VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PHẠM THỊ THỦY AN EVALUATION OF TRANSLATION QUALITY OF LITERARY WORKS (PROSE) Major: English Linguistics Code: 62.01 A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Associate Prof. Lê Hùng Tiến (Ph.D) HANOI – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the dissertation, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the dissertation. The dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree of diploma in any other tertiary institutions. PHẠM THỊ THỦY Date: ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION.
Rationale of the study. Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Contribution of the study.
Organization of the study. 6 PART II: DEVELOPMENT. 8 CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT. Concept of translation in three different approaches.
Literature-oriented approaches. Skopos-related approaches. Linguistics-based approaches. Concept of translation quality assessment in three different approaches.
Definition of translation quality assessment. Literature-oriented approaches. Skopos-related approaches. Linguistics-based approaches.
14 iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Early linguistics-based approaches. Later linguistics-based approaches. Translation quality assessment (TQA) models.
Non-comparative model: Toury‟s model. Nord‟s TQA model. Newmark‟s TQA model. House‟s TQA model.
Discussion on Nord‟s model, Newmark‟s model and House‟s model. A detailed description of House‟s TQA model. House‟s (1977) original TQA model. Theoretical bases of House‟s original model.
Three aspects of meaning and concept of equivalence. Functions of language vs. functions of texts. A model for establishing functional equivalence.
Operation of House‟s original model. Method of analyses and comparison of texts. House‟s revised (1997) TQA model. Modifications to House‟s original model.
Register analysis of field, tenor, and mode. A functional-pragmatic TQA model. Operation of House‟s revised model. Overt and covert translations.
41 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. 45 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Mixed approaches and specific methods. Mixed approaches: qualitative and quantitative.
Qualitative analytical procedure. Quantitative analytical procedure. Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task. Focus group interview.
Data for qualitative analyses. Data for quantitative analyses. Data for analyses of translation naturalness. Data from MDCT.
Data from focus group interview. 66 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS FROM QUALITATIVE ANALYSES AND DISCUSSIONS. 68 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. „Southern Skies‟ (ST No.1) – „Trời Nam lồng lộng‟ (TT No.
Analysis of ST No. Comparison of ST No.1 „Southern Skies‟ and TT No.1 „Trời Nam lồng lộng‟. Categorization of TT No.1 „Trời Nam lồng lộng‟. „Abbreviation‟ (ST No.2) – „Tên viết tắt‟ (TT No.
Analysis of ST No. Comparison of ST No.2 „Abbreviation‟ and TT No.2 „Tên viết tắt‟. Categorization of TT No.2 „Tên viết tắt‟. „Joe‟ (ST No.3) – „Thằng Joe‟ (TT No.
Analysis of ST No. Comparison of ST No.3 „Joe‟ and TT No. Categorization of TT No. „The Hottest Night of the Century‟ (ST No.4) – „Đêm nóng nhất thế kỷ‟ (TT No.
Analysis of ST No.4 „The Hottest Night of the Century‟. Comparison of ST No.4 „The Hottest Night of the Century‟ and TT No.4 „Đêm nóng nhất thế kỷ‟ 100 3. Categorization of TT No.4 „Đêm nóng nhất thế kỷ‟. „Hostages‟ (ST No.5) – „Con tin‟ (TT No.
Analysis of ST No. Comparison of ST No.5 „Hostages‟ and TT No. Categorization of TT No. 112 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
113 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS FROM QUANTITATIVE ANALYSES & ANALYSES OF TRANSLATION NATURALNESS AND DISCUSSIONS. Quantitative analyses of personal pronouns, and of passive vs. Analyses of translation naturalness. Analyses of translation naturalness based on data from MDCT.
Analyses of translation naturalness based on data from focus group interview. 133 PART III: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. Contributions of the study. Criticism of House‟s Model.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further research. 144 ARTICLES AND PROJECTS RELATED TO THE DISSERTATION. 155 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Appendix A: STs.
4: “The Hottest Night of the Century”. 1 “Trời Nam lồng lộng” .2 “Tên viết tắt”. 4: “Đêm nóng nhất thế kỷ”. 269 Appendix C: Linguistic background for analyzing and comparing Vietnamese communicative preferences and norms.
275 Appendix D: Analysis of ST No.1: Analysis of ST No.2: Analysis of ST No.3: Analysis of ST No.4 „The Hottest Night of the Century‟ .4: Analysis of ST No. 305 Appendix E: List of addressee – directing utterances in the STs and TTs. 311 Appendix F: Translations of English personal pronouns in the TTs. 314 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Appendix G: Translation of English passive sentences in the TTs.
