VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -----***----- NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH HẠNH EVALUATING THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF THE BOOK ‘CHICKEN SOUP FOR MOTHER AND DAUGHTER SOUL’ BY JACK CANDFIELD AND MARK VICTOR HASEN USING JULLIANE HOUSE’S MODEL (Đánh giá chất lượng bản dịch Tiếng Việt tác phẩm “Chicken Soup for Mother and Daughter Soul” áp dụng mô hình của Julliane House) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Hanoi - 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -----***----- NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH HẠNH EVALUATING THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF THE BOOK ‘CHICKEN SOUP FOR MOTHER AND DAUGHTER SOUL’ BY JACK CANDFIELD AND MARK VICTOR HASEN USING JULLIANE HOUSE’S MODEL (Đánh giá chất lượng bản dịch Tiếng Việt tác phẩm “Chicken Soup for Mother and Daughter Soul” áp dụng mô hình của Julliane House) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc. LÊ HÙNG TIẾN Hanoi - 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Declaration i Acknowledgement ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of abbreviations vi List of figures vii A. Rationale for the study 1 2. Significance of the study 1 3.
Scope and objectives of the study 3 3. Scope of the study 2 3. Organization of the study 2 B. Definitions of translation 3 1.
Translation methods and strategies 5 1. Translation quality assessment 13 2. Characteristics of literary translation 16 2. Challenges in literary translation 17 3.
Introduction about the book 18 CHAPTER 2. APPLICATION OF HOUSE’S MODEL FOR TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT 21 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Presentation of the model 21 1. An overview of the model 21 1.
Operation of the model 22 2. Application of the model 26 2. Analysis of the source texts 26 2. Statement of function 32 CHAPTER 3.
Comparison of Target Text and Source Text 34 1. Social role relationship 37 1. Overtly erroneous errors 39 2. Statement of quality 41 C.
Implications for translating English literary works into Vietnamese 43 3. Suggestions for further research 44 REFERENCES 45 APPENDICES I – XI APPENDIX I. Placing of clauses and expressions of purpose and time before the main clauses I APPENDIX II. Use of parenthetical and appositional structures III APPENDIX III.
Spoken language signals or interjections V APPENDIX IV. Presence of connectors VI APPENDIX V. Presence of reference VII APPENDIX VI. Repeated structures IX APPENDIX VII.
Noun and noun phrases are translated into clauses XI v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SL: Source Language TL: Target Language ST: Source Text TT: Translation Text vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Translation Process Page 6 Figure 2: A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Texts Page 24 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationale for the study In the trend of globalization and integration, people are more frequent to read books and documents written in a foreign language because that helps them to understand and be more familiar with the thoughts, traditions, principles and actions of the people from the culture. Therefore, translation is regarded as a significant key interlinking people from all cultures in the world. In Vietnam, more and more foreign books and documents are translated into Vietnamese.
However, Vietnamese readers do not always have chance to approach translations of good quality and that a translation is considered good still draws much discussion. Each translation theorists has his or her own founded criteria for translation quality assessment. Among distinguished scholars of this field is Julian House who is a German linguist, with her model for translation quality assessment. Many famous English books have been translated into Vietnamese.
„Chicken Soup for Mother and Daughter Soul‟ by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield is one of them. Being translated into Vietnamese, the series of the book are popular to a number of Vietnamese readers. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, translating a foreign text and making it acceptable by the target language readers is not easy due to the fact that each language has its own unique features and peculiarities and literary book translation calls for stringent and high quality standards. Therefore, an assessment of the Vietnamese version of this book is thus desirable.
Significance of the study The results of the study will be used as suggestions and references to analyze and evaluate the quality of other literary translated works. Also, the research results will be used as guidelines for conducting further research in translation and in other related fields. Besides, the study will also propose some suggestions concerning the translation of English literary works into Vietnamese. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Scope and objectives of the study 3. Scope of the study The book series „Chicken Soup for the Soul‟ consists of almost 200 titles in print and a study of the whole book series is therefore beyond the scope of this paper. So, the study will analyze volume 9 of the series which is entitled “Mother and Daughter Soul” translated by Ngoc Diep and Vi Thao Nguyen. Research questions The study aims at finding answers to two questions: 1.
How good is the translation according to House‟s model? 2. What are the remaining problems of the translation? 4. Research methods The paper aims at assessing the quality of the Vietnamese translation of the book „Chicken Soup for Mother and Daughter Soul‟ by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield. To achieve that aim, a set of criteria for assessment is essential.
