject of investigation is the translation of Vietnamesecultural words in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” The reasons for thischoice are both linguistic and practical.

Linguistically, the translation of culture-related words has never been seen as an easy task,especially between such two distant cultures as Vietnam and English The challenges mayoriginate from cultural differences, the cultural knowledge of the translator etc However,the hardest problems may be attached to non- equivalence which consists of the conceptsunknown to target language readers, the non-lexicalization of the concepts, the lack ofsuper ordinates of hyponyms etc The main contribution of this paper is to draw out themain ways of dealing with the hurdles by investigating how an experienced translator and afamous Vietnamese cultural expert overcome the difficulty in his book.

Practically, I hope that the lessons drawn from the study of his work could effectivelyassist me in my practical job at my university, where a Vietnamese Studies Department isto be opened with an aim to train new generation of youngsters who will narrow down theculture gaps between Vietnam and other countries.

On the completion of this thesis, I am indebted to many people.

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc.

Prof Dr Le Hung Tien for his valuable and prompt advice and helps, without which, this

thesis could not come into being.

My thanks also go to all my lecturers and officers from Post Graduate Department,College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, who have facilitated me withthe best possible conditions during my whole course of studying.

Last but not least, let my gratitude go to my family and friends, whose encouragement andassistance are of extreme importance during the course of my writing this thesis

Hanoi, July 2007

Bach Anh Hong

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Scope of the study 1

3 Aims of the study 2

4 Methodology 2

5 Design of the study 3

Chapter 1: Theoretical background 4

1.1 Translation theory 4

1.1.1 Definition of translation 4

1.1.2 Translation equivalence 4

1.1.2.1 The nature of equivalence in translation 5

1.1.2.2 Types of equivalence in translation 5

1.1.3 Common problems of non-equivalence 7

1.2 Notion of culture in translation 9

1.3 Cultural categories 10

1.4 Translation methods 11

1.5 Conclusion 13

Chapter 2: Vietnamese cultural words and their equivalences 14

2.1 The most common types of cultural words 14

2.2 The most common types of equivalence 14

2.2.1 Nil equivalence: 16

2.2.2 Other types of equivalence 25

2.2.2.1 One-to-part-of one equivalence 25

2.2.2.3 One-to-one equivalence 31

PART C: CONCLUSION 33

REFERENCES 38

PART A: INTRODUCTION1 Rationale

Translating from one language into another has never been an easy job even for the mostexperienced translators Translation, involving the transposition of thoughts expressed inone language by one social group into the appropriate expression of another group, entailsa process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding However, the process oftransmitting cultural elements is a complicated and vital task Culture is a complexcollection of experiences which condition daily life; it includes history, social structure,religion, traditional customs and everyday usage This is difficult to comprehendcompletely The more disparities that exist between any two languages, the greater themeaning loss in the translation is As hard as it may seem, the translation of Vietnamesecultural words is now an inevitable part in our integrating life since we have become amember of WTO Thang Long University is one of those where the Department ofVietnam Study is going to be opened with an aims of training Vietnamese students intothose who can introduce Vietnamese culture to the world This sooner or later will poseteachers of English at Thang Long University a problem of matching cultural equivalencebetween English and Vietnamese However, not many empirical studies have beenconducted so far on the issue of translation of Vietnamese cultural words into English.Those reasons may explain how this study came into being The study investigates how avery famous and experienced translator, Huu Ngoc, dealt with all the Vietnamese culturalwords his whole-hearted work “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” It also raised theneed for translators of Vietnamese-English texts, especially in treating cultural terms, topay close attention to the linguistic and cultural elements of the source texts.

2 Scope of the study

This study sets its boundary in studying cultural words in the book “Wandering throughVietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc It will look into the equivalence and non-equivalenceof Vietnamese cultural words and their translations from the following points:

 the most common types of equivalence the possible reasons for the non-equivalence their translations

3 Aims of the study

The main aims of the study are:

 To find out the most common type of equivalence used in his translation ofVietnamese cultural words

 To draw out the common problems of equivalence seen in the translation ofVietnamese cultural words into English

 To draw out the strategies and procedures that may apply to the translation ofVietnamese cultural words

 To suggest some implications for the translation of the cultural words.On this ground, the study seeks answer for the retailing research questions:

 What are the common types of equivalence used in the translation of culturalwords in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc? What are the most common problems in translating Vietnamese cultural words

into English that can be seen in the book?

