VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES CAO HUYỀN TRANG A TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF CHAPTER 6 IN THE NOVEL “LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER” USING J. HOUSE’S MODEL (ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƯỢNG BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT CHƯƠNG 6 TIỂU THUYẾT NGƯỜI TÌNH PHU NHÂN CHATTERLEY DỰA TRÊN MÔ HÌNH CỦA HOUSE) MA MINOR THESIS Major: English Linguistics Code: 60.01 HANOI - 2014 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES CAO HUYỀN TRANG A TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF THE VIETNAMESE VERSION OF CHAPTER 6 IN THE NOVEL “LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER” USING J. HOUSE’S MODEL (ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƯỢNG BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT CHƯƠNG 6 TIỂU THUYẾT NGƯỜI TÌNH PHU NHÂN CHATTERLEY DỰA TRÊN MÔ HÌNH CỦA HOUSE) MA MINOR THESIS Major: English Linguistics Code: 60. LÊ HÙNG TIẾN HANOI - 2014 z DECLARATION I, Cao Huyen Trang, hereby declare that this thesis, which is entitled “A translation quality assessment of the Vietnamese version of Chapter 6 in the novel "Lady Chatterley's lover" using J.
House's model", has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work as the result of my own original research. All materials used as references in this thesis are quoted clearly with their sources while data collection and results were comprehensively done by me. Signature CAO HUYỀN TRANG i z ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not have been possible without the guidance and the help of several individuals around me, to only some of whom it is possible to give particular mention here. First and foremost, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my advisor Assoc.
Lê Hùng Tiến for his motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. From the early stage, it was his fascinating lectures on translation studies that inspired me to conduct this thesis. During the process this thesis was conducted, I have received his valuable guidance, insightful comments and sincere encouragement that I would never forget. My sincerest thanks go to my tremendous mentor for encouraging my research and for allowing me to grow as a research scientist.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude toward my whole family and my friends for their kind support and great encouragement which urges me in completing this thesis. ii z ABSTRACT The field of translation has never witnesses a strongly increase in the requirement for literary translation before. Thanks to good translations, readers over the world are offered a chance to access and enjoy many timeless works. This field, however, involves various challenges.
Therefore, this minor thesis aims at discovering many factors causing to these difficulties and suggesting several recommendations to improve the quality of translation. More specifically, the thesis attempts to evaluate the quality of the Vietnamese version of Chapter 6 in the novel "Lady Chatterley's lover" using J. Based on the analysis of this text, some major findings and suggestion of phonological and cultural problems might be drawn as well. Furthermore, the study shows that the application of covert translation and abuse of some Vietnamese colloquial expressions tend to lower the true value of the source text so that readers are likely to experience a “sloppy translation” with pornographic rather than erotic scenes due to its preference of physical element to spiritual one.
iii z LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SL: Source Language TL: Target Language ST: Source Language Text TT: Target Language Text TQA: Translation Quality Assessment iv z LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS Figure 1.A model for translation quality assessment by House (1977). Figure 2: A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Text in by House (1997). v z TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
iv LIST OF FIGURES. Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Methodology of the study.
Design of the study. Definition of literary translation. Difficulties of literary translation. Cultural translation problems.
Stylistic translation problems. Linguistic translation problems. Text specific translation problems. Translation quality assessment.
The role of translation quality assessment. Approaches towards translation quality assessment. Previous models for translation quality assessment. Nida‟s response-based approach.
Koller‟s text-based approach. Peter Newmark‟s comprehensive criticism approach. House‟s model of translation quality assessment. House‟ original model.
House‟s revised translation quality assessment model. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS. Source Language Text Analysis. Source Language Text Background.
Analysis of ST in accordance with House's model. Statement of function. ST and TT comparison and Statement of Quality. ST and TT comparison for mismatches.
Statement of Quality. The Dialects used in the source text. Comparison between Source Language Text and Target Language Text .IV vii z PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study The field of translation, especially literary translation has undergone many shifts and trends over the last few decades with wide-range arguments.
Numerous approaches have come and gone in a hope to define “a good literary translation” which satisfies all the requirements of literary translation. To resolve these issues, many theories have been proposed and applied in an attempt to assess the quality of a translation. This would be of great benefit for both translators and readers in Vietnam nowadays after some mishaps in literary translation. It is obvious that there have been many literary translations so far such as Harry Porter, Twilight, The Miserables, The call of the wild, Woman in love, Lady Chatterley‟s lover, etc.
However, the quality of these translations still involves countless arguments because of conflicting theories. Thus, it is vital to address an appropriate theory for evaluating translation quality. Among them, Juliane House with her well-known model for assessing translation quality is widely accepted. Despite of its unavoidable limitations, J.
