VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÒA EVALUATING ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE SHORT STORY "THE GENERAL RETIRES" BY NGUYEN HUY THIEP BASED ON J.HOUSE'S MODEL (ĐÁNH GIÁ BẢN DỊCH VIỆT - ANH CỦA TRUYỆN NGẮN 'TƯỚNG VỀ HƯU" CỦA NGUYỄN HUY THIỆP DỰA TRÊN MÔ HÌNH CỦA J. MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 HANOI - 2014 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****************** NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÒA EVALUATING ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE SHORT STORY "THE GENERAL RETIRES" BY NGUYEN HUY THIEP BASED ON J.HOUSE'S MODEL (ĐÁNH GIÁ BẢN DỊCH VIỆT - ANH CỦA TRUYỆN NGẮN 'TƯỚNG VỀ HƯU" CỦA NGUYỄN HUY THIỆP DỰA TRÊN MÔ HÌNH CỦA J. MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc. Lê Hùng Tiến HANOI - 2014 z DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis, which is entitled Evaluating English translation of the short story "The General Retires" by Nguyen Huy Thiep based on J.House's model, has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university.
This work is the result of my own original research and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. Signature NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HÒA i z ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Translation has always been my favorite subject, and I became truly interested in the issue of translation quality assessment since I registered and attended the course of Assoc.Dr Le Hung Tien on subject Translation Study. From that time, I always bear in my mind the idea of doing my thesis on a topic in such field. My very first and deepest thank goes to my Supervisor, Associate Professor Le Hung Tien for his encouragement, patience and profound knowledge.
Without his whole-hearted guidance, insightful comments and suggestions, this thesis would not have been possible. I also would like to express my sincere thank for my beloved teachers in the course, Professor Hoang Van Van and Doctor Huynh Anh Tuan for their lectures that inspire me to the relevant knowledge of this thesis. My special thank to Ms Ngo Thanh Thuy, who did not mind pouring rain or scorching sun to guide us throughout the course. I highly appreciate advices and comments given by my classmates, Mr Trang and Ms Quynh, who are always willing to give me great help while I gather materials and conduct details of this thesis.
I am in debt to my family who does a great spiritual support by their simple but careful actions. Despite of the fact that their supports are obviously indirect, they always possess the distinguish motivation source for the formation of my thesis. ii z ABSTRACT That translation literature has been put in the race for quantities and time triggers the need for an effective tool for assessing quality of translation. This paper applies translation quality assessment model developed by House (1977) for evaluation of an English translation of a famous Vietnamese short story.
The study firstly emphasizes features and critical problems that translation literature has been facing. Secondly, the original and the translation are both analyzed in accordance with House's model before they are put in comparison with each other for mismatches to be found. Finally, these mismatches are employed to generalize quality of selected translation and to suggest some recommendations for quality improvement of the selected translation. iii z LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SL: Source Language TL: Target Language ST: Source Language Text TT: Target Language Text iv z LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS Figure 1.:A model for translation quality assessment by House (1977) .:A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Text in by House (1997).
Page 17 Figure 3:Some instances of semantic translation of dominated verb bảo in TT. Page 21 Chart 1:Statistical frequency of engaging in conversation of each interlocutor. Page 27 v z TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
iv LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS .Significance of the study .Scope and objectives of the study .Structure of the study .1 Typical features of literary translation .2 Problems of literary translation .2 Translation quality assessment .1 Researches in translation quality assessmen .2Julian House and A Model for Translation quality assessment. AN APPLICATION OF HOUSE’S MODEL INTO TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT .1Source Language Text analysis .1 Source Language Text background.2 Analysis of Source Language Text in accordance with House’s mode .3 Statement of function .2 Source Language Text and Target Language Text comparision and statement of quality .1Source Language Text and Target Language Text comparision for mismatches .2 Statement of quality .Recommendations for quality improvement of the translation. Source Language Text: Vietnamese original. Target Language Text: English translation.
A list of colloquial and cultural featured lexical items and English equivalences (Sorted A – Z. LIX vii z PART A. Rationale: For a long time, literary translation has been discussed by people all around the world. During current globalization, the growing trend against the dominance of a few languages emphasizes the role of this translation variant.
Vietnam literature is developing towards diversification, in which there is active presence of literary translation, which plays an important role in "importing" and "exporting" literature and culture. Literary translation has been immigrating to the center of national literature and it cannot be denied that, with such movement, readers have been being given the change to enjoy quintessence and value of world literature. At the same time, literary translation is the one which contributes much to the richness of knowledge in world culture. Famous translators such as Trinh Lu, Tran Dinh Hien, Le Bau, Nguyen Bich Lan, Thuy Toan, Huu Viet are typical for their seriousness in translation of literary and were awarded by Vietnam Association of Literature.