 What are the common methods used in the translation of Vietnamese culturalwords?

4 Methodology

With the hope to go on the right track for the answers, the writer will conduct the study infollowing steps:

 Building up a theoretical background for the paper.

 Collecting and group the Vietnamese cultural words and their Englishequivalents for description, analysis, comparison and induction

 Finding out the similarities and differences and draw out the translation used inthe translation of cultural words

 The main method is contrastive analysis.

 Data collection: The Vietnamese cultural words and their translations appear inthe book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc.

5 Design of the study

This study consists of three main parts, a reference, and a number of appendixes.

Part A: Introduction

The introduction gives rationale for the study It also outlines the aims and themethods of the study.

Part B: Development

The development comprises two chapters.

Chapter 1, which is named “Theoretical background”, provides the theory of

translation and the translation of cultural words.

Chapter 2 entitled “Cultural words and their equivalences” discusses the most

common types of equivalence in translation of Vietnamese cultural words.It also studies the translation of Vietnamese cultural words and translationmethods employed in their translation by Huu Ngoc in his book“Wandering though Vietnamese culture”.

Part C, which is the “Conclusion”, summaries the strategies and procedures and

Reference includes all the books, articles or website that has been referred to during the

writing of this thesis.

The appendixes list examples of different groups of equivalence in order of the alphabet

PART B: DEVELOPMENTChapter 1: Theoretical background

1.1 Translation theory

1.1.1 Definition of translation

Translation has been viewed differently through times and thus defined variously Larson(1984: 3) stated “Translation is basically a change of form… In translation the form of thesource language is replaced by the form of the receptor (target) language” Newmark(1988:5) did not seem to totally agree with Larson - who considered translation a basic“change of form”, by emphasizing the “intended in the text” as said “ Translation isrendering a written text into another language in the way the author intended in the text.”Hatim & Mason (1990:3), on the other hand, focused more on the communicative purposeof translation by citing: “Translation is a communicative process which takes place withina social context” It is then followed by other linguists, Bell (1991: 5), who thought“semantic and stylistic equivalences” are crucial for a translation to communicatesuccessfully: “Translation is the expression in another language (or TL) of what has beenexpressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences”These definitions, in spite of slight differences in the expressions, share common featuresthat they all emphasize the importance of finding the closest equivalence in meaning by thechoice of appropriate target language’s lexical and grammatical structures, communicationsituation, and cultural and the requirement to find equivalents which have similarcharacteristics to the original It is this notion of equivalence, which will be taken intoconsideration in the next part.

1.1.2 Translation equivalence

As easily seen, equivalence can be considered a central concept in translation theory.Therefore, it is not by chance that many theorists define translation in terms of equivalencerelation Newmark (1988) defines: “The overriding purpose of any translation should be toachieve ‘equivalence effect’ i.e to produce the same effect on the readership of translationas was obtained on the readership of the original” He also sees equivalence effect as the

desirable result rather than the aim of any translation except for two cases: (a) If thepurpose of the SL text is to affect and the TL translation is to inform or vice versa; (b) Ifthere is a pronounced cultural gap between the SL and the TL text.

Pym(1992) has even pointed to its circularity: equivalence is supposed to definetranslation, in turn, defines equivalence.

1.1.2.1 The nature of equivalence in translation

Equivalence has been considered the unique intertextual relation that only translations areexpected to show: it is defined as the relationship between a source text and a target textthat allows the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place Nearly alltraditional definitions of translation, whether formal or informal, appeal to some notion ofthis: translation means the replacement, or substitution, of an utterance in one language bya formally or semantically or pragmatically equivalent utterance in another language.Therefore, it is no surprise that equivalence is always taken for granted as a prescriptivecriterion, as Koller (1995:196) says:

“Translation can be understood as the result of a text-reprocessing activity, by means ofwhich a source-language text is transposed into a target-language text Between theresulting text in L2 (the target-language text) and the source text in L1 (the source-language text) there exists a relationship which can be designated as a translational, orequivalence relation.”

Then the question to be asked is not whether the two texts are equivalent, but what typeand degree of translation equivalence they reveal Therefore, it is possible to say thatequivalence is “Any relation characterizing translation under a specified set ofcircumstances.” And “Equivalence was a relationship between two texts in two languages,rather than between the languages themselves” (Dr Tien’s lectures- 2007).

