CHAPTER 4: EQUIVALENTS IN TRANSLATION AND STRATEGIES TO DEAL
4.3 Equivalents and non-equivalents at words level in the selected short story “The
4.3.2. At-word-level non-equivalence
As formerly mentioned, Baker (1992) categorizes 11 sub-groups of non- equivalence at-word-level; however, in lieu of a comprehensive discussion on all of them, which were not found between the two stocks of “The last leaf, the paper discusses the discovered ones only. Also, the total number of examples which include at-word-level non-equivalence is 34. Table 4.4 shows the number of non-equivalents at word level in the selected short stories “The last leaf” by O’ Henry and their translated versions.
Non-equivalents at word level in the selected short stories “ The last leaf” by O’
Henry and their translated versions
Types of non-equivalents F %
Culture-specific concepts 5 14.71%
The target language lacks a hyponym 5 14.71%
SL and TL words make distinction in meaning 9 26.47%
Difference in form 4 11.76%
Non-equivalence in number 3 8.82%
Non -equivalence in tense and aspect 2 5.88%
Non-equivalence in person 3 8.82%
Non-equivalence in voice 3 8.82%
Total 34 100.00%
Table 4.4: Non-equivalents at word level in the selected short stories “ The last leaf” by O’ Henry and their translated versions
The sub-sections below give a more detailed analysis of such data.
4.3.2.1. Culture-specific concepts
Cultural-bound concepts are those known in one culture but totally unknown in another culture. They are understood differently from culture to culture. The researcher found that there are some pairs in the two versions of the short story “The last leaf” containing concepts that are highly culture-bound, for example:
(4.10) An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street
(Có chàng nghệ sĩ phát ngôn rằng đường sá như vậy cũng có cái... lợi của nó.) (4.11) They had met at the table d"hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico"s,"
and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted
(Họ gặp nhau tại quán cơm bình dân trên đường Số Tám, cùng yêu thích hội họa, cùng mê món rau díp trộn, tương đắc đến nỗi cột tay áo mướn chung với nhau một xưởng vẽ)
(4.12) Ah, darling, it"s Behrman"s masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.
(Nhỏ ơi, nó chính là cái tác phẩm lớn của cụ Behrman đó. Cụ đã vẽ nó vào cái đêm chiếc lá nho cuối cùng rơi xuống.")
The Vietnamese or SL words indeed do not raise any difficulty to readers’
understanding. All in all, they amount to five (5), (Appendix 1), accounting for 14.71% of all tokens of non-equivalence. Admittedly, there is nothing like “đường xá”, “quán cơm bình dân” and “Nhỏ” in English culture. When the translator used these words in Vietnamese in the translated version of “The last leaf” – “Chiếc lá cuối cùng”, readers’ understanding of the story was enhanced.
4.3.2.2.The target language lacks a hyponym
With five examples from the selected short story, this subgroup represents 14.71%, equal to that of the first one.
In Vietnamese, the system of verbs is rather wide and detailed in meanings to cover a full description of different human action. In the above examples, the verb
“get up”in English has the exclusive meaning but may be conveyed by “ngủ dậy”,
“tỉnh dậy”, thức dậy” in Vietnamese. Or the verb “hót” in Vietnamese has the exclusive meaning of bird singing, one type of different living creature’s singing;
other animals’ singing is expressed by other verbs, like “hát, ngâm” for human, “gầm, rú” for big-sized predators such as tigers and lions. Clearly, the hyponymic groups of
“sing” are various. In the “The last leaf” by O’ Henry and their translated versions, the researcher also found some examples as follows:
(4.13) That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers
(Đó là hồi tháng Năm. Vào tháng mười một thì trời phái một ông khách lạnh lùng mà các ngài bác sĩ thường gọi là Bệnh Viêm Phổi đến khủng bố khu "thuộc địa", thò cái bàn tay lạnh ngắt, sờ chỗ này một chút, vỗ chỗ kia một phát.)
(4.14) "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I"ll not be gone a minute.
("Ráng ngủ đi." Sue nói. "Mình phải kêu ông Behrman lên ngồi làm mẫu một người thợ mỏ nghèo. Mình sẽ đi chừng một phút.)
(4.15) Ah, darling, it"s Behrman"s masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.
(Nhỏ ơi, nó chính là cái tác phẩm lớn của cụ Behrman đó. Cụ đã vẽ nó vào cái đêm chiếc lá nho cuối cùng rơi xuống.")
In the examples (4.13), (4.14), and (4.15), such words as “one”, “try” and
“darling” have many hyponymic groups in the target langages, for example, “một chút”, “một phát”, một ít” are hypomynic words of “one”, “cố”, “ráng” are those of
“try” and “cưng”, “nhỏ” are those of “darling”.
4.3.2.3. SL and TL words make distinction in meaning
Exemplinary pairs of non-equivalence belonging to this regard appear in 9 pairs and remain by far the most prevalent non-equivalence in the corpora discussion (26.47%). Admittedly, the notion of “trời” in the TL culture is not limited to “bầu trời”; instead, it refers to the God, the Heaven (Ông trời, kính trời, cầu trời). The word -the sky- when translated into Vietnamese may make different meanings. Similarly, the phrasal verb “look up”, with its five derivations found in Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, the first denotation is to “raise your eyes when you are looking down at something”, just as in “she looked up from her book as I entered the room”.
It can be the best equivalent of “ngước lên nhin”, in Vietnamese in lieu of “ngóng”.
