The translation of health insuracne terms of non-equivalence group

The translation of health insuracne terms of non-equivalence group

This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award ofany other degree or diploma in any university or tertiary institution, and to the bestof my knowledge and belief, neither does it contain material previously published orwritten by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text.

Vũ Thị Thanh Yến

On the completion of this thesis, I wish to express my deepest gratitude tomy supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến who gave me benefit of his wisdomand his expert knowledge in translation as well as his constant encouragement fromthe beginning stage of working out the research proposal to the final stage ofwriting up the thesis Without his critical comments and valuable suggestions, thisstudy could not have been completed.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Mrs Rosemary Nguyen who helpedshape the idea for my thesis, giving me her practical guidance, assisting me withdata collection and sharing with me her long and varied experience in the translationof health insurance terms in the US health plans.

I take this opportunity to express my sincere thank to all lecturers inPostgraduate Department at College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam NationalUniversity, Hanoi for their useful lectures during my M.A course.

Finally, I would also like to thank my parents who have been a constantsource of encouragement, support, love and care during the course of my writing.

The need for the translation of US health plans into Vietnamese is a of-fact since there are already a number of American insurer carriers operating inVietnam, and many more are expected to enter such a potential market of more than80 million people However, it is not an easy task at all due to sharp differences inthe sub-culture of health insurance between the US and Vietnam

matter-This thesis titled “A study on the equivalence between English andVietnamese translation of insurance terms in US health insurance”, therefore, is an

attempt to find out the differences and similarities between English HI terms andtheir Vietnamese equivalents, and to draw out the strategies/procedures/methodsthat are appropriate to the translation of HI terms in the US health plans intoVietnamese Hopefully, the research may make a contribution to the translation ofHI terms and will be of some help to insurance circle, especially translators withlittle experience of doing the translation in the field.

To this end, the paper identifies the equivalence relationships and classifiesterms according to their structural patterns More importantly, the research paperfocuses on working out strategies/procedures/methods that can be best applied tothe translation of terms of equivalence and non-equivalence groups Suggestions fortranslation strategies/procedures/methods are also made so that translators may havean idea of what strategies/procedures/methods can be used to deal with certaingroups of terms.

ABBREVIATIONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I 1.Terminology 4

I.1.1 Definition 4I.1.2 General features of terminology 4I.1.3 Term creation 6I.2 English single words and compounds in comparison with the Vietnamese ones 7I.3 Translation theory 7I.3.1 Definition of translation7I.3.2 Translation equivalence 8I.3.3 Translation methods, strategies and procedures 10

I.3.4 Technical translation 11

I.4 Translation of terminology 11

I.5 Chapter conclusion 13

CHAPTER II: THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURANCETERMS OF EQUIVALENCE GROUP 14

II.1 An overview of equivalence relationships in the translation of health insurance terms 14

II.2 Classification of health insurance terms in the US health insurance plans according to their structural patterns 17

II.2.1 Single terms 17

II.2.2 Compound terms 19

II.3 The common strategies and procedures used in the translation of health insurance terms of non-equivalence group 19

II.3.1 The translation of single terms – Old words with new senses 23

II.3.2 The translation of compound terms by rank shift or transposition 24

II.3.3 The translation strategy which involves the deletion of “OF” 26

II.4 Concluding remark 26

CHAPTER III: THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE TERMSOF NON-EQUIVALENCE GROUP 28

III.1 The source of non-equivalence problem in the translation of health insurance terms in the US health plans 28

III.2 The strategies, procedures and methods used in dealing with non-equivalence problem in the translation of health insurance terms in the US health plans 29

III.2.1 The translation of terms by transference procedure (the use of loan words) 30

III.2.2 The translation of terms by paraphrase 32

III.2.3 The translation of terms with communicative method 34

III.2.4 Literal translation 37

III.3 Concluding remarks 38

PART C: CONCLUSION 39

1 The terms of equivalence group 39

2 The terms of non-equivalence group 39

3 Suggestion for the methods, procedures and strategies 40

4 Suggestion for further studies 42

REFERENCESAPPENDICES

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Since Viet Nam has successfully gained its accession to WTO, and the Bushadministration has granted Vietnam with Permanent Normal Trading Status (PNTR), awide range of actors, including US enterprises, is expected to be here It is also envisagedthat US HI providers will do business in our country, hence a demand for the translationwork in the field will be inevitable The problem lies in the fact that sharp differences inthe US HI and the Vietnamese one result in several diffrent HI plans between the twocountries Undoubtedly, this will pose a great obstacle to translators due to theirinsufficient knowledge about the two different sub-cultures of health insurance They mayhave to squeeze their brain to convey the true essence of each kind of health plans fromEnglish in Vietnamese

In the USA, quite a few Vietnamese-American are full time employees in Americancompanies and factories, hence eligible to HI coverage offered by their employers.Annually, the companies and factories have the so-called enrollment for their employees toenroll for health benefits or to choose the health plan that best benefits them To guaranteethat their employees do not end up in wrong decisions, which goes in counter with theirbenefits due to the failure to understand HI plans written in English, they have themtranslated by Vietnamese and native American translators

In Vietnam, though translators do not have to translate such HI plans for clients, theystill have to translate a number of presumably popular HI terms, including many in the USHI plans for at least insurance-majored students or for training courses held by someinsurance carriers

Having studied and compared the original and the translated versions by differenttranslators, I have come up with an idea of making an investigation into how HI terms in

the US HI plans are currently dealt with Hopefully, the study, titled “A study on the

equivalence between English and Vietnamese translation of insurance terms in US HIplans”, may be of some use to those who have been and will do translation in the field.