283 Appendix H: Replacement of nouns in the STs by verbs in the TTs .1: MDCT – Lecturers of English .2: MDCT – Postgraduate students of English .3: MDCT – English-major senior undergraduate students.4: MDCT – Senior undergraduate students of Literature and Linguistics 313 Appendix I.2: Samples of MDCT.1: Samples of MDCT – version 1 .1 – Lecturers of English .2 –Postgraduate students of English.3 – English major senior undergraduate students.4 – Senior undergraduate students of Literature and Linguistics .4: Information about MDCT respondents. 346 Appendix J: Focus Group Interview .1: Data for focus group interview.2: Transcript of focus group interview .3: Summary of focus group interview and choices of translation naturalness .4: Summary of results of focus group interview. 365 ix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Texts .1 Components of language competence .1 Frequency of occurrence of Vietnamese personal pronouns and kinship nouns as translations of the pair „I-You‟. 2 Three types of passive sentences in the STs and their translations in the TTs.
3 Translation of passive sentences in the STs into Vietnamese in the TTs. 124 x LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 4. 1: Frequency of occurrence of Vietnamese personal pronouns and kinship nouns as translations of the pair „I-You‟. 2: Number of passive sentences in the STs and their translations in the TTs.
3: Passive types in the STs and their translations in the TTs. 4: Verb and noun choice by respondents (five groups of respondents). 5: Verb and noun choice of seven sentences among individual groups of respondents. 128 xi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS DCT Discourse Completion Task/ Test EFL English as Foreign Language ESL English as Second Language L1 First language L2 Second language MDCT Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task/ Test N Noun ST Source text TQA Translation quality assessment TT Target text, Translation text V Verb xii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to many people who have assisted my research work.
I am indebted to my supervisor, Associate Prof. Lê Hùng Tiến, for his encouragement, insightful comments on the content and research methods, as well as interest in my research. I would like to thank the staff of Post Graduate Department, University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, for their assistance that has made the realization of the dissertation possible. My sincere thanks also go to Prof.
Hoàng Văn Vân, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, VNU; Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn, Dean of Post Graduate Department, ULIS–VNU; Associate Prof. Lâm Quang Đông, Head of Office of Science and Technology, ULIS– VNU; Associate Prof. Trần Xuân Điệp, Hanoi National University of Education; Prof.
Nguyễn Quang, ULIS–VNU; Associate Prof. Nguyễn Văn Độ, Thăng Long University; and Dr. Nguyễn Đức Hoạt, Foreign Trade University for their invaluable suggestions and comments on the methodology and other issues related to the dissertation. Their willingness to support me, to answer my questions, and to comment on the dissertation content and organization, especially on the methodology has given me more confidence in doing research in this challenging area.
I also owe two independent examiners my thanks for their detailed, critical, but positive comments on the dissertation. I take this opportunity to thank the Board of Rectors of International School - Vietnam National University, Hanoi, and my colleagues of the Foreign Languages Department at IS – VNU, for their assistance during the time I did my research. I would also like to thank the survey respondents and focus group interviewees inside and outside VNU, who contributed to the data of this study. My thanks also extend to Mr.
Trịnh Lữ, the translator of the Australian Short Stories Collection, for allowing me to use his translations in this study. xiii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Finally, I would like to give my thanks to my husband, Đoàn Xuân Trường, and my two sons, Đoàn Minh Thành and Đoàn Minh Trí, for their support and encouragement. Without their support and encouragement it would be far more difficult for me to pursue my research. xiv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT The present study focuses on the evaluation of translation quality of English-Vietnamese fictional prose, more specifically, of English-Vietnamese short stories.
To achieve this aim, we have taken the data from Australian Short Stories collection (2005). The data comprise five Australian short stories (with the total word count being 19,725) and their translations. The data for the research also collected from a survey questionnaire conducted on 370 native Vietnamese speakers, and a focus group interview to validate the naturalness of a number of sentences in the Vietnamese translations. The research methods employed in this study are a combination of qualitative analyses by means of House‟s (1997) functional-pragmatic model of translation quality assessment (TQA), the main method, quantitative analyses by adapting House‟s (2006) method, Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Task (MDCT), and focus group interview.
The review of literature on translation evaluation shows that House‟s functional- pragmatic TQA model is highly appropriate for assessing fictional prose translations because it, firmly based on contemporary research on literary criticism, takes into account both the source text (ST) and the target text (TT). Applying this model, the assessor can discover not only the merits and shortcomings of the translations, but also the cultural aspects of the STs and TTs, which are linguistically manifest. The findings reveal that all the five TTs are target text focused (covert translations), in which the translator has adapted the ST‟s norms to those of the TT. The findings have pointed out several mismatches between STs and TTs along the dimension of Tenor in House‟s model, which include the use of different Vietnamese personal pronouns and kinship nouns for the same English personal pronoun, the shifting of nouns in the STs into verbs in the TTs, and the transformation of a variety of passive sentences in the STs into active ones in the TTs.
In addition, this study suggests that the Australian original texts and the Vietnamese translation texts are equivalent at the level of ideational functional component, and at genre level in House‟s model. However, the researcher argues that the interpersonal functional component in the TTs to some extent is more marked than in the STs. xv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study In the era of globalization, there is a great need to exchange culture and literature among nations.