1.1.2.2 Types of equivalence in translation

Translation theorists tend to classify equivalence in accordance with different criteria andapproach Some out standings are quantitative, meaning based, form-based and functionbased.

a Quantitative approach:

Munday (2001) seems to stick to numeracy and suggests:

 One-to-one equivalence: A single expression in TL is equivalent to a singleexpression in SL.

 One-to-many equivalence: More than one TL expressions are equivalent to asingle SL expression.

 Many- to-one equivalence: there is more than one expression in the sourcelanguage but there is a single expression in target language which isequivalence to them.

 One-to-part-of-one equivalence: A TL expression covers part of a conceptdesignated by a single SL expression.

 Nil equivalence: no TL expression is equivalent to a single SL expression ->loaned/borrowed equivalents should be used.

b Meaning-based equivalence

Koller (1979) considers five types of equivalence:

 Denotative equivalence: the SL and the TL words refer to the same thing in thereal world.

 Connotative equivalence: this type of equivalence provides additional valuesbesides denotative value and is achieved by the translator’s choice ofsynonymous words or expressions.

 Text-normative equivalence: The SL and the TL words are used in the same orsimilar context in their respective languages.

 Pragmatic equivalence: With readership orientation, the SL and TL words havethe same effect on their respective readers.

 Formal equivalence: This type of equivalence produces an analogy of form inthe translation by their exploiting formal possibilities of TL, or creating newforms in TL

c Form-based equivalence:

An extremely interesting discussion of the notion of equivalence can be found in Baker(1992) who seems to offer a more detailed list of conditions upon which the concept ofequivalence can be defined She distinguishes between:

 Equivalence that can appear at word level and above word level, whentranslating from one language into another This means that the translatorshould pay attention to a number of factors when considering a single word,such as number, gender and tense (1992:11-12)

 Textual equivalence, when referring to the equivalence between a SL text and aTL text in terms of information and cohesion It is up to the translator to decidewhether or not to maintain the cohesive ties as well as the coherence of the SLtext His or her decision will be guided by three main factors, that is, the targetaudience, the purpose of the translation and the text type

1.1.3 Common problems of non-equivalence

As we all share the view that equivalence is the vital part of translation, we may easilyagree that the problem of non-equivalence is the hardest hurdles of translation Manytheorists has showed their concerns in the issue of “untranslatability” The following aresome common types of non-equivalence at word level suggested by Barker (1994: 72):

a Culture-specific concepts

The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the targetculture The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to a religiousbelief, a social custom, or even a type of food.

b The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language

The source-language word may express a concept which is known in the target culture butsimply not lexicalized, that is not ‘allocated’ a target-language word to express it.

c The source-language word is semantically complex

The source-language word may be semantically complex This is a fairly common problemin translation Words do not have to be morphologically complex to be semanticallycomplex (Bolinger and Sears, 1968) In other words, a single word which consists of asingle morpheme can sometimes express a more complex set of meanings than a wholesentence.

d The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning

The target language may make more or fewer distinctions in meaning than the sourcelanguage What one language regards as an important distinction in meaning anotherlanguage may not perceive as relevant.

e The target language lacks a superordinate

The target language may have specific words (hyponyms) but no general word(superordinate) to head the semantic field Russian has no ready equivalent for facilities,meaning ‘any equipment, building, services, etc that are provided for a particular activityor purpose’

f The target language lacks a specific term (hyponym)

More commonly, languages tend to have general words (superordinates) but lack specificones (hyponyms), since each language makes only those distinctions in meaning whichseem relevant to its particular environment.

g Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective

Physical perspective may be of more importance in one language than it is in another.Perspective may also include the relationship between participants in the discourse (tenor).

h Differences in expressive meaning

There may be a target-language word which has the same propositional meaning as thesource-language word, but it may have a different expressive meaning.

i Differences in form

There is often no equivalent in the target language for a particular form in the source text.Certain suffixes and prefixes which convey propositional and other types of meaning inEnglish often have no direct equivalents in other languages.

j Differences in frequency and purpose using specific forms

Even when a particular form does have a ready equivalent in the target language, there maybe a difference in the frequency with which it is used or the purpose for which it is used.

k The use of loan words in the source text

The use of loan words in the source text poses a special problem in translation Quite apart

form their respective propositional meaning, loan words such as au fait, chic, and alfresco

in English are often used for their prestige value, because they can add an air ofsophistication to the text or its subject matter.

