THE PROBLEMS IN TRANSLATION FACING THE LAST YEAR STUDENTS MAJOR IN ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY OF PHAN THIET M.A Tu Thi Tuyet Vy Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Phan Thiet B.A Student Truong Le Thuan An Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Phan Thiet B.A Student Phung Thi Hanh Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Phan Thiet B.A Tran Thi Nhu Hao Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Phan Thiet B.A Student Nguyen Thi Kim Anh Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Phan Thiet Abstract The study aimed at exploring the difficulties that face the students of Phan Thiet University in the translation process from English to Vietnamese and vice versa. The researchers attempted to find suitable solutions for these difficulties and problems that these students experienced. The researchers followed an experimental descriptive method in the study. The researchers also designed a test in order to explore the difficulties and problems that face thesestudents.
The test was composed of seven questions and 58 items. The study was conducted on the English students of Phan Thiet University during the course of the 2017/2018 academic year. The researchers selected a random sample of students. The researcher applied the suitable statistical methods inthe research.
At the end of the study, the researchers offered numerous recommendations and suggestions. Introduction Translation is one of the language skills, which is very crucial to be learned by translators and students in the relevant field of study who are eager to be a professional 1 translator in the future. According to Malkjaer (2011), translation is a sort of activity which is done by a translator at conveying meaning in a text from one language to another language. Both researchers stated that the result of translated-work is not supposed to be like what has been written in the source language (SL) text; however, the purpose of the source language should be conveyed when it comes to the target text (TL).
Hence, based on the explanations that have been revealed by Malkjaer and Waldorf, translation can be concluded as the process of transferring ideas from one language to another language. Therefore, the translators are only transferring the ideas without changing the purposes of a source text (SL). The purpose of the text in the translation work means the precise meaning of the source text should be conveyed in the target text. In addition, the translators Published by International Society of English Language Studies.
This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) have to realize that they are only stating the same ideas as written1 in source language text from one language to another language without changing the ideas that have been written in the source text. Hence, the translators are expected to have a better understanding of the source text before they translate a text from the source language to the target language. According to the study that has been conducted by Risku (2016) stated that most translators’ clients are not satisfied with the quality of their translators’ work because sometimes the purpose or the intention of the source language text is not conveyed when it comes to the target language text. As a result, the credibility of translators is underestimated because their works do not suit the clients’ needs.
Further, Risku (2016) stated it is important for translators to have further discussion with their clients in terms of how the translation result is expected. Therefore, there will be no misunderstanding in the translation result after it is being translated by translators, and the result can be accepted by the clients. There is a number of studies about translation that have been conducted, primarily the studies 2 about translation problems. 1n 2014, a study entitled “Theory and problems in translation” has been conducted Bharathi.
His study attempted to investigate. The translation problems that appear in the two novels, Tell a thousand lies and the Sea of innocence. The qualitative method had been applied in this study. The result of his study showed that from the two novels which have been investigated, apparently the most common problems found were the cultural problems.
Further, the two novels themselves were created in the English language where the source language was English, and the target language was Urdu, which is one of the Indian languages. Shama Bharathi concluded that most English words were not translated properly into Indian because there was no close equivalent due to some cultural terminologies in English into the Indian language. Hence, he suggested to translators to have a proper insight of both the languages, i., the source language and the target language. This study will be worthwhile for the students, teachers, and further researchers.
For students, they will learn about the problems of translation that will be explicitly elucidated in the findings and discussion section and also the causal factors behind the issues themselves. Teachers, who immerse themselves in the translation teaching, can also utilize this study because this study will also explain the translation method that can be used in reducing the number of problems in terms of translating the academic essay. Moreover, this study will be beneficial for those further researchers who would like to explore more about translation problems who might not discover in this study primarily. Hence this research can be utilized as an additional reference.
However, this study investigated the translation problems made by students of the English department in translating academic essay where students of translation class 2015 were the participants of the study. Further, the study investigated the products of translation works which have been translated by translation students as the participants. The translation problems’ theory of Mathieu (2003) was used in analyzing the translated documents of an argumentative essay and comparison and contrast essay. Besides, there were no numbers of studies conducted similar to this study, because the previous studies 3 found only discussing the problem in translating English novel into an Indian language, cross-cultural translation, the factors of meaning lost in translation article, and the issue and challenges in translating historical text.