2 Scope of the study

Within limited time, resources, conditions, and the length of the thesis, the researcherfocuses only on HI terms collected from HI plans Disability income insurance which isalso a sub-type of the US HI is excluded from the study

Such is the boundary set for my thesis so as to achieve a thorough investigation.Specifically, the study takes into consideration such major aspects as follows:

 classification of equivalence relationships structural patterns of HI terms in English their translations

3 Aims of the study

 To work out the similarities and differences between English terms and theirVietnamese equivalents

 To draw out the strategies/procedures/methods that may apply to the translationof HI terms, especially to the translation of non-equivalence terms in the US HIplans into Vietnamese

4 Methods of the study

their Vietnamese equivalents for description, analysis and induction

 Drawing out strategies, procedures and methods in the translation of HI terms

The main method is contrastive analysis.

4.3 Data collection

The English HIterms studied are taken from the US insurance health plans and theirequivalents are picked out from the translations by native American and Vietnamese-American translators living in the US and those in charge of translation work in Bảo Việt,Pjico, Prudential, and Aoncare which are big insurer carriers in Vietnam.

5 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts, references and appendices as follows:

 Part A: Introduction

The rationale for the study, scope, aims, methods and design of the study areorderly presented in this part

 Part B: Development

There are three chapters in this part:

Chapter I: Theoretical background

The theory of translation and terminology will be dealt with in this chapter.

Chapter II: The translation of HI terms of equivalence group

This chapter features an investigation into the equivalence between English andVietnamese translation of HI terms in the US health plans Accordingly, how HIterms in the US health plans are currently translated and whatstrategies/procedures/methods are employed are the focus of the research

Chapter III: The translation of HI terms of non-equivalence group

This chapter examines how non-equivalence problem in the translation of HI termsin the US health plans is solved by available translation strategies, procedures andmethods

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

I 1.Terminology

I.1.1 Definition

Terminology has been defined variously by many different linguists, either native

or Vietnamese Chau, D.H (1981) claims “Terms are specialists words used within aspecific field, a profession or any technological field” To identify technical term, he states“Scientific and technical terminology consists of lexical units used to denote phenomenalobjects, activities …in industrial technologies and natural or social sciences” Sharing

some common features in content with the one by Chau, though put differently, the

definition proposed by Giap, N.T (1998) seems to be more informative: “Terminology,understood as a special linguistic unit of language, consists of word and fixed phrase thatprovides precise definition and objectives that belong to particular scientific area.”

Such definitions can serve as a foundation on which we can base our distinction

between terms and words In fact, Baker (1998:261) puts that “Terms differ from words inthat they are endowed with a special forms of reference, namely that they refer to discreteconceptual entities, properties, activities or relations which constitute the knowledge spaceof a particular subject field” Accordingly, further important differences between terms

and words are as follows:

1 Terms have special reference within a particular discipline whereas wordsfunction in general reference over a variety of subject fields.

2 Terms keep their lives and meanings only for as long as they serve the system ofknowledge they gave rise to them.

In other words, terms together with words and proper names constitute the general

class of lexical items Names refer individually to objects and people; words refer arbitraryboundary between terms and words is not a clear-cut, i.e many terms become ordinarywords when they are used in specialized field

I.1.2 General features of terminology

Since terminology is not allowed to carry the speaker’ attitude, figurative sense,compliment or criticism, it should possess the following qualities: accurateness,systematicism, internationalism, popularity and nationality as claimed by Giap, N.T (1998)and Lang, L.V (1977) They will be briefly presented in the next part.

I.1.2.1 Accurateness

A term needs to be accurate and clear because basically it reflects an exact conceptof a science If a term is of absolute accuracy, people never mistake one concept foranother Once a word has become a term, it no longer has connotational, emotionalmeaning; it also loses its polysemousness, synonymousness and antonymousness In short,terminology necessarily works on the principle that “one concept has only one term for it,and one term indicates only one concept” This relationship is called the one-to-oneequivalent between a concept and a term.

I.1.2.2 Systematicism

Any field of sciences has its own limited system of concepts, which are named by asystem of terms Therefore, each item has its own position in the system of concepts andbelongs to a terminological system As a result, a term loses its value when isolated fromsystem In short, a term has to be a dependent member of its system.

I.1.2.3 Internationalism

Terms are used internationally because they are special words expressing commonscientific concepts to people of different languages Therefore, it is useful to agree onterms to be used among languages in order to push up the development of science Theinternational links in science result in a number of terms presented in many differentlanguages For example, video, radio, telephone…are found in French, German, Englishand Vietnamese…with little difference in form.

I.1.2.4 Popularity

Terms need to be popular in the sense that they should be close to the language ofthe masses, which is to say easy-to-remember, easy-to-understand and easy-to-remember,since they will help bring knowledge to and benefit men of all walks of life

I.1.2.5 Nationality

Though belonging to a particular subject field, terms are still a part of a languagesystem of a nation They, therefore, possess all the characteristics and colors of a nation

language Put differently, they should be made from the materials of the national languagein terms of lexicology, forms and grammar.

