MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY TRẦN THỊ NGỌC GIÀU EVALUATING THE QUALITY OF ENGLISH- VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONS CARRIED OUT BY GOOGLE TRANSLATE Field: English Linguistics Code: 8.01 Supervisor: Lê Nhân Thành, Ph. e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN TRẦN THỊ NGỌC GIÀU ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƯỢNG CÁC BẢN DỊCH ANH-VIỆT DO GOOGLE TRANSLATE THỰC HIỆN Chuyên ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS. Lê Nhân Thành e i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank all those who helped me complete this thesis. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr.
Le Nhan Thanh, who has given guidance, patience, time, support, and help essential for the completion of this thesis. Without his support, this thesis would never exist. Besides, I would like to express my thankfulness to all the teachers of the Department of Foreign Languages, Quy Nhon University, for their useful lessons, guidance, experience, wholehearted instruction, enthusiasm, and sympathy to make me a more knowledgeable person today. This thesis would have never been fulfilled without the assistance and support from my classmates of the 19th MA Course on the English Language at Quy Nhon University.
Last but not least, I would like to send my warmest thanks to my family and friends, whose love and encouragement were a source of inspiration and motivation for me to complete this thesis successfully. e ii ABSTRACT Google Translate may produce translations with different levels of quality depending on the kinds of text it translates. This study aims to evaluate the quality of GT’s Vietnamese translations of English literary and technical texts to see which of these two genres Google Translate translates better. The study tries to answer the research question (1) How does Google Translate translate literary texts and technical texts in terms of translation quality? and (2) Which of these two genres does Google Translate translate better? Based on Haijar Khanmohammd and Maryam Osanloo’s (2009) conceptual framework of five common types of translation errors including orthographic errors, morphological errors, lexical errors, semantic errors, and syntactic errors, the researcher analyzed Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of three literary texts with 5,773 words and six technical texts with 4,884 words in total.
The findings indicate that GT is better with the technical texts than the literary texts. It is understandable as literary texts are more closely related to culture than technical texts. Although the study achieved its aim, there were some limitations. For instance, there was no investigation on the influence of translation errors on TL readers, and the data for the study was not big enough for more reliable generalizations.
Some implications for teachers and students of translation, translators and other researchers are addressed in the thesis. e iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. v LIST OF TABLES. vi LIST OF FIGURES.
Aim and Objectives of the Study. Scope of the Study. Significance of the Study. Organization of the Thesis.
Definition of translation. Translation quality assessment (TQA). The history of machine translation. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the Findings. Limitations of the Study. Implications of the Study.
Implications for teachers and students of translation. Implications for translators. Implications for other researchers. 57 e v ABBREVIATIONS GT Goolge translate IIMA Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad LE Lexical errors ME Morphological errors MT Machine translation OE Orthographic errors POS Part-of-speech SE Semantic errors SL Source language SYE Syntactic errors TT Target translation e vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.
Identifiable characteristics of translation errors. Example of translation representation. Types and frequencies of errors committed by GT. The frequency of errors occurring in literary texts.
The frequency of errors occurring in the translations of the technical texts. Summary of translation errors committed by GT in the literary text and technical texts. 51 e vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. List of translation methods.
Types of translation shifts. Classification of translation errors. Hierarchical structure of the error typology. Three different levels of an original text and its translation .