3 Misuse of personal pronouns and prepositions In Vietnamese, there are many ways to express the thoughts and feelings or attitude which differ from those in English The social status, age, sex, and the family order are distinguished clearly and systematically This is reflected in a distinguished clearly and systematically This is reflected in a number of words for addressing such as “cụ, ơng, bà, bác, cơ, chú, thím, dì, dượng, cậu, anh, chị, ngài, quí vị, mày, em, ” such words are generally expressed by English people in one word “you” In Vietnamese, each preposition has a fixed meaning which does not change regardless of the noun, adjective or verb proceeding it On the contrary, the meaning of a preposition in English depends on its preceding word This difference leads to errors in using prepositions of TL For example, the Vietnamese preposition “về” can be expressed by different prepositions in English: nói chuyện lịch sử thất vọng quan tâm nhấn mạnh lo lắng tự hào tiếng instead of “disappointed about”, “ proud about”, “famous about” as the translator may use Due to the mother tongue interference, the translators found themselves in a confusing situation when they use prepositions n English In order to avoid this type of errors the translators should learn the prepositions going with nouns, adjectives or verbs by heart If they not know how to use prepositions exactly, they tend to the Vietnamese ones into English or vice versa As a result, the translators should be provided with as many structures with prepositions systematically as possible to help them take notes and draw out the formation and rules Misuse of synonyms Some translators depend largely on the meaning in dictionary picking out the synonyms without paying much to the context In fact, the pairs of synonyms share at least one sense in common but not share all their senses To some extent, they can hardly substitute for each other The misuse of synonyms makes the meaning of one of the following sentences unacceptable “ You have my deep/ profound sympathy.( acceptable) “ The river is deep.”( acceptable) “ The river is very profound.” (unacceptable) Another example shows that some translators not realize the connotational meaning, which leads to the distorting of the meaning of the sentence Take “famous” and “notorious” as an example While “famous” means “well-known/ celebrated”, and therefore contains some features of positive meaning, “notorious” means “well-known” especially for unfavorable reason & negative meaning Most of the synonyms have the same meaning in certain context If a translator use synonyms without referring to the context,(s)he can make wrong & funny for his readers In order to avoid the misuse, the translator should carefully take the synonyms into consideration before using them In addition, it would be better for the translator to consider the differences of the pairs of synonyms when translating 1.1.5 Idioms & terminologies The meanings of idioms are not definitely related to grammatical rules or the lexical meaning of each word because they feature the metaphor and figures of speech For example, “ wet blanket” should be translated “người rầu rĩ” instead of “cái chăn ướt” or “to read one’s palm” translated as “xem tay” instead of “đọc lịng bàn tay” In fact, idioms can be translated satisfactorily by considering the context, if not, it is difficult to find the exact meaning An English idiom must be translated into Vietnamese by an equivalent one It is very important to be aware that we must not choose the equivalents of every word forming the idiom but we find the equivalent ways of expression which exist in both languages If we stick to each word, the meaning becomes strange, unnatural and funny In addition to this, due to the limited knowledge of social background and some special fields, some translators mistranslated the terminologies causing vagueness, inaccuracy to readers It is not very easy for some translators to translate the following terminologies if they are not familiar with business texts - cash flow: - insurance policy: - acknowledgement: - credit terms: - hard currency: - marginal: - total working capital: - sales promotion campaign: In conclusion, some inexperienced translators committed the lexical errors mentioned above including those of context, word collocation, prepositions, synonyms and idioms & terminologies They are committed by those who have little knowledge of both source language(SL) and target language (TG) At the same time, they thought that although English is different from Vietnamese, both languages have a one-to-one correlation of lexical items In practice, in terms of translation, it can be chosen the only one appropriate equivalent from this into that language Even more, that equivalent hardly keeps the meaning of the word itself but that of context In some dictionaries, the authors present series of synonyms of SL in comparison with TL However, the synonyms are those of the context in which the are operating Another problem is that some translators did not realize the linking meaning of word units It is obvious that these units link together to create a larger unit of meaning in a given text to be translated The linking meaning itself does not exist in separate word units but in the link of the units constituting the whole text (FOR THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE 7) STRATEGIES TO DEAL WITH NON-EQUIVALENCE AT LEXICAL LEVEL It is often the case that no direct equivalents can be found in Vietnamese for English words It may be that the concept or idea is new to Vietnamese translators, as in the case of ‘gender’, which is, in fact, a relatively new concept in general, and a very difficult concept to understand and explain in many languages It may also be that the concept is known or understood but there is no specific word in Vietnamese used to express it Another difficulty is that, in addition to their concrete meaning, some words have special connotations that are not conveyed by the Vietnamese word for the same thing The strategies listed below can be used to handle cases of non-equivalence Translating by a more specific word In some cases, it may be appropriate or necessary to use a more specific word to translate an English word into Vietnamese This usually involves choosing among several different words, as there may be many Vietnamese words that correspond to the general category or meaning expressed by English word Translating by a more general word In other cases, it may be appropriate to use a more general word to translate an English word with no specific Vietnamese equivalent Translating by cultural substitution This strategy involves replacing a culture-specific item or expression with one of the different meanings but similar impact in the translated text Because of their self-described “respect” for the original text, most Vietnamese translators object to this strategy and tend to translate directly, even though it is in appropriate For example, a farmer’s manual that has been translated into Vietnamese suggests the planting of different types of fruit trees which are not even grown in Vietnam The original manual, which was developed in other parts in Asia, was not modified at all for the Vietnamese context Though some translators argue that it is not the responsibility of the translator to chance the text in this way, the translator is in fact playing an important role in this task Translators should be encouraged to consider the appropriateness of the documents they are translating and suggest changes to make them more culturally appropriate Translating by using a loan word plus explanation There is some objection to this strategy in Vietnam, as many translator prefer to coin new words in Vietnamese rather than borrow English words However, this strategy is very useful when the translator deal with concepts or ideas that are new to Vietnamese audience, culture-specific items, and proper names of diseases or medicines that are widely known in English names Translating by using a paraphrase This strategy can be used when we translate an English word or concept that does not exist in Vietnamese, or when the Vietnamese term for it does not include all the meanings conveyed by the English term for the same concept Translating by omission Though some translators may reject this strategy as too drastic, it is sometimes appropriate to omit words or phrases that are not essential to the meaning or impact of the text This is especially true for words that would require lengthy explanations, awkward paraphrases, or literal and unnatural translations, which would interrupt the flow of the text and could distract the reader from the overall meaning