THE STATE BANK OF VIETNAM MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF BANKING GRADUATION THESIS Major: Business English USE OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE IN TRANSLATING COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS: TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT Student: Pham Le Thanh Truc Class: DH36AV05 Batch: K36 Supervisor: Le Thi Thuy Nhung, PhD Ho Chi Minh City, May, 2024 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As I have been gradually progressing towards the completion of my graduation thesis, which marks the culmination of my four-year journey as a university student, I would like to convey acknowledgements to individuals who have played indispensable roles for their invaluable assistance and encouragement. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge and express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Le Thi Thuy Nhung, my thesis supervisor. Her thoughtful recommendations, invaluable guidance, dedicated support, and expertise in linguistics have been invaluable throughout the entire process of conducting the study.
Secondly, my heartfelt gratitude extends to the Faculty of Foreign Languages, especially to Ms. Nguyen Thi Lan Anh for her ongoing support with the completion of this thesis. My thanks also go to my friends for their continuous support and encouragement throughout my academic journey. During challenging periods, their enthusiasm and companionship have been a great source of encouragement and motivation for me.
Finally, I am immensely grateful to my parents and my brother for their unconditional love and support, which have been fundamental in making my path and allowing me to follow my dreams. I truly cherish everything that they have done for me, so thank you very much. i DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I, the undersigned Phạm Lê Thanh Trúc hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. To the best of my knowledge this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgement has been made.
Student Phạm Lê Thanh Trúc ii ABSTRACT This study assesses the quality of translation produced by Google Translate (GT) and identifies the errors GT generates in its translations of commercial contracts from English into Vietnamese. The study employs both qualitative and quantitative research methods for data analysis. The qualitative component includes describing the texts (translations) based on different categories. The quantitative approach includes identifying and quantifying the numbers of errors produced by GT.
The findings show a total of 65 lexical mistranslations and 90 syntactic mistranslations produced by GT including common words with uncommon meanings, archaic words, vague words, synonyms, technical terms, and formal words. GT generates a total of 150 translation errors comprising 138 overtly erroneous errors (92.0%) and 12 covertly erroneous errors (8. Although GT has several limitations in translating commercial contracts, it can maintain the overall level of formality of the documents. The study makes implications for language students, teachers, and course developers in making better use of GT in studying and teaching translation courses while minimizing its drawbacks.
The findings indicate the important role of human translators and the need for quality assessment in translation. The study suggests a combination of GT and human translators in translation practice so as to enhance the quality of translation. Keywords: Google Translate, translation quality assessment, machine translation, commercial contracts iii Abbreviation Full word GT Google Translate ME Microsoft Excel MT Machine Translation MW Microsoft Word SL Source Language ST Source Text TL Target Language TQA Translation Quality Assessment TT Target Text ABBREVIATIONS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .i DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP .iv LIST OF TABLES. Background of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Structure of the thesis. A brief history and development of Google Translate.
Translation quality assessment. Definition of translation quality assessment. Criteria for translation quality assessment. The relationship between translation accuracy and translation quality.
The importance of error identification and classification in translation quality assessment. Translation quality assessment models. House‟s translation quality assessment model. House‟s translation quality assessment model.
Overt and covert translation. The differences between overt translation and covert translation. Overtly erroneous errors and covertly erroneous errors. Overtly erroneous errors.
Covertly erroneous errors. Definition of contracts. Definition of commercial contracts. Types of commercial contracts.
Principles of commercial contracts. Purposes of commercial contracts. Legal language of commercial contracts. Definition of stylistics.
The need to analyze stylistic features. Stylistic analysis of commercial contracts. Data collection procedures. The adaptation of Nord‟s (1991) and Steiner‟s (1998) models for assessing the quality of Google Translate translation in the study.
The adaptation of House‟s (1997) translation quality assessment model to identify errors in Google Translate translations. Validity and Reliability. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Overtly erroneous errors.
Covertly erroneous errors. Summary of major findings. Implications for students. Implications for teachers.
Implications for translation course developers. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further research .103 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Words with common definitions and uncommon definitions.
Informal words and formal words in commercial contracts. Steps to assess the quality of translations by GT. House‟s (1997) model of error analysis. Intra-textual factors.
Samples of GT‟s translation of archaic words. Translation of archaic words. Samples of GT‟s translation of technical terms. Translation of technical terms.
Samples of GT‟s translation of common words with uncommon meanings. Translation of common words with uncommon meanings. Sample of GT‟s translation of vague words. Translation of vague words.
Samples of GT‟s translation of synonyms. Translation of synonyms. Samples of GT‟s translation of formal words. Translation of formal words.
Sample of GT‟s translation of other lexical features. Samples of GT‟s translation of specific nouns referring to the contract parties. Translation of specific nouns referring to the contract parties. Samples of GT‟s translation of long and complex sentences.
Translation of long and complex sentences. Samples of GT‟s translation of conditional sentences. Translation of conditional sentences. Samples of GT‟s translation of passive sentences.