House‟s model, based mainly on the theory of functional grammar by K. Halliday, is chosen by most researchers thanks to its best applicability. Feeling interested in D.Lawrence‟s novels, especially Lady Chatterley‟s Lover, the researcher tries to conduct this minor thesis with a hope that it would be of help for translators, readers and other of concern. With its four-letter words and its explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse, Lady Chatterley‟s Lover is the novel with which D.
Lawrence is most often associated. First published privately in Florence in 1928, it attracted countless controversies due to the reputation of being a sordid book. Also, its present Vietnamese version by Ho Anh Quang is still a matter of criticism. Among other chapters, chapter 6 is an interesting one with Connie‟s new awareness of the self and sexuality through a beauty revelation featured with erotic scenes.
Aims of the study The overall aim of the study was to apply J.House‟s TQA model in order to evaluate the quality of the Vietnamese version of Chapter 6 in the novel "Lady Chatterley's lover translated by Ho Anh Quang. Specifically, the research tries to analyze the source text and target text using House‟s model, in the light of M.K Halliday‟s theory to assess the quality of the translation, find out some mismatches between the two texts and draw a conclusion of what type of translation is employed. The thesis also suggests some implications for a better edition of this novel. To achieve this aim, the two research questions are generated as follows: - How good is the quality of translation text in the light of House‟s model? - What need to be done to improve the quality of the translation? 3.
Scope of the study Within the scope of a minor thesis, it is impossible to analyze the entire novel “Lady Chatterley‟s Lover” with 19 chapters. Therefore, the thesis will focus only on analyzing Chapter 6 which raises Connie‟s new awareness of the self and sexuality and appraises Lawrence‟s bitter indictment of modern industrial society and explicitly describe sexual intercourse between man and woman. This chapter consists of 13 pages, from page 46 to page 58, published in 2005 by Wordworth Editions Limited. As mentioned above, with this controversial novel, D.
Lawrence took a different view of the relationship between the two sexes than was generally mentioned before. Thus, it is unsurprising that this novel was considered as a pornographic rather than erotic work until 1960. Like its original text, Vietnamese version also attracts countless attention from translators, readers and literary critics. Therefore, this thesis is conducted in hope to present a comprehensive analysis of this literary translation as well as seek the true value of the novel.
Methodology of the study This thesis is conducted to investigate the translation quality of Chapter 6 in the novel “Lady Chatterley‟s Lover‟ by D. Lawrence, applying Julian House‟s model, which is set up on the basis of functional pragmatic theories of language use. To conduct this research, qualitative analysis is employed to study an individual text closely. More specific, the chapter 6 of the novel Lady Chatterley‟s Lover‟ was selected for assessment based on J.
House‟s model (1977) with eight dimensions of language use and language user. Also, the analysis makes a strong comparison between ST and TT in order to find out mismatches on each dimension and declares the quality of translation. Descriptive and comparative techniques are also used to evaluate the translation text. The data for this study is collected through the procedure of critical analyzing, based on House‟s model.
Design of the study This research is presented in three chapters as bellow: Part A: Introduction - gives an overview of the rationale, aim, scope, methodology and design of the study Part B: Development - Chapter 1: Literature Review – presents an overview of some related concepts of translation theory and some typical models of translation quality assessment. - Chapter 2: Results and discussion – analyzes the source text, the target text as well as compare the two texts based on the framework provided in chapter 1. Part C: Conclusion - summarizes the results of the research and suggests some recommendations for a better translation. 3 z PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is designed to re-examine some fundamental concepts in the literary translation and introduce some typical models for assessing translation quality in order to provide theoretical orientations for the analysis of the Chapter 6 in the novel „Lady Chatterley‟s Lover‟ including translation theory, literary translation and translation quality assessment.
Several well-known linguistics such as Nida, Peter Newmark, Koller and J. House with their notable works are presented in this section. Definition of literary translation Among other types of translation, literary translation seems to be discussed at greatest length due to its special features, that is, it implies the translation of all genres of literature, which include prose, drama and poetry. As affirmed by Bush (1998:127), “literary translation is the work of literary translators.
That is truism which has to serve as a starting point for a description of literary translation, and original subjective activity at the center of a complex network of social and cultural practices. The imaginative, intellectual and intuitive writing of the translator must not be lost to the disembodied abstraction which is often described as “translation”. With this definition, Bush put a stress on the mission of a „literary translator‟ as well as the social and cultural factors. Following Bush‟s idea of literary translation, Lambers (1998:130) also asserted that “a published translation is the fruit of a substantial creative effort by the translator, who is the key agent in the subjective activity and social practice of 4 z translation”.
He claims that it is the literary translator who decides to translate and gives the literary translation its existence no matter what restraints of the network of social and cultural factors are. Literary translation, indeed, is a matter of challenges.