VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN AN EVALUATION OF THE VIETNAMESE TRANSLATED VERSION OF “THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY Nguyen cung ai and vu tuan phuong Đánh giá bản dịch tiếng việt của tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã” của hai dịch giả Nguyễn Cung Ái và Vũ Tuấn Phương MINOR M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Hanoi - 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN AN EVALUATION OF THE VIETNAMESE TRANSLATED VERSION OF “THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY Nguyen cung ai and vu tuan phuong Đánh giá bản dịch tiếng việt của tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã” của dịch giả Nguyễn Cung Ái và Vũ Tuấn Phương MINOR M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Pham Thi Thanh Thuy (Ph.d) Hanoi - 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ……………………………………………………………………… Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………… Table of content………………………………………………………………. List of abbreviations…………………………………………………………. Rational for the study……………………………………………… 2 2. Objective of the study……………………………………………… 2 3.
Scope and method of the study……………………………………… 2 3.1 Scope of the study 2 3.2 Method of the study 3 4. Organization of the study…………………………………………… 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1 Definition of translation ……………………………………………….2 Translation methods and procedures…………………………………… 6 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Types of translation equivalence……………………………… 11 1.3 Translation assessment/ evaluation…………………………………….2 Translation Quality Assessment Models……………………… 14 1.1 Julianne House and her model………………………… 14 1.2 Peter Newmark‘s model………………………………. 16 CHAPTER 2: APPLICATION OF NEWMARK’S MODEL FOR 18 TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF CHAPTER 2 OF “THE CALL OF THE WILD” 2.1 A brief analysis of the Source Language text ……………………… 18 2.2 The translator’s purpose…………………………………………… 20 2.3 Comparing the translation with the original……………………… 20 2.4 An evaluation of the translation…………………………………… 23 2.1 An evaluation of the translation version in the translator‘s 23 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 An evaluation of the translation version in the critic‘s terms….3 An evaluation of the translation version as a piece of writing, 37 independently of its original…………………………………….5 The translation’s future…………………………………………. 38 PART 3: DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND CONCLUSION REFERENCES……………………………………………………………….
English version of the selected text ……………………………. Vietnamese version of the selected text………………………… Appendix C: Evidence quoted from the original and the translated version vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS TQA: Translation Quality Assessment ST: Source Text TT: Target Text SL: Source Language TL: Target Language vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND TABLES Tables and diagrams Pages New Mark‘s methods of translation…………………………. 6 House‘s Revised Schema for the Analysis of ST and TT……. 15 Table 1: A selective but representative detailed comparison of the 23 translation with the original Table 2:Evidences about translators‘ achievements in terms of word 25 choice and expressions.
Table 3: Evidences about translators‘ achievements in terms of using 26 idioms Table 4: More evidences about translators‘ achievements in terms of 28 word choice and expressions. Table 5: Mistakes in Vietnamese version in terms of grammar and 33 meaning Table 6: Mistakes in Vietnamese version in terms of word choice and 34 meaning viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 5. Rational for the study Translation is an issue which attracts more and more attention from many people all over the world. Nowadays, in the inevitable trend of globalization and integration, not only the professional translators but also many people working in different fields such as health care, economy, politics, etc, are concerned about the quality of translation.
However, in fact, to have a high-quality translation version, especially in the field of literature, is not an easy task and it involves a lot of skills from the translators. According to the translator Thuy Toan(1993), to have a good translation version, the translator must not only love his job and literature but also be good at their mother tongue, know foreign languages, have a thorough knowledge of culture, work cautiously and be industrious at consulting. From his point of view, it is clear that translation is a challenging job, which requires the translator both the knowledge of the language and the background knowledge of the culture which the literary works belongs to. Sometimes, due to lack of either of these or because of the translator‘s carelessness, the translated version may not be concise enough.
Even more seriously, it can transfer the wrong message that is attached in the literary works. At present, in Vietnam, works of literary translations are growing rapidly , even uncontrollably in quantity for commercial purposes ; however, there has been no popular criterion for a good and valuable translated version. Besides the successfully -translated masterpieces such as Wuthering Heights (Đồi gió hú), Harry Porter, Noruwei no mori (Rừng Nauy), The Centaur in the Garden (Con nhân mã ở trong vườn ), there still exists ones of bad quality, for example , the Vietnamese version of ―The Da Vinci Code‖ (Mâ ̣t mã Da Vinci) by translator Đo Thu Ha (Van Hoa-Thong Tin Publisher ,2006). This translation receives a lot of criticism right from publication because of the mistakes that she should not have made in terms of vocabulary, grammar and descriptions.