I.1.3 Term creation

Since terms are to name concepts, so whenever a concept appears, is made in a

culture, or translated to a new culture, it involves the creation of a new term to name it

I.1.3.1 Primary and secondary term creation

Primary and secondary terms formation are governed by different influences: Primary term formation occurs when a newly created concept has to be

named wile secondary term formation occurs as a result of either (1) themonolingual revision of given terminology, for example, the purpose ofproducing a standard document, or (2) a transfer of technology to an otherlinguistic community-a process which requires the creation of new term inthe target language.

 Anther fundamental differences between the two formation methods lies inthe fact that in primary term formation, there is no linguistic precedentalthough there are rules for forming appropriate terms On the contrary, insecondary term formation, there is always the precedent of an alreadyexisting term in another language with its own motivation.

 Secondary term formation is more often subject to guidelines than primaryterm formation which are on the basis of patterns terms and wordsformation already prevalent in the subject field and natural language inquestion.

(Baker, M: 1998)

I.1.3.2 Guidance on the creation of terms

 Terms should consistently reflect some key features of the concepts they areliked to in order to facilitate precise reference At the same time, theyshould be as economical as possible without giving rise to homonymy. Terms should be lexically systematic and should conform to the

phonological and morphological rules of the language.

 Terms must conform to the general rules of word-formation of the languageor they should allow composition and derivation where appropriate.

 The meaning of the term should be recognizable independently of anyspecific context.

Those are advices from International Organization for Standard (ISO 1995) (citedin Bac, N.T, 2003)

I.2.English single words and compounds in comparison with the Vietnameseones

Single and compound words in Vietnamese have been defined by many establishedlinguists Châu, Đ.H (1981:40) defines single words as one-morpheme words He alsoclaims that the majority of Vietnamized single words are monosyllabic The number ofpolysyllabic simple words such as bù nhìn (scarecrow), ếch ương (frog), mồ hôi (sweat) isrelatively small According to Cẩn, N.T (1999: 51), a Vietnamese syllable, in most cases,corresponds to a word, whereas compounds are comprised of at least two words thatnormally can exist independently and seperately from each other

Nguyen Hiet Chi and Le Thuoc (1935) defined that ‘Compound words are wordswith at least two roots; namely, words in their structures, have at least two morphemeswhich are not affixationals but root morphemes’.

Unlike a Vietnamese single word that is formed by only one morpheme in mostnormal cases, a single word in English contains at east one morpheme In fact, a singleword in English is defined as a sound or a combination of sounds that symbolizes andcommunicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination ofmorphemes (TheFreeDictionary at: www.thefreedictionary.com/ - 74k - Jul 13, 2007) Forexample, the single word ‘need’ has only one morpheme, but ‘inconceivable’ written as a

single word has three morphemes: in, meaning ‘not’, conceive meaning ‘think or imagine’,and able meaning ‘able to be, fit to be’ One important feature of morpheme is that some

just have grammatical functions such as making plurality (limitations), and tense (insured).Compound words in English share certain common features with the Vietnameseones Take now a definition of compounds as illustration Jackson and Amvela (2000:70)stated that compounds may be defined as stems consisting of more than one roots (cited inHien, T.T.T, 2005).

I.3 Translation theory

I.3.1 Definition of translation

Kelly, L.G-a prominent figure in linguistic circle stated “Without translation, thereis no history of the world” How can it that be? What has he based on to make such aclaim? And what is translation that is of great importance as implied by Kelly? In anattempt to find the answer to the last question, I have find myself thrown into confusion byquite a few definitions proposed by different linguists Follows are some of them:

According to Cartford (1965), translation is “the replacement of a text in onelanguage (SL) by an equivalent text in another language (TL)” In Bell, R.T (1991:5), theauthor collected and edited the following definition: “Translation is the expression inanother language (or TL) of what has been expressed in another, SL, preserving semanticand stylistic equivalences.” Hatim & Mason (1990:3), however, focus more on the

communicative purpose of translation rather than the semantic and stylistic features:

“Translation is a communicative process which takes place within a social context”.

Newmark (1995:5) simply defines translation as the rendering of a written text into anotherlanguage in the way the author intended in the text.”

Though put different, these definitions share one common thing, which is to findequivalents that best or appropriately preserve features of the original in terms ofsemantics, grammatical structures, lexis, cultural context as well as communicationsituation among other things to be considered

I.3.2 Translation equivalence

Equivalence has been put in the heart of almost all the theories about translation.Hence, it is understandable that a great attempt has been made by several linguists indefining equivalence or translation in terms of equivalence as Pym (1992, cited in Baker,1998) who has pointed to its circularity: equivalence is supposed to define translation, inturn, defines equivalence A close look at different approaches to the question ofequivalence will help further illustrate the point:

Newmark (1995: 48) states: “The overriding purpose of any translation should be to

achieve ‘equivalent effect, i.e to produce the same effect (or one as close as possible) onthe readership of translation as was obtained on the readership of the original” Accordingto him, equivalence effect is regarded as the desirable result rather than the aim of anytranslation except for two cases: (a) If the purpose of the SL text is to affect and the TLtranslation is to inform or vice versa; (b) If there is a pronounced cultural gap between theSL and the TL text

In the view of Koller (1979), there are five types of equivalence:

 Denotative equivalence: the SL and the TL words refer to the same thing inthe real world.

