NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH NGUYEN THI THU HUE Business English 58A A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES FACED BY MARKETING INTERNS IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH MARKETING TERMS INTO VIETNAMESE Hanoi, May, 2020 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH NGUYEN THI THU HUE A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES FACED BY MARKETING INTERNS IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH MARKETING TERMS INTO VIETNAMESE Supervisor: Tran Thi Thu Giang, MBA Hanoi, May, 2020 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A ACKNOWLEDGEMENT To complete this final report, I gain a range of encouragement and support from my reliable consultants, so I sincerely want to express my gratefulness as well as deepest thanks to all the help that I have treasured. Firstly, I would like to express my honest gratitude to my supervisor Ms. Tran Thi Thu Giang, whose valuable guidance, stimulating suggestions and encouragement helped me in all stages of this research and writing of this thesis. Without her helpful direction and sound advice, I would not be able to complete this important internship thematic.
Secondly, I am pleased to send my thankfulness to all the members at Le Group of Companies for their willingness to help me to complete my graduation thesis at their esteemed organization. Besides, I would like to thank NEU students who gave me valuable recommendations and participated in my survey, without their sincere participation, the outcome of my academic investigation would not have been completed. Finally, it is my pleasure to receive persistent care, love and encouragement from my family, my lecturers and my friends during my four-years in the university as well as in my life. Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The evolution of Marketing in 21st century create high demand for translation of marketing materials of all forms, as well as of training and education in marketing.
In particular, the process of translating marketing terms plays an indispensable role in business integration. However, translation has never been considered to be easy, especially effective translation virtually requires extensive specialized vocabulary of marketing as well as proper culture understanding. Given this issue, the research focused on analyzing the difficulties that marketing interns frequently face with when translating marketing terminology. This study analyze in detail main causes of the situation and proposed recommendations to improve quality of marketing translation.
By developing theoretical framework leading to the analysis research survey and the series of nine questions and three seminar interview questions implemented to 102 marketing interns and 5 experts, the researcher investigate different obstacles in marketing terminology translation. Depend on what has been got from the study, it can be easily indicated that the interns meet many struggles with vocabulary and culture when dealing with translation process of marketing term, in which lexical ambiguity and inadequacy is considered as the most challenging one. Therefore, some recommendations are proposed with the hope to minimize the difficulties and upgrade translation skills. The suggestions are given out in order to help marketing newcomers to overcome both lexical and cultural difficulties.
Obliviously, nothing can improve your translation skill better than frequent practicing. Besides, a variety of valuable material from books, dictionaries, websites, newspapers play important parts in cultivating diverse vocabulary and culture knowledge. Especially, online source is an effective and fast way while translator meet new terms. However, when accessing to online documents, the learners should intelligently make uses of them by applying reliable information to avoid mistakes.
The result of this study would help marketing newcomers as well as all who has concerned about marketing and translation field be better aware of translating marketing term and more well-equipped proffesional knowledge and skill in order to gain success in this field. Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3. Degree of marketing interns' satisfaction with translating marketing terms 19 Figure 3. Marketing interns’ difficulties when translating marketing terms 24 Figure 3.
Lexical difficulties in translating marketing terms 26 Figure 3. Marketing interns’ tendency when facing with new terms in marketing translation 29 Figure 3. Cultural difficulties in translating marketing terms 31 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A LIST OF TABLES Table 3. The frequency of marketing interns’ difficulties in translating marketing terms 19 Table 3.
The accurate translation for marketing terms in the questionnaire 21 Table 3. Common methods applied in the translation of English marketing terms into Vietnamese by survey respondents 22 Table 3. The best recommended ways used to translate marketing terms in the questionnaire 23 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. NEU: National Economics University 2.
4th: fourth year 3. SL: Source language 4. TL: Target language Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY il LIST OF FIGURES 1H LIST OF TABLES 1V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS V CHAPTER I. Background of the research 1 1.
Objectives of the research 2 1. Scope of the research 2 1. Structure of the study 3 CHAPTER I. Common translation methods 6 2.
Translation of terminology 7 2. The importance of English — Vietnamese translation to marketing terminology 13 2. Marketing terminology and terms 14 2. Marketing terminology 15 CHAPTER II.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18 3. Marketing interns’ attitude towards marketing terminology translation 18 3. The frequency of marketing interns’ difficulties in translating marketing terms 18 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A 3. The degree of satisfaction of interns when translating marketing terms 19 3.
The degree of accuracy in translating English - Vietnamese terms of respondents 20 3. The common method often applied in the translation of English marketing terms into Vietnamese 21 3. Marketing interns’ difficulties when translating marketing terms 25 3. Cultural difficulties 30 CHAPTER IV.