Translation of passive sentences. Samples of GT‟s translation of other syntactic features. Other syntactic features. Lexical features of 10 commercial contracts.
Syntactic features of 10 commercial contracts. Examples of ungrammaticality in GT‟s translation .28 Examples of dubious acceptability in GT‟s translation. Dubious acceptability errors. Examples of additions in GT‟s translation.
Examples of omissions in GT‟s translation. Examples of wrong selections in GT‟s translation. Wrong selection errors. Examples of wrong combinations of elements in GT‟s translation.
Wrong combination of elements errors. Examples of covertly erroneous errors in GT‟s translation. Overtly erroneous errors. Covertly erroneous errors.
Overtly erroneous errors vs. Covertly erroneous errors. INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the background information of the study beginning with a brief history and development of machine translation (MT) and Google Translate (GT), followed by the justification of the importance of translation quality assessment (TQA). Next, it provides an identification of the research gaps, the significance of the study and the contribution of the study to the existing knowledge.
Then, the chapter presents the scope of the study, the rationale for the study, the aims and the research questions. Finally, the chapter concludes with an outline of the structure of the thesis. Background of the study There are many different languages spoken throughout the world, each of which represents a distinct culture, history, and means of communication amongst people in different countries. In the increasingly globalized world we live in, language barriers can make it challenging to access information (Rivera-Trigueros, 2022).
As a means of bridging language barriers and providing communication channels among people of different languages and cultures, translation plays an important role in the advancement of global understanding. With the rapid development of technology, the advent of MT tools and especially the availability of GT, translation practices have seen a significant transformation. Since its introduction in 2006, GT has gained its popularity by providing translation support for 133 languages worldwide. Over the past decades, GT has been widely used in various aspects of language education, especially in translation training and practices.
GT has become increasingly popular in language learning since the tool offers a number of benefits. Language learners have easy access to GT with the use of websites and online apps via smart devices connected to the Internet (Jolley & Maimone, 2022). In addition, the use of GT and other MT tools provide an effective solution to a great number of expensive and time-consuming tasks that require human translators (Azer & Aghayi, 2015). However, the widespread use of GT has brought about several problems.
Language students tend to depend on GT as an instant instrument to complete their 1 assignments, yet they are not sure if the translations from GT are good enough (Brahmana et al. Many students easily accept translations from GT without questioning its quality. GT translations sometimes produce inaccurate or unusable outputs that would hardly be produced by human translators (Alsalem, 2019). In other words, GT‟s translations are not as accurate as those generated by a qualified translator, and the quality of GT-translated texts is hardly up to the standard produced by a qualified human translator (Amilia & Yuwono, 2020).
GT‟s translation is far from perfect owing to the high level of complexity of languages, which have many different meanings for words, different ways to interpret sentences, and grammatical rules that occur in one language but do not in another (Okpor, 2014). This signifies the importance of conducting the TQA of GT‟s products. Assessment of the quality of GT translations may benefit trainee translators as they need to know the degree of accuracy and the types of errors made by GT so as to improve the works (Hönig, 1997, as cited in Zehnalová, 2013). As a result, users can determine how to use GT effectively in their own ways.
In other words, assessment of the quality of GT translations helps users to measure and modify the GT‟s outputs (Görög, 2014). The need to assess the quality of translations produced by GT may benefit students who are doing translation courses at university. As a senior English major in the Business English program at Ho Chi Minh University of Banking (HUB), the researcher had opportunities to attend translation courses in the study program. These courses offer undergraduate students opportunities to develop knowledge and skills in business translation.
From the researcher‟s experiences and observation while doing the translation courses, several English majors at HUB have been dependent on GT for translation outputs while dealing with translation assignments. Since GT can help students to produce translations quickly and easily, several students often put translation tasks into GT for outputs rather than doing the translations themselves and accept the GT translations without questioning its quality. The heavy reliance on GT can make students lazy and hinder the development of their translation skills. 2 This study aims to assess how accurate GT‟s translations of commercial contracts from English to Vietnamese are.
Furthermore, it seeks to identify the common errors that GT produces when translating commercial contracts from English into Vietnamese. The findings of the study provide insights into the quality of translation produced by GT with the hope that HUB English majors are better informed about the limitations of GT. By understanding GT‟s drawbacks, students can become less dependent on GT during the courses of their study. Furthermore, the students know how to effectively make use of GT not only for dealing with assignments in translation courses at HUB but also for their professional practices in translation beyond university.
Research gaps Investigating the translation quality of GT is not a new topic. Several studies have examined the quality of GT‟s translations of business correspondences (Riadi et al., 2020), academic abstracts (Tongpoon-Patanasorn, 2020), newspapers (Foradi et al., 2022), and legal documents (Alkatheery, 2023). These studies provide insights into the benefits and drawbacks of GT‟ translations of different text genres. Nevertheless, previous research on GT‟s translations of commercial contracts remains scarce.