 Connotative equivalence: this type of equivalence provides additionalvalues besides 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 sameor similar context in their respective languages.

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

 Formal equivalence: This type of equivalence produces an analogy of formin the translation by their exploiting formal possibilities of TL, or creatingnew forms in TL

Kade (1968) and other writers on lexical equivalence, in particular in the area ofterminology, categorizes equivalence relationships as follows:

 One-to-one: There is a single expression in the TL for a single expression inthe SL.

 One-to-many: There is more than one expression in the TL for a single SLone.

 Many-to-one: There is more than one expression in the SL, but there is onlya single expression in the TL that is equivalent to them.

 Many-to-many: There is more than one expression in the SL and they areequivalent to more than one in TL.

 Whole-to-part/Part-to-whole: A TL expression is only equivalent to part ofthe concept designated by a single expression in the SL, or the equivalent inthe TL has a broader meaning than the concept in the SL.

 One-to-zero: There is no expression in the TL for a single expression in theSL

The one-to-zero or nil equivalence problem has always been a big obstacle to evenexperienced translators in every field.

I.3.3 Translation methods, strategies and procedures

Due to time constraint and within the framework of the thesis, we will present onlytranslation methods, procedures and strategies that match the content of the study, or canserve as a firm foundation for the research.

I.3.3.1 Literal translation

It would be useful to study word-for-word translation before having a look at whatliteral translation is Word-for-word translation, according to Newmark (1995:69),transfers SL grammar and word order, as well as the primary meanings of all the SL wordsinto the translation.” This translation is supposed to be effective only for brief simple

neutral sentence Literal translation ranges from one word to one word (hall-salle) through

group to group (a beautiful garden-un beau jardin), collocation to collocation (make a

speech-faire un discour), clause to clause (when that was done-quand cela fut fait) to

sentence to sentence (The man is in the street-L’homme e’tait dans la rue).

I.3.3.2 Communicative translation

Communicative translation attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of theoriginal in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable andcomprehensible to the readership Newmark (1995: 42) claims that in communicativetranslation, the translator has the right to correct or improve the logic; to replace clumsywith elegant, or at least functional, syntactic structure; to remove obscurities; to eliminaterepetition and tautology; to exclude the less likely; to exclude the less likely interpretationof an ambiguity; to modify and clarify jargon, and to normalize bizarreries of idiolect, i.e.wayward uses of language Further, one has the right to correct mistakes of fact and slips,normally stating what one has done in a footnote

I.3.3.3 Transference

Transference is the process of transferring a SL word to a TL text, which includeloan words, transcriptions When it comes to the role of a translator with respect to thistranslation procedure, h/she has to decide whether or not to transfer a word unfamiliar inthe TL Generally, only cultural objects or concept should be transferred to show respectfor the SL’s culture Words and expressions that are normally transferred are: names of allliving and most dead people: geographical and topographical names including newly

independent countries except for those which already have recognized translation; Name ofperiodicals and newspapers, titles of untranslated literary works, plays, films, names ofprivate companies and institutions, public or nationalized institutions; street names,addresses, etc.

I.3.3.4 Shifts or transpositions

A ‘shift’ (Catford’s term) or ‘transposition’ (Vinay and Darbelnet) is a translationprocedure involving a change in the grammar from SL to TL Newmark (1995:85)mentions four sub-types of shifts: (1) the change from singular to plural or in the positionof the adjective; (2) the change when a SL grammatical structure does not exist in the TL.(3) the change where literal translation is grammatically possible but may not accord withnatural usage in the TL; (4) the replacement of a virtual lexical gap by a grammaticalstructure

I.3.3.5 Paraphrase

This is an amplification or explanation of the meaning of a segment of the text.According to Baker (1992; 40), the main advantage of the paraphrase is that it achieves ahigh level of precision in specifying propositional meaning

I.3.4 Technical translation

Newmark (1995:151), in an attempt to distinguish technical translation from

institutional translation, claims that technical translation is one part of specializedtranslation, potentially non-cultural, therefore, universal.

According to Sofer (1991, cited in Mai, N, 2003), the translation of a text may becalled technical when it requires specialized terms in a particular field

A close look at the two definitions can help identify that though put differently,technical translation is viewed as specialized translation by both two linguists Newmark(1995: 152) go even further, suggesting that there are three varieties or levels of technical

language: (1) academic style associated with academic papers, (2) professional style whichrefers to formal terms used by experts and (3) the popular one including familiaralternative terms

I.4 Translation of terminology

I 4.1 Definition of neologisms

In the view of Newmark (1995:140), neologisms can be defined as newly coinedlexical units or existing lexical units that acquire a new sense Neologisms are perhaps the

non-literary and the professional translator’s biggest problem According to him, since theyusually arise first in a response to a particular need, a majority of them have a singlemeaning and can therefore be translated out of context, but many of them soon acquire newmeanings in the target language.