Hence, the study of translation problems in the academic essay needs to be conducted. Students of English Department at seventh semester are expected to have the ability to translate a text from source language (SL) text to the target language (TL), because they have accomplished all linguistics courses such as Introduction to Linguistics, Phonetics, and Phonology, Morphology, English Syntax, Sociolinguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, and Psycholinguistics. Further, English Department students are mostly dealing with academic essay almost in their all courses during studying in the English Department. Hence, according to the several tendencies that students of English department do in the translation class as mentioned above, this study aimed to explore more about students’ ability in translating academic essay and investigate the dominant problems in students’ academic essaytranslation.
Cultural, communicative, sociolinguistic aspects of translation define trends in contemporary translation studies. The conceptual approach to translation phenomenon is due to the deep integration of national cultures, and their interactions (Marinetti, 2011). Common problems of prose, poetry and drama, specific questions of translation process, the place of translation in multicultural literary process have become the subject of translation study research. Dynamic development of national literatures required not only translation reforms, but also changes in the reader’s cultural expectations and era’s aesthetic concepts (Robinson, 1998).
The condition of translation studies was influenced by a number of circumstances. First of all, the objective conditions characterized the formation of literary translation: the nature of the national literature, the development degree of the native literary language, the strength or weakness of translation traditions, the geographical, political differences in living conditions, influencing the reader perception and differences in culture. Unfortunately, the national psychological traits, the specificity of creative thinking, genre constructs were often left out of the translator 4 attention. Partly this factual information relevant to the interior colour, and traditions were compensated by footnotes, annotations, but it did not contribute to the full accuracy of the translation.
Therefore full attention should be paid to translation of lingua cultural concepts, because the current problems of cultural transmission are of great importance. Translation is the transmission of a thought in a language to another language. It is a process which guides from written source language text into target language (Pinchuck, 1977; Wilss, 1982; Newmark, 1991). It is also a bridge to understand the knowledge, science, textual material, and others.
Many learners do translation to understand text. However, they have difficulties in translating from English to Indonesia or the vice versa even though software application to assist translation are available. Some learners said that translation is difficult since the materials of translation are not suitable with the need of language learners, the activity of translation is boring, and the learners also lack of background knowledge about linguistic. They may do errors in translating some idioms and some words which are not familiar with their native language because the culture influences anguage‟s expressions.
As it is said by Al-Darawish (1983), general difficulties in doing translation are no two languages are exactly the same in term of phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic features. They are divergent in arrangement of sentences or syntax. That‟s why students find it difficult in translating of English into the target language Then, another difficulty is to translate idiomatic expressions from English into the target language. As it is stated by Baker (1992) there are two factors which make idiomatic expression translation in English difficult.
First, the translators lack of equivalence of the target language. They do not know the acceptable translation of some words into target language since different languages express different linguistic features. The latter, culture specific idioms are also not easy for the students to translate into the target language. They may refer to specific items to that particular culture of the language.
However, according to Komissarov (1985), five aspects should be considered in idiomatic expressions such as figurative meaning, literal meaning, emotive 5 character, stylistic register, and national coloring. Figurative meaning tries to give meaning not based on the basic meaning of the words but imaginative meaning. The translators should be able to assess the figurative meaning in the sentences. Then, literal meaning is the basic meaning or original meaning of the words.
To look for the literal meaning is not as difficult as figurative language. Emotive character means that whether the sentences providing positive, negative, and neutral meanings, whereas stylistic register is to notice whether the sentences are very formal, informal, slang or taboo. Last, national coloring means proper nouns of something using nationality. Those five aspects cause difficulty for students in translating.
Some studies related to translation have been reported such as Suksaereseup and Thep-Ackrapong (2009) they show that the translators have problems in reading process of the source text and wrong lexical interpretation. This translation was done by Thai students who translated from English to Thai. Then, Sukmana (2000) also reported in her research that most students of sixth semester of English study program at University of Bengkulu get poor achievement and none of them get good achievement in translating idiomatic expression. Another research was also done by Al Zu‟bi (2018) which maintains that M.A students who take translation program in Yarmouk and Middle east University faced difficulties in translating.
It was because their unfamiliarity with political expression and resorting to literal translation. Moreover, Ibrahim (2017) has conducted research about an investigation of difficulties of translation which faced by Sudanese students in Dongola University. His research aims were to find out kind ofstudents. difficulties in translation, introducing pupils‟ difficulties in detail, and how to overcome the problems.
The data were taken from Dongola University consisted of 30 students. Questionnaire was used to take the data of the study. He reported that Sudanese University students in College of Education in the second semester find students‟ difficulties in translating because of grammatical categories, linguistic level, lexical items, and some differences between source language with the target language. Whereas, another research also applied in M.