However, not every translated work has been welcome with compliments or assessed specifically and appropriately. There are cases, of which translations were done carelessly and hastily, resulted in contradictory reactions since wise readers and critics recognize mismatches between translation and original. Meanwhile, it seems that in Vietnam, proper and serious attention paid to research and assessment in literary translation is somewhat limited. The quality of translation thus has always been a critical issue because of the appearance of incidents where the translations were navigated too much from the original.
We have seen blooming of translated books with many translation supporting tools (software, dictionary, search engine, etc.), but the question of quality remains controversial, especially translations in specific fields. As the result, there is a need for an effective and trustful tool, which can be used to evaluate the quality of such translations from a more scientific view. 1 z This study is carried out with two grounds in mind. Firstly, it is a modest effort to contribute to translation assessment field in Vietnam by giving an evaluation on a work in literature.
Secondly, it pays a revisit to Tướng về hưu, one famous story which impressed readers since it first appreared and in years later. This story was written by Nguyễn Huy Thiệp in 1986 and then was translated into English titled "The General Retire" by Greg Lockhart and was published in 1993 by Oxford University Press. Significance of the study Until now, researches and works in evaluation of translation (English - Vietnamese, Vietnamese -English) are not remarkable. In Vietnam National University, at MA degree, within 5 years, there have been about 50 researches conducted in translation, provisionally distributed in 5 main topics such as translation method (of texts and specialized terms), equivalence, translation and its application in teaching, translation assessment and others in which theses on translation quality assessment only make up approximately 10% (figures updated until end of 2011).
These theses, although present researchers' efforts in evaluating of texts of different genres and fields from a scientific view, seem insufficient for those who want to get more general view of current status on translation assessment in Vietnam. In this paper, the quality of English translation of the story is about to be evaluated basing on model developed by Julian House in 1977. It is expected that what are found will be useful for further refinement of the translation. On the other hand, this study is assumed to, with its particularity, contributes to researches in the field and triggers similar studies in Vietnam.
Scope and objectives of the study 3.1 Scope of the study 2 z Base on House's translation quality assessment model, this study addresses the quality assessment of the entire English translation of a Vietnamese short story named Tướng về hưu. The translation lasts for 21 pages (pp. 115 – 136) and was entitled "The General Retires". The translation assessment is thus limited in literary text where difficulties in translation of such texts are described attentively.
Putting into practice House's translation assessment model, this study applies some issues addressed in discourse, pragmatics, grammar, speech act theory and systemic functional grammar.2 Research questions: This study is conducted with the aim of shedding a light on following questions: 1. How good is the translation in accordance with House's model? 2. What can be done to improve the quality of the translation? 4. Research method Supposing that translation in literature encounters numerous problems, a text in the field was selected for assessment.
The next step is to choose an assessment scheme which should make it possible for a relatively comprehensive and linguistic based analysis. Therefore, the assessment model that Julian House developed in 1977 acts as the crucial analytical frame and the pragmatic and disourse based appoach was utized. With House's model used as a system of reference, analysis includes the description of ST and TT and a comparison between them. Descriptive and comparative methods were thus employed respectively in order to work out answer for 2 above research questions.
Descriptive method is useful for gathering set of data constituted by features found in each dimension during description of each text, while comparative method was taken its full advantage for comparing dimension by 3 z dimension the features picked up in order to find out the mismatches as a pre- condition to evaluate the quality of selected translation. Observation method was used to the search of non-dimensional mismatches which are visible and could be observed directly during line-by-line comparison of two texts. During analysis, quantitative evidence was also collected to support for given points. To make it convienient for description and comparision of ST and TT, each text was marked using conventions of numbering.
Each paragraph was numbered by Roman numeral while each sentence was numbered by Arabic numerals. These texts can be found in Appendix A and B of this paper. For statement of function of ST and quality of TT, generalization technique was utilized. It should be noted that only description of ST was presented to fit well for length of this thesis.
The presented analysis is thus limited in description of ST, statement of function, covert and overt mismatches and statement of quality. Structure of the study This paper comprises following major parts: PART A. DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter 2: AN APPLICATION OF HOUSE'S MODEL INTO TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT PART C.1 Typical features of literary translation We take it for granted that doing translation in literature field is nothing easy. To perceive a literature text is the task of reader, to understand and convey the text into another language is the task of a translator.
The task for the translator is thus always doubled both in term of quantity and difficulty. For literary texts, translation is an art while for non literary texts; translation is a science (Newmark, 2004: 10). As a special type of translation, literary translation shares common features with others while persists inside itself the distinguished ones. Those distinguished features make up the differences and originally bring hard tasks to those who want to translate any variant of literary texts.