Newmark (1995:141) proposes twelve types of neologism (Old words with newsenses; New coinages; Derived words; Abbreviations; Collocations; Eponyms; Phrasalwords; Trasferred words; Acronyms; Pseudo-neologisms; and The creation ofneologisms) and the way to deal with each but only the ones relevant to the study are

descriptive terms, say, “HI plans-chương trình BHYT” or “premium-phí BH”

Existing collocations with new senses may be cultural or non-cultural; if theconcept or object exists in the TL, there is usually a recognized translation or throughtranslation If the concept does not exist or the TL speakers are not aware of it, an

economical descriptive equivalent has to be given ‘Reimbursement account’ proves itself a

PPO plan’ do not exist in TL And in such cases, what a translator is expected to do is to

transfer them and then add a functional-descriptive term Otherwise, we might create ourown neologisms, but it is not as easy as it sounds

I 4.2.3 Acronyms

Acronyms are an increasingly common feature of all non-literary texts and an

acronym is defined by Newmark (1995: 200) as “the initial letters of words that form agroup of words used (vertiginously) for denoting an object, institution or procedure”.

Sometimes, the acronym can be specially coined for the text and can be found there, so itwould be a waste of time if one tries to look for it in the numerous reference books What’smore, there are many cultural reasons why the acronym may or may not be worthtransferring (depending on the standard contextual factors as readership, translationprospects…) In science the letters are occasionally joined up and becomeinternationalisms (‘laser’, ‘master’), requiring analysis only for less educated TLreadership In translation, the importance of the acronyms decides on the way they aretranslated It can be transferred if they stand for institutions or names of companies Whena political or social organization become important, it is common to transfer its acronymand translate its name A standard equivalent term, or a descriptive term if the standarddoes not yet exist.

I.5 Chapter conclusion

This part has fulfilled it task of gathering information about terminology, itsgeneral features, and the translation of terminology The translation theory, especially avariety of relevant translation strategies and procedures have been reviewed so that it canshed light on how HI terms in the US HI plans are currently translated.

CHAPTER II

THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE TERMS OF EQUIVALENCE GROUP

II.1 An overview of equivalence relationships in the translation of HI terms

From the collected data we can group equivalence relationships into fourcategories, excluding the one-to-zero which will be studied in chapter III:

 one-to-one equivalence one-to-many equivalence many-to-many equivalence  many-to-one equivalence

The four following tables present some typical examples of each type:

One-to-one equivalence

One-to-many equivalence

Chương trình sức khỏe chungTổ hợp BHYT lớn

Preexisting Condition Bệnh tật sẵn cóTình trạng sức khỏe trước khi mua BH

BH chi phí nằm việnCoordination of benefits

Duplication of benefits phối kết hợp quyền lợi

(Waiting/elimination/qualifying) period thời gian chờ đợiSubscriber / Participant

Many-to-many equivalence

Qualified impairment health insuranceSpecial class health insurance

Substandard health insurance

BH những người tàn tật được côngnhận đủ tiêu chuẩn

BH tình trạng suy nhược được chấpnhận

BHSK dưới mức tiêu chuẩnImpaired risk

Substandard risk rủi ro dưới mức chuẩnrủi ro xấu

The variety of equivalence realtionships can be attributed to the following factors:i) There is, to a more a lesser extent, some overlapped area between the US

and Vietnamese insurance as a result of Vietnam’s insurance adapted fromthe US one.

ii) The various sources from which the data was collected1 BlueCross BlueShield at:

www.southcarolinablues.com/bcbs/blue_glossary.nsf/glossary 2 United Healthcare-Trung Tâm Tài Nguyên at:

www.uhcasian.com/Vietnamese/guests/G_4_4_6.htm 3 HIresource center at:

4 SHIBA HelpLine English-Vietnamese Glossary atwww.insurance.wa.gov/publications/consumer/vietnamese/

Vietnamese_SHIBA_Glossary.pdf - Supplemental Result

5 improvement and better insurance at:

Voca-I1.doc - Supplemental Result

www.pjico.com.vn/webplus/attachments/22ecf7c0260e8cf54e27b3531fb86963-6 Thuật ngữ BH nhân thọ I-Glosary I at:www.baoviet.com.vn

7 Vietnam Insurance Training Center8 Aon-care Vietnam Resource Center 9 Prudential Vietnam Resource Center

Thanks to the overlap mentioned above, happy marriages in terms of HI conceptscan be found in some situations, yielding such one-to-one equivalence relationship Whatthe translator has to do is just an easy job He finds terms referring to the same conceptsthat are lexicalized in Vietnamese for the terms in English It should be noted that such aneasy job may be a hard task for those who do not have a background knowledge of HI in

the two countries or who have never met the term Take now the term ‘renewability’ If

something is claimed to have the feature of ‘renewability’, that means it can be restarted

from the beginning, or it can grow again or is replaced after it has been destroyed or lost,or the time for which it is valid can be extended Therefore, if it is rendered into

Vietnamese as “tính có thể làm mới” or ‘khả năng có thể làm mới’, it seems to be quite

reasonable However, it is not an appropriate equivalent and sounds like an explanation

rather than a translation, hence less technical and succinct than ‘tính tái tục’