1.2 Notion of culture in translation

The definition of "culture" as given in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1999) varies fromdescriptions of the "Arts" to plant and bacteria cultivation and includes a wide range ofintermediary aspects More specifically concerned with language and translation,Newmark (1988:94) defines culture as "the way of life and its manifestations that arepeculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression", thusacknowledging that each language group has its own culturally specific features Hefurther clearly states that operationally he does "not regard language as a component orfeature of culture" (Newmark 1988:95) in direct opposition to the view taken by Vermeerwho states that "language is part of a culture" (1989:222) According to Newmark,Vermeer's stance would imply the impossibility to translate whereas for the latter,translating the source language (SL) into a suitable form of TL is part of the translator'srole in transcultural communication.

Despite the differences in opinion as to whether language is part of culture or not, the twonotions appear to be inseparable Discussing the problems of correspondence in translation,Nida (1964:130) confers equal importance to both linguistic and cultural differencesbetween the SL and the TL and concludes that "differences between cultures may causemore severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure" Itis further explained that parallels in culture often provide a common understanding despitesignificant formal shifts in the translation The cultural implications for translation are thusof significant importance as well as lexical concerns.

Lotman (1978:211-32) states that "no language can exist unless it is steeped in the contextof culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre, the structure ofnatural language" Bassnett (1980:13-14) underlines the importance of this doubleconsideration when translating by stating that language is "the heart within the body ofculture," the survival of both aspects being interdependent Linguistic notions oftransferring meaning are seen as being only part of the translation process; "a whole set ofextra-linguistic criteria" must also be considered As Bassnett further points out, "thetranslator must tackle the SL text in such a way that the TL version will correspond to theSL version To attempt to impose the value system of the SL culture onto the TL cultureis dangerous ground" (Bassnett, 1980:23) Thus, when translating, it is important toconsider not only the lexical impact on the TL reader, but also the manner in whichcultural aspects may be perceived and make translating decisions accordingly.

(5) Gestures and habits (often described in ‘non-verbal’ language)

1.4 Translation methods

Language and culture may thus be seen as being closely related and both aspects must beconsidered for translation When considering the translation of cultural words and notions,Newmark proposes two opposing methods: transference and componential analysis(Newmark, 1988:96) As Newmark mentions, transference gives "local colour," keepingcultural names and concepts Although placing the emphasis on culture, meaningful toinitiated readers, he claims this method may cause problems for the general readership andlimit the comprehension of certain aspects The importance of the translation process incommunication leads Newmark to propose componential analysis which he describes asbeing "the most accurate translation procedure, which excludes the culture and highlightsthe message" (Newmark, 1988:96) This may be compared to the scale proposed byHervey et al, visualised as follows:

(Hervey et al, 1992:28)

Nida's definitions (1964:129) of formal and dynamic equivalence may also be seen toapply when considering cultural implications for translation According to Nida, a "glosstranslation" mostly typifies formal equivalence where form and content are reproduced asfaithfully as possible and the TL reader is able to "understand as much as he can of thecustoms, manner of thought, and means of expression" of the SL context Contrasting withthis idea, dynamic equivalence "tries to relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevantwithin the context of his own culture" without insisting that he "understand the culturalpatterns of the source-language context" All in all, it can be easily seen that the aboveapproaches are not very much different from what Venuti (1995:20) named “sourcelanguage oriented and target language-oriented” translation approach, which may sharesome similarities with Newmark’s ( 1988: 145) methods of translation as follows:

Semantic translation Communicative translation

Word-for-word translation

This method focuses on SL word order in which words are translated by most commonmeaning and out of context Therefore, the results of this method are that the translation isread like original text.

Adaptation

This is the ‘freest’ form of translation It is used mainly for plays (comedies) and poetry;the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the SL culture converted to the TLculture and the text rewritten The deplorable practice of having a play or poem literallytranslated and then rewritten by an established dramatist or poet has produced many pooradaptations have ‘rescued’ period plays.

Free translation

Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the formof the original Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called‘intralingual translation’, often prolix and pretentious, and not translation at all.

Idiomatic translation

Idiomatic translation reproduces the ‘message’ of the original but tends to distort nuancesof meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where these do not exist in theoriginal (Authorities as diverse as Seleskovitch and Stuart Gilbert tend to this form oflikely, ‘natural’ translation.)