The two words make obvious distinction in meaning. In the 4.3.2.4. Difference in form
The words “sleepless nights – đêm không ngủ” shows that while Vietnamese expresses the meaning in full lexicon, English uses suffixes of negative meaning to convey the same meaning. Similarly, the words “unfurl – trải” also well illustrate that English and Vietnamese differ from each other in the form of words. Apart from the use of affixation to coin new words, English is typical of the use of compound nouns, or the nouns which are hyphenated. This subgroup found in 4 examples shares its portion with the second type, at 11.76 %.
4.3.2.5. (Non)equivalence in number
English and Vietnamese belong to two different groups of languages,
“inflectional”, and isolating, respectively. Therefore, the expression of number - a grammatical category, is obviously far distinctive between the two. In principle, English appearsto be more exact when it has specific elements indicative of singular
and plural forms for a noun (an/an/ the/ one and -es/-s). On the contrary, understanding of such forms in Vietnamese is perceived quite vaguely with readers’
taking for granted. This part investigated two main groups: equivalence in number between two corpora and non-equivalence including Vietnamese singular nouns- English plural nouns, and Vietnamese plural nouns-English singular nouns. As for the first group, they can be found in only few pairs, when the nouns are singular.
Apparently, there is no use of the endings “s” or “es” to express plurality in English in some cases, indicating that the noun are singular. The article of “the” means something specific in this regard as well. However, they are also translated with the plural meaning in Vietnamese.
Clearly, there are no quantifiers as the determiners for the Vietnamese bold noun phrases; nonetheless, one should perceive that they are plural, and should be translated into plural forms in English. Interestingly, it is not always the case that English equivalents for Vietnamese numerally ambiguous nouns are plural. The reverse case, or the second group was realized, instead.Even Vietnamese reader may think of many roads and mountains in the original versions; however, they are rendered into noun of singularity in the English version.
4.3.2.6. (Non)equivalence in tense and aspect
Theoretically, temporal and aspectual references help distinguish English from Vietnamese. As an inflectional language, English has different classification to verb forms with regard to time and aspect. For example, in order to indicate an action that happened and ended in the past, one say: “He broken the window” while if he means something at present, it should be: “He breaking the window”. The case is absolutely different in Vietnamese when verbs remain unchanged whatever the time is past, present, or future with a frequently additional use of adverbials like “đã”,
“đang”, “sẽ”.
The part below manifests some typical examples from the corpora. In the corpora of data for the study, non-equivalence in this regard is definitely prevailing, with 17 pairs. In the translation, even such adverbs are not used explicitly in the source and the translator had to make decisions on different adverbials in Vietnamese
version.
For example:
(4.16) The art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth century gables and Dutch attics and low rents
(Thế nên đám hoạ sĩ chẳng bao lâu đã kéo đến phường Greenwich, săn lùng phòng cho thuê có cửa sổ thông ra hướng bắc, góc mái kiểu thế kỷ 18, gác lửng kiểu Hà Lan, và giá thuê lại rẻ.)
(4.17) Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown
"places.
(Tên giặc đã ngang nhiên hoành hành khu phía đông, hạ gục nhiều nạn nhân, nhưng hắn chỉ mới đặt chân chầm chậm qua các lối ngõ như bàn cờ của mấy “vùng”
nhỏ hẹp phủ đầy rêu.”)
(4.18) Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman (Ông khách Viêm Phổi không phải là hạng người mà bạn thường gọi là ông bạn già hào hiệp.)
(4.19) A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote;
and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house
(Bạn sẽ không xem Thần Viêm Phổi như một quân tử già đầy hào hiệp. Người con gái nhỏ vốn đã mất máu vì những trận gió ở California thì lẽ ra không đáng cho một kẻ bất tài già nua bận tâm đến. Nhưng hắn đã tấn công Johnsy. Thế là cô nằm bẹp, không mấy cử động, trên chiếc giường sắt, xuyên qua khung cửa sổ kiểu Hà Lan nhìn ra bức tường trơ trụi của căn nhà gạch kế bên.)
4.3.2.7. (Non)equivalence in person
The category of person relates to the notion of participant roles. Many languages, including Vietnamese, have a formality/politeness dimension in their person system, thereby, requiring translators’ decisions on degree of intimacy
between participants and the possible inclusion of the addressee, or the nature of relationships amongst characters in the story and their social standing. Looking into the two selected versions of ST and TT short story, one can see that the use of person is not obvious in Vietnamese version, but to retain the canonical structures in English, the translator must add a subject to any sentence in translated poems, even it is an empty “it” or “there be”.
4.3.2.8. Non-equivalence in voice
The use of passivization are found to be quite prevalent in the selected Vietnamese translations. In Vietnamese, in order to express passives, one has to use
“bị” for negative meaning, and “được” for positive meaning. However, in the SL with English version this meaning is not expressed. Furthermore, some sentences which are active in the SL are translated into passive in the TL. For example:
(4.20) One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.
(Một buổi sáng nọ, Sue được vị bác sĩ đầy bận rộn mời ra hành lang)
(4.21) “She has one chance in - let us say, ten,” he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer.”
(Cô ấy chỉ được trao mười phần trăm cơ hội để sống sót”, ông ấy nói trong khi đang vẩy cái nhiệt kế thăm bệnh để mực thuỷ ngân trong đó hạ xuống)
It appears that while the English original version expresses an active and subjective meaning, the act of obtaining something ahead of the speaker, its counterpart in English proves more objective and distance the speaker from the statement.
4.4. Strategies to tackle non-equivalence at word level in the selected short stories “The last leaf” by O’Henry.
Out of eight types of strategies in dealing with nonequivalence at the level of word, the following strategies were employed six are found amongst the stock of.
Details and examples of translation strategy are presented as follows.