Another confusing problem arises when there exist two or more competing termsfor the same concept in the Vietnamese version The one-to-many equivalence relationshipserves as a vivid illustration The translator has to struggle for a smart choice among all theVietnamese equivalents available to gurantee the comprehensibility of the translated

version for a particular readership Let’s take ‘deductible’-the amount of loss that the

insured pays before the insurance kicks in- as an example of the problem It has two

Vietnamese equivalents as “mức miễn thường” and “khoản khấu trừ” The former is a

commonly used term among insurance circle in Vietnam, whereas the latter is used inVietnamese community in the US According to a native American experienced translator,if ‘mức miễn thường’ were used in translated versions for the readership there, it would bealmost incomprehensible though it is accurate and sounds more professional Clearly, thereadership plays a decisive role in the translator’s choice of equivalents since what ispreferred by him may not be understandable to the intended readers

As far as ‘many-to-one’ equivalence relationship is concerned, it poses no problemto translators in the sense that the context in which the term is used can give the translator ahint to figure out its meaning And it appears that among more than one terms referring to asame concept in the SL, there must be one which is more widely used than others Thelikelihood of encountering a completely new term used to express a common concept,therefore, may be minimized For example, ‘participant’ (người tham gia BH) is moreuniversally used than ‘subscriber’ and ‘enrollee’, with the latter making sense only in theUS sub-culture of insurance

‘Many-to-many’ equivalence relationship, as implied by its name, refers to thesituation in which there are more than one SL expressions which are equal to more thanone equivalent in the TL Though the translator does not have to struggle as hard as he hasto do with non-equivalence problem, he still has to put some thoughts into choosing themost comprehensible and appropriate equivalent to specific readership when it comes to a

specific situation For example, ‘impaired risk and ‘substandard risk’ both refer to a

situation of a person whose physical condition is less than standard or who has a hazardous

occupation or hobby Each has its own equivalent as ‘rủi ro xấu’ and ‘rủi ro dưới mức

tiêu chuẩn’ respectively The former is highly recommended in the US for

Vietnamese-American whose level of education in not high and the latter for the opposite group InVietnam, both are used equally Again, the importance of the readership to the choice oflexical word is undeniable, requiring the translator to firstly characterize the readership ofthe TL before working on the text

From scratch, the researcher assumed that there would be more than oneequivalence relationships since the data was collected from different sources in Vietnamand in the US where both American-American and Vietnamese American translators workwith insurance documents Expectedly, however, all the translators employ commontranslation strategies and procedures when dealing with HI terms in the US health plans,which will be studied after we have investigated the structural patterns of these terms.

II.2 Classification of HI terms in the US health insurance plans according totheir structural patterns

HI terms are divided into two sub-groups according to their structural features:single terms and compound terms.

II.2.1 Single terms

II.2.1.1 Single terms in the form of a noun

The terms that are nouns (also including those deriving from verbs) can be dividedinto subgroups as follows:

Sub-insurance terms

A fairly big number of HI terms collected for this study are ordinary words thatlose their normal sense and take on the specialist meaning, e.g., the normal sense of‘policy’ is ‘a set of ideas or plans that is used as basis for making decisions, especially inpolitics, economics or business’ (chính sách) Its specialist meaning is a document whichshows the agreement that you have made with an insurance company (đơn BH) Rightbelow are other examples:

English termsVietnamese terms

representation lời khai của người được BH

These terms can create difficulties for translators because words commonly met ingeneral English take on a specialized meaning within, say, insurance context Although theuser already knows the general meaning, he may be thrown into confusion when comingacross it in a context with a totally different meaning he has never experienced before

High-insurance terms

It is commonly known that every subject has its set of highly technical terms,which is an intrinsic part of the learning of the discipline itself Without backgroundknowledge of the field, it would be hard for the user to understand these terms

Followings are good examples of high-insurance terms:

If equipped with little knowledge of both English language and HI in Vietnam andthe US, the user will definitely find these terms really hard-to-crack.

II.2.1.2 Single terms in the form of an adjective

Unlike technical terms in the form of a verb, almost all the terms in the form of anadjective do not have their nouns to be used as alternatives

BH dưới mứckhông được BH

One important feature of these adjectives is that all of them usually collate with oneor two certain nouns to form collocations:

eligible employees/dependents ( người phụ thuộc/nhân viên hội đủ điều kiện)usual/customary/reasonable fees (phí thông thường/thông dụng/vừa phải )

guaranteed issue (quyền lợi được BH)

uninsured employees (nhân viên không được BH)

We have examined single HI terms that account for significant proportion of thetotal collected terms

II.2.2 Compound terms

These are terms which are composed of two words or more; these words, which areof different part of speech, combine and create terms that have the form of nominal group(Halliday’s term).

II.2.2.1 The nominal group

It would be insufficient not to study the experiential structure of the nominal group,so the following section will focus on such a brief investigation.