1.5 Conclusion

This part of study has just examined general translation theories It also takes a close lookon the significance of culture and the translation of cultural words Furthermore, a varietyof different approaches have been examined in an attempt to shed light on Huu Ngoctranslation of cultural words in the next chapter.

Chapter 2: Vietnamese cultural words and their equivalences

2.1 The most common types of cultural words

In his classification of culture words, Newmark (1998) concluded five major categories ofculture words including ecology, material culture (artifacts), social culture – work andleisure, organisations, customs, ideas and gestures and habits.

In Huu Ngoc’s book, the frequency of material culture, and to be more specific, food is thehighest as compared to other types The ratio among them can be illustrated in the chart asfollows:

Culture-related words Quantity Rate (%)Food and drinks 135 45.9%

2.2 The most common types of equivalence

As mentioned above, there are many approaches to the classification of equivalence intranslation This thesis adopts Munday (2001)’s perspective of quantitative equivalencewhich is consisted of one-to-one equivalence, many- to- one equivalence, one-to-part-of-

Food and drinksOthers

one equivalence and nil equivalence We can hardly find the case of one-to- manyequivalence Therefore, this kind of equivalence is not taken into consideration.

The writer of the thesis has listed almost all the cultural words occurred in his book and putthem into the order of the most common types of equivalence to the least common one.The data can be easily find in the table below:

Type of equivalence Quantity Rate (%) Examples

Nil 194 66 Nước vối: “voi tea”One-to-part-of-one 39

2.2.1 Nil equivalence:

Looking into the translation of “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”, one can easilysee on the chart above that nil-equivalence makes up the largest part, consisting 66%.Clearly, This is not a surprise to any translator who have ever stepped into the translationland of culture related words There are some explanations for this biggest share.

The possible explanation is the availability Normally, with exactly the same meaning, noone can say for sure that two cultures could choose to express it the same way For

example, , Vietnamese people would prefer using the buffalo in many idioms “Ngưu tầm

ngưu, mã tầm mã” but the English would like to use “bird” as in “Birds of the samefeather flocks together” One other example may be “hiền như củ khoai”, “hiền như bụt”

or “hiền như cục đất” for Vietnamese people but their English counter part would like tosay “as mild as a lamb” (hiền như một chú cừu non) That is the case when two cultures

express the same meaning As a consequence, one can easily guess what the situation willbe like when there are abundant of things in Source Language (SL) culture but there is nosuch things Target Language (TL) culture.

The first problem occurs when the Vietnamese word may express a concept which istotally unknown in the target language culture To be more exact, those words often link tofood and many kinds of tropical herbs and plants For instances:

The explanation to this situation may be the climate differences Vietnamese climate is hotand humid which is home to many tropical kinds of plants while the English climate is coldand dry, which may be suitable to totally different kinds of plants Therefore, it can beeasily understood while there are a lot of tropical plant culture-related words in his bookwhich may not be known to English readers.

This may also be the reason for the second group of non-equivalence which is dishes.Different kinds of vegetables / herbs may lead to different ways of cooking, which leads tothe existence of exotic Vietnamese dishes to Englishman For examples:

Xôi gấcThịt kho tàuCua đồng nấu thiên lý

Living on land, Vietnamese (and Chinese) peasants also have their own festivals, customsor ceremonies relating to land, rice or grains, trees with special attention paid to theweather, especially rain For instances:

Lễ cầu đảo (cầu mưa)Lập XuânTết Đoan Ngọ (diệt sâu bọ)

Tết Trung ThuTết Ông Công Ông TáoĐi hái lộc

Additionally, the traditional games and entertainments of the Vietnamese are also various:

Trồng Nụ, Trồng HoaÔ ăn quanĐánh thẻ

Those mentioned categories are like only the tip of the Vietnamese culture iceberg whichcan be roughly listed as illustrations for the diversity of the source language culture.Clearly, this poses a huge challenge to the translator and the writer.

So that will happen if the translator has to face with the translation of culture-relatedconcepts? Looking into the translation of those nil-equivalents words, one can clearly seethat the first common translation tool that is fully made use of is borrowings

First of all, looking at the group of typically tropical plants and vegetables, Huu Ngoc usesthe third language, that is, Latin as a medium for translation He tends to use the scientificterms of the plants to translate the Vietnamese words For instances:

Cây sấu:dracontomelum duppereanum PierreGạo tẻ:Oryza sativa Lin var dura