House‟s model is chosen to apply in this study because of comprehensive set of parameters for assessing functional and pragmatic equivalence of the translation text. Applying House‟s model, the researcher follows the chronological steps in translation quality assessment suggested by House. Firstly, a source text (ST) is selected, and then a register analysis is done to get the source text profile based in the eight situational dimensions. A statement of function of the ST will be made after that.
Next, a profile of the translation text will be come up with and compared with the ST‟s to find out mismatches before a statement of quality can be drawn about the target text (TT). Organization of the study The study contains three chapters: 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Chapter 1 – Literature Review In this first chapter, some related concepts of translation theory and typical models of translation quality assessment are introduced. Also, the chapter discusses characteristics and challenges of literary translation. Chapter 2 – Application of House‟s model for translation quality assessment In this chapter, House‟s model for translation quality assessment will first be presented and then applied to analyze and decide the ST profile as well as statement of function with ideational and interpersonal meaning.
Chapter 3 – Discussion of results and implications In the third chapter, the researcher will apply Julliane House‟s model to analyze and compare the English ST and the Vietnamese translation one and then draw the statement of quality. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Definitions of translation To translate is understood as to express the meaning of speech or writing in a different language.
However, in translation studies, things are not that simple. Theorists approached translation studies differently and they proposed various definitions of translation. Also basing on the concept of equivalence, Nida and Taber (1982) suggested that “translation consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalence of the SL message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (Nida and Taber. The definitions are not limited only on Catford and Nida and Taber‟s point of view.
There are several definitions stated by some experts. Discussing three aspects of meaning which are semantic, pragmatic and textual, House (1977:29) introduced a tentative definition of translation. “Translation is the replacement of text in the SL by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the TL” and these are only written texts. Similarly, Wilss (1982) focused on written text and he considered translation a procedure which leads from a written SL text to an optimally equivalent TL text, and which requires the syntactic, semantic, stylistic, and text pragmatic comprehension by the translator of the original text.
In Bell‟s definition (1991), three aspects of translations are also mentioned. He defined that translating is the transformation of a text originally in one language into an equivalent text in a different language retaining, as far as possible, the context of message, the formal features and the roles of the original text. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Some other scholars approve the idea that translation deals with the meaning. Translation with the correct structure is useless without the meaning.
In Dubois‟s point of view, translation is the expression in another language (or TL) of what has been expressed in another (SL), preserving semantic and stylistic in equivalences (Dubois, 1973 cited in Bell, 1991). It means that translation has to be able to say the expression in TL as well as it is said in the SL. The translated language version should give the same meaning on the TL when it is compared to the SL. Newmark stated a further view towards the transferring meaning in a translation.
As he says (1988:5), translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended in the text. Unlike previous scholars, Hatim and Mason (1990) suggested that translating is a communicative process which takes place within a social context (Hatim and Mason, 1990:3). Translation deals with the signs and attempts to preserve semiotic as well as other pragmatic and communicative properties which signs display. No matter how diversely the scholars defined translation, the basic ideas they shared are that translation does not deal with language as a system, but with language in use and that the essence of translation lies in the preservation of semantic, pragmatic, and textual aspects of meaning across two different languages.
Translation methods and strategies Nida (1969) in Munday (2001:40) divide the process of translating into three stages system: (1) analysis of message in the SL; (2) transfer; (3) reconstruction of the transferred message in the TL. 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com A (Source Language) B (Receptor Language) Analysis Restructuring Transfer X Y Figure 1: Translation Process As can be seen from the diagram, ST is analyzed in terms of the intention of the text, the intention of the translator, text styles, the readership, stylistic scales, attitude, setting, the quality of the writing, connotations and denotations, and the cultural aspect of the text. Then the meaning is transferred from the SL to the TL. The last stage is the reconstruction stage in which the translator revises or re- expresses the materials in such a way that the translation product is readable and acceptable in terms of rules and styles in the TL.
Translation methods There have been various classifications of translation methods introduced by different scholars such as Darbelnet (1973), Larson (1984), Newmark (1988), Delisle (1999), etc. In this part, the classification by Newmark (1988) is presented because it is more detailed and systematic. In Newmark‟s point of view, translation methods can be categorized into two groups which are semantic translation and communicative translation. Semantic translation follows the form of the SL whereas communicative translation communicates the meaning of the SL text in the natural forms of the TL.
He introduced the V-diagram of translation methods. 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com (Newmark, 1988: 45) Newmark briefly explained these methods as: - Word-for-word translation: The SL word-order is preserved and words translated singly by their most common meaning, out of context.