According to Halliday (1985: 180), the nominal group structure comprises theThing, commonly called head noun, preceded by various items including Deictic,Numerative, Epithet, Classifier, and followed by Qualifier The following table willexactly illustrate the structure:

Deictic Numerative Epithet Epithet Classifier Thing QualifierThose two splendid old electric trains with pantographs

All the items functioning as pre-modifier and post-modifier will be brieflypresented in the following table:

Deictic The Deictic element indicates whether or notsome specific subset of the Thing isintended It is either (i) specific or (ii) non-specific

(i) This, these, my…(ii) A, each, every…

Numerative The Numerative element indicates some

numerical feature of the subset : either (i)quantity or (ii) order, either exact or inexact

(i) one, two

(ii) first, second, few,little, many

Epithet This item, usually in the form of anadjective, indicates some quality of thesubset This can be (i) an objective propertyof the thing itself; or (ii) it may be anexpression of the speaker’s subjectiveattitude towards it.

(i) old, short, heavy(ii) wonderful,

splendid, silly

Classifier The Classifier indicates a particular subclassof the thing in question It can be (i) anadjective or (ii) a noun

(i) medical

(ii) health insurance,drug coverage

Thing The Thing is the semantic core of thenominal group, which may be commonnoun, proper noun, or personal noun.

Qualifier The Qualifier element follows the Thing andcharacterizes it It can be a relative clause ora prepositional phrase.

The money which isreimbursed to the insuredperson

As far as Classifier is concerned, it needs more detailed discussion since apart from

adjectives and nouns which serve as classifiers; verbs also enter into the nominal group,functioning as Epithet or Classifier in one of the two forms:

(i) present (active) participle, V-ing, e.g participating, as in participating physician(ii) past (passive, or intransitive active) participle, V-en, e.g insured, as in insuredemployee or covered in covered expense

When serving as Epithet, these forms usually have the sense of the finite tense towhich they are most closely related: the present participle means ‘which is (was/will be)…ing’, the past participle means ‘which has (had/will have) been…ed’.

qualifying period (period that qualifies))

expected morbidity (morbidity that is expected)

Often the participle itself further modified, as in self-funding employer, existing condition, state-mandated benefits, tax-advantaged account

pre-Sometimes, the same word may function either as Epithet or as Classifier, with

different meaning Let’s look at ‘fast’ in ‘fast trains’ ‘Fast’ serves as Epithet in the sensethat it means ‘trains that go fast’, and functions as Classifier since it classifies a subtype oftrain, that is ‘express train’.

It is noted that usually several classifiers cluster around a thing to indicatesubclasses of more concreteness Nouns, adjectives, participles, positioned near the Thing,are most common classifiers in English

Examples:

wellness office visit classifier(Cs) Cs thing

II.2.2.2 Health insurance terms in the US health plans in the form of the nominalgroup

A number of high-frequency nominal groups have been found among termscollected for this study.

II.2.2.2.1 Terms consisting of Classifier (noun) +Thing

As implied by the name, these terms consists of two nouns with the first onefunctioning as Classifier It distinguishes the Thing (the second noun) from other concept

of the same group For example, health in ‘health insurance’ (BHSK) helps distinguishesthis type of insurance from many other types such as ‘disability insurance’ (BH thươngtật), ‘car insurance’ (BH xe ô tô), ‘home insurance’ (BH nhà ở) Other examples of this

health exposure (rủi ro về sức khỏe)

network provider (nhà cung cấp thuộc mạng lưới)fee schedule (giá biểu liệt kê các mức thanh toán tối đa)indemnity plan (dịch vụ tính tiền)

benefit period (thời kỳ thụ hưởng)

II.2.2.2.2 Terms consisting of Classifier (adjective) +Thing

A term in this group is formed by an adjective that serves as Classifier and theThing.

creditable coverage (việc được BH chính đáng)customary fee (phí thông dụng)

dental coverage (BH răng)

supplemental insurance (chương trình BH phụ/bổ sung)eligible employees (nhân viên hội đủ điều kiện)

The Classifier, as discussed in (II.2.2.1), can be further modified by another classifier that takes on the form of a noun or an adjective:

sub-basic health plan (chương trình BHSK cơ bản)group health plan (BHSK theo nhóm)

hospital expense coverage (BH chi phí nằm viện)

prescription drug coverage (BH chi phí theo đơn thuốc)substandard HI (BHSK dưới mức tiêu chuẩn)

And several classifiers cluster around a Thing to indicate subclasses of moreconcreteness like the followings:

qualified impairment HI (BH người tàn tật được công nhận đủ tiêu chuẩn) special class HI (BH tình trạng suy nhược được chấp nhận)

prepaid group practice package (BH trọn gói chi phí y tế tập thể trả trước)

II.2.2.2.3 Terms consisting of Classifier/Epithet (present participle) +Thing

In this group, some V-ing function as (i) Epithet and some as (ii) Classifier :

(i) If you do not go to participating physician, you may get lower level of

(ii) Eliminating this two-year waiting period would provide stable HI to a

vulnerable group of adults who are unable to work.