For this reason, the minor thesis would like to focus on the evaluation of one literary translation 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com so that the readers can have better understanding of some models of translation quality assessment initiated by some famous linguists in the world like Nida and Taber, Peter Newmark, and J. Within the limitation of the minor thesis, only some of these models will be introduced, and then, the model of Peter Newmark will be applied in evaluating the Vietnamese translated version of ―The Call of the Wild‖ by Nguyen Cung Ai and Vu Tuan Phuong, two great and famous Vietnamese translators to point out both the strengths and weaknesses of translated texts in comparison with the original. Also, the author would like to investigate the prominent equivalence types the translator has achieved in translating this famous masterpiece so that other translators can get some experiences from them. Objective of the study This thesis mainly aims at answering the three research questions: How good is the Vietnamese version of ―The Call of the Wild‖ according to Newmark‘s model? What are the weaknesses of the translated version? What might be some lessons learned from the translation version? 7.
Scope and method of the study 3.1 Scope of the study The masterpiece ―The Call of the Wild‖ includes of seven chapters in total. Due to the limited time for this study, only Chapter Two of this short story will be chosen as the typical analysis of the success and the shortcomings of two translators in translating this masterpiece from English into Vietnamese. The title of this chapter is ―The Law of Club and Fang‖ and the reason why this chapter is chosen is that the writer has had access to this chapter since she was a fourth year student. At that time, she had chances to learn about this chapter in the subject ―English Literature‖, which attracts her a lot.
Moreover, this is a moving chapter about the process in which the dog adapts itself to 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com the new harsh environment and rude owners. Therefore, the writer decides to make a comparison between the original version and the translated one to see whether the translators can transship both the connotative and denotative meaning of the source text into the target text or not. Method of the study The goal of this study is to evaluate the quality of the translated version of ―The Call of the Wild‖ by Nguyen Cung Ai and Vu Tuan Phuong. To reach this goal, I decide to have an insight into various translation quality assessment models by different authors, among which Peter Newmark‘s model is chosen as the main criteria for assessing the Vietnamese version of this masterpiece because of its strong points in terms of application, that is, it is easy to follow.
During the assessing process, Contrastive Analysis approach will be applied to compare and evaluate the translated version against the original one. This assessing process will be carried out as follows. First, the original text will be read thoroughly and comprehensively, then the source text will be compared to its translation under the framework of NewMark‘s TQA model. According to his model, there are five main steps towards TQA and the researcher is going to strictly follow them: Step 1: A brief analysis of the SL text stressing its intention and its functional aspects Step 2: the translator‘s interpretation of the SL text‘s purpose, his translation method and the translation‘s likely readership Step 3: A selective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with the original in terms of both sematics and syntactics Step 4: an evaluation of the translation: - (a) in the translator‘s terms, (b) in the critic‘s terms, (c) as a piece of writing, independently of its original.
3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Step 5: Where appropriate, an assessment of the likely place of the translation in the target language culture or discipline. Organization of the study The study contains three main parts: Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Development. This part includes two chapters: Chapter 1: Literature Review This part will discuss different basic aspects of translation, which is compulsory background knowledge for any translation assessor who wishes to evaluate the quality of translation, including definition of translation, translation methods and procedures, translation equivalence, and translation assessment. Chapter 2: Application of Newmark‘s TQA model in evaluating Chapter Two of ―The Call of the wild‖ In this chapter, Newmark‘s five- step TQA model mentioned above will be applied in assessing the Vietnamese version of chapter 2 in the works ―The Call of the Wild‖ by Jack London.
Finally, part 3 will deal with the discussion of the results of this study and some conclusions will be drawn. The quality of the translation text including both translators‘ strengths and weaknesses, which are based on the application of the model, will be discussed. Also, some implications and suggestions will be made for other translators, especially in the field of literature. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Definition of translation Translation has a long history and plays an important role in linguistics as Kelly, L.G- a prominent figure in linguistic circle, once stated ―Without translation, there is no history of the world‖.
However, there have been so many different opinions of what a translation is that it has become a controversial topic so far. Within the scope of this thesis, just some famous viewpoints around this topic of some outstanding researchers will be mentioned to illustrate this. The first is the definition made by Newmark, a well-known researcher who has made a great deal of important contributions to the development of translation. According to him, “Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language‖ (Newmark, 1988a:7).
This definition is quite evident and easy to understand. Sharing a similar viewpoint, Catford (1965:20) considers translation ―The replacement of textual material in one language (source language) by an equivalent textual material in other language (target language)‖. Along the same line, Hartman and Stork (1972:713) also gave their own definition of translation. According to them, ―Translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language.