Recommendations for lexical difficulties 35 4. Cultivating diverse vocabulary 36 4. Checking and editing 36 4. Recommendation for culture difficulties 36 CONCLUSION 38 5.
Summary of the study 38 5. The limitation of the study 39 5. Recommendation for further studies 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX 42 Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A CHAPTER I. Background of the research Marketing is considered as indispensable activities of any business which brings their images and products closer to customers.
With fierce competition within the market nowadays, marketing increasingly plays a significant part in the existence and progress of a business. No matter whether a business is a monopoly, a limited liability company, or a law firm, knowing the basic marketing terms can help to reach its potential in any industry. Globalization has been creating various chances for lucrative economic development. However, language is always considered as one of the biggest barriers, preventing businesses from integrating into foreign markets.
If an enterprise is ambitious to globalize its brand and persuade customers to trust their products and services, the crucial action should be targeted is to understanding international market. Therefore, the requirement of translating advertising and marketing materials from English to Vietnamese is highly appreciated. Correspondingly, proficiency in the translation of English marketing terms is regarded as an urgent need for success goal of business. Effective translation of marketing terms requires skillful practitioners who have not only have extensive knowledge about marketing specialized vocabulary but also culture understanding.
During the translation process, the author also faced with many difficulties in translating marketing terms, which confused and made me waste a lot of time. That is the main reason inspiring the researcher to carry out this study. Moreover, although there are a large number of translation studies have been done before, the investigations about marketing terminology translation are in very limited quantity, notwithstanding the current increasing demand on translation document in marketing field. All of these issues are the driving forces helping me to choose the topic “4 study on difficulties faced by marketing interns in translating English marketing terms into Vietnamese” with the desire to help marketing lovers as well as marketing interns to find out their obstacles during translating marketing terms and propose solutions for them to overcome these difficulties.
Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A 1. Objectives of the research The study aims at identifying current situation faced by marketing interns in translating marketing terms from English to Vietnamese. Therefore, the study has the purpose of seeking for the mistakes, misunderstandings and difficulties that the interns frequently deal with. The second objective is to identify the main causes of the situation.
Finally, as a source of reference, some recommendations have been proposed to improve quality of marketing translation as well as contribute to the improvement of marketing term usage. Scope of the research For research subjects, it focuses on marketing interns, who are currently the senior students at National Economics University and are pursuing marketing field. During three months of doing research, the study has attracted 102 questionnaire respondents and 10 interviewees (5 experts and 5 marketing interns). Research questions With the view of achieving the mentioned objectives, the study has given out two research questions: 1.
What problems can be frequently found in English-Vietnamese translation of marketing terms? 2. What advices and sources can help the interns deal with those problems? 1. Research procedure In order to find out the answer of the research questions, the author has to use specific methods that will be described below. Firstly, the research topic would be proposed and narrowed in order to approach and create research questions.
From what has been done, the thesis would become more focused and reliable. Secondly, related materials written by prestigious authors in previous studies would be collected through the internet and reliable references, regarded as the basis for theoretical frameworks of the study. Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A In the next step, survey questionnaires and interview questions would be proposed and transferred to marketing interns to collect data for the finding and recommendation part of this study. After collecting data, the data base would be summarized and analyzed carefully and be represented in chapter 3.
Finally, from what has been gained from analyzing the collected information, solutions would be proposed to help marketing interns prevent their difficulties. Documentary analysis: A variety of reliable documents and previous researches in the field of marketing translation and marketing terminology play an important part in collecting data, writing literature review and evaluating findings. Survey questionnaire: The questionnaire will be conducted by means of using both online method and off-line method to collect data. The participants include 102 NEU senior students who are doing marketing internship or just finished marketing internship.
The aim of this method is to identify the difficulties and reasons of these problems. Interview: After finding out the problems and their reasons, the author will interview 5 experts in field of marketing and marketing translation and 10 marketing interns. This method aims at asking them to evaluate the results of survey and give suggestions to solve. Structure of the study The study is divided into four main chapters as following: Chapter 1: Introduction It describes the overview, research objectives, research questions, methodology and research’s organization.
Chapter 2: Literature review In this chapter, it will show the literature review mentioning about what has already been said and done in this area. In particular, theoretical background from previous researches have presented in the term of marketing terminology Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ - 11162103 — Business English 58A translation, including Translation, marketing, common translation methods, marketing terminology, and common obstacles that the marketing interns might come across in their translation processes. Chapter 3: Findings and discussion This chapter undertakes to answer the first research question, with the purpose of analyzing the survey. The authors will focus on marketing interns’ obstacles when translating terms and their causes based on collected data and get deeper understanding about the causes of the listed problems.