However, when interpreted in different situations, some others can be eitherClassifier or Epithet:

self-funding employer (BH của hãng cho nhân viên)pre-existing condition (bệnh tật có sẵn)

II.2.2.2.4 Terms consisting of Classifier/Epithet (past participle) +Thing

Like V-ing participle, some V-ed ones can serve as either Classifier or Epithet, andwhat function it carries depends on different situations:

covered expense (chi phí được bao trả)insured person (người được BH)impaired risk (rủi ro xấu)

experienced morbidity (tỷ lệ bệnh tật theo kinh nghiệm)

II.2.2.2.5 Terms consisting of Thing + Qualifier

The Qualifier in this group is usually ‘of noun phrases’:evidence of insurability (bằng chứng về khả năng có thể BH)coordination of benefits (phối hợp quyền lợi)

schedule of benefits (bảng liệt kê các quyền lợi được hưởng)certificate of insurance( giấy chứng nhận BH)

We have investigated the structural patterns of the nominal group in English ingeneral and of HI terms in the form of the nominal group in particular We have also made

an attempt in classifying and dividing them into ‘single term’ and ‘compound term’groups Single terms are further grouped into sub-insurance terms and high insuranceterms There are subgroups of terms under the head ‘compound terms’.

The next part will focus on what translation strategies and procedures have beenused currently to translate HI terms that do not belong to non-equivalence group, and thendraw out the ones that may be best applicable

II.3 The common strategies and procedures used in the translation of HItermsof equivalence group

II.3.1 The translation of single terms – Old words with new senses

The number of HI single-terms in English, both low-insurance and high-insuranceones, takes up a fairly significant proportion in comparison with compound terms They,therefore, create a certain level of difficulty to translators Almost all the terms in this

section can be grouped under the heading “Old words with new senses” They already

exist in the language and are commonly used with their basic nuclear meaning However,onced used in a professional narrow scale, these terms acquire new typical meaning of the

field as analysed with vivid examples in (II.2.1)

What should be noted here is that with regard to equivalence in form, not allVietnamese terms can be seen as the equivalents for the single terms in English in quite afew cases The discernible difference can be detected with ease Take now the single term‘representation’ It is clearly a term in the form of a single word When it is rendered into

Vietnamese as ‘lời khai của người được BH’, it is no longer a single word Rather, it is a

noun phrase and has the form of ‘head noun (lời khai) + of (của) + postmodifier (người

được BH)’ The other two examples help further illustrate the non-equivalence problem in

forms They are ‘coinsurance’ and ‘formulary’ that take ‘đồng BH’ and ‘thuốc khuyến cáo’respectively as their Vetnamese equivalents In these cases, the Vietnamese terms are not

single words, but compounds as defined by Cẩn, N.T (1999: 49) Even, the sinlge term‘underwriting’ has its Vietnamese equivalent ‘việc nhận xét rủi ro y tế’ in the form of a

free group of words as defined by Nguyen Nhu Y (1996:64) Such a group is

comtemporarily made to meet the need of the reality to be described or to meet thesubjective demand of the speaker or the writer.

(See more examples in Appendix 1)

II.3.2 The translation of compound terms by rank shift or transposition

The translation of the following groups of terms involves a change in the grammarfrom SL to TL, which is the so-called transposition or a shift

Group 1: Terms translated with transposition procedure that involves an automaticchange in the word order from SL to TL

Since this is the only translation procedure concerned with grammar, mosttranslators make transposition intuitively Specifically, what they have to do with the termsin this group is the change in the position of adjectives or modifying elements due to thedifference in word order between English and Vietnamese Vân (1998) claims that Englishnominal group differs from the Vietnamese one in terms of the order of Classifiers andEpithets in relation with the Thing, and this is presented in the table below:

Classifier/Epithet + Thing Thing + Classifier/Epithet Examples of terms translated by this procedure are as follows:

Classifier (noun) +Thing

English termsVietnamese terms

Classifier/Epithet (adjective) +Thing

It is no exaggeration to say that it is an easy transposition procedure The translatorjust has to do two things: (1) firstly identify the divisions between the elements in thegroup and (2) then convert the position of the elements from English word order into their

corresponding word order in Vietnamese Terms of longer nominal group, withinexpectation, can also be easily dealt with this way:

English word orderVietnamese word order

medical benefits exemption miễn trừ các quyền lợi y tế

hospital expense coverage BH chi phí nằm việndental expense coverage BH chi phí nha khoa Individual health insurance BHSK cá nhân

This type of transposition can be of great help in that it is applicable to thetranslation of nominal groups of different types, especially longer groups as follows:

English word orderVietnamese word order

guaranteed renewable health insurance BHSK tái gia hạn được bảo đảmconditional renewable HI BHSK tái tục có điều kiệnmajor medical expense coverage BH chi phí y tế chính

creditable drug prescription coverage BH theo đơn thuốc chính đáng

(See more examples in Appendix 2)

The Vietnamese equivalents that sound stiff or fail to accord with natural usage inVietnamese are categorized under the heading “Literal translation” which will be touchedupon in the “non-equivalence” section.

Group 2: Terms consisting of Classifier (past participle) + Thing

Exactly, the terms in this group can be translated by either (i) automatictransposition or (ii) by rank-shift that involves a change in grammatical structure of certainitems in SL To be more specific, a nominal group in English corresponds to a clause inVietnamese as follows:

(i) expected morbidity = số liệu thống kê bệnh tật dự tính

A change in the position of V-ed acting as Classifier is needed so that theVietnamese version can sound natural and accords to the word order in the Vietnamesenominal group

(ii) expected morbidity = số liệu thống kê bệnh tật (đã) được dự tính

Syntactically, (ii) is longer than (i), but semantically clearer though both arecomprehensible to the readership Usually, though the shorter is more preferred for the