HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES --------------- NGUYEN BUI THUY MINH NOMINALIZATION IN THE NON-FICTION BOOK “SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND” AND ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES --------------- NGUYEN BUI THUY MINH NOMINALIZATION IN THE NON-FICTION BOOK “SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND” AND ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CODE: 8220201 SUPERVISOR: TRUONG BACH LE, PH. THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ --------------- NGUYỄN BÙI THÙY MINH DANH TỪ HÓA TRONG “SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND” VÀ BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ NGÔN NGỮ ANH MÃ SỐ: 8220201 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. TRƯƠNG BẠCH LÊ THỪA THIÊN HUẾ, 2022 i STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree in any university. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.
Signed: ………………………… Nguyen Bui Thuy Minh Date: ……/……/……… ii ABSTRACT This thesis aims to investigate the tendency for explicitation in translating English nominalization in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” into Vietnamese. Following Biber’s definition of English nominalization as a product of derivational morphology, this study categorizes English nominalization into deverbal and deadjectival forms and describes their characteristics. The findings reveal that the majority of nominalizations found in the corpus are verb-derived. Moreover, it was discovered that certain derivational bound morphemes vastly outnumber other suffixes in the corpus.
Explicitation, which is a universal characteristic of translated texts, is highly pertinent to the discussion of nominalization in translation owing to the disparity in their natures. While a nominal structure depicts the state of affairs in a subtler and more implicit manner, explicitation is the inclination to spell out rather than leave things implicit in the translation. Therefore, explicitation in translating nominalization has been selected as the research’s primary focus. By adopting the corpus-based contrastive approach, the thesis supports the existence of explicitation in the Vietnamese translation via a number of surface manifestations.
The results of the research indicate that explicitation in the translation manifests in a relatively wide pattern, with seven categories used by the translator to increase explicitness. It is also worth mentioning that explicitation in the translation of English nominals found in the corpus frequently occurs at the lexical level. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While a complete master’s thesis bears the single name of the principal researcher, it would never have been achievable without the generous support, advice and collaboration of various people. Hence, it is my privilege to express my sincere gratitude towards all of them.
At the outset, I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to my research instructor, Truong Bach Le, Ph., for giving me the opportunities to work under his guidance. As my supervisor, he has constantly supported me by offering not only extensive professional advice but also the much-needed encouragement throughout this research. His knowledge and dedication clarified a lot of my questions and gave me the inspiration to pursue my goals. What my supervisor has given me was much more than I could ever give him credit for.
In addition, thanks should be bestowed upon my colleagues at the Faculty of English, Hue University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, who have shared my workload and encouraged me all throughout. Finally, I acknowledge my gratitude to everyone who has directly or indirectly helped me accomplish my master’s thesis. iv List of Tables Table 2. Noun suffixes (Biber et al.
Six types of nominalizations. Gumul’s (2017) taxonomy of surface manifestations of explicitation. The taxonomy of surface manifestations of explicitation adopted in the study (adapted from Gumul’s model, 2017). Deverbal nominalizations in the English corpus.
Deadjectival nominalizations in the English corpus. Nominalizations with untraceable bases in the English corpus. Frequencies of explicitating shifts found in the corpus .67 v List of Figures Figure 3. Sketch Engine’s main screen.
Sketch Engine’s parallel concordance. Distribution of shifts involving meaning specification (tokens). Distribution of shifts involving replacing nominalizations with verb phrases or other structures (tokens). Distribution of shifts involving adding plurality (tokens).
Distribution of shifts involving disambiguating lexical metaphors (tokens). Distribution of shifts involving lexical specification (tokens). Distribution of explicitating shifts involving the addition of modifiers (tokens). Distribution of shifts involving the provision of descriptive equivalents and additional explanatory remarks (tokens) .83 vi List of Abbreviations BT: Back translation SL: Source language SS: Source sentence ST: Source text TL: Target language TR: Target reader TS: Target sentence TT: Target text vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of Original Authorship.
iii List of Tables. iv List of Figures. v List of Abbreviations. vi Table of Contents .vii Chapter 1: Introduction .1 Background and rationale for the research .2 Research objectives and research questions .3 Significance of the research .4 Structure of the thesis.
4 Chapter 2: Literature Review .1 Jespersen’s approach to English nominalization .2 English nominalization and Mathesius’ complex condensation .3 Lees’ transformational approach to English nominalization .4 Chomsky’s lexicalist approach to English nominalization.5 Biber’s approach to English nominalization.6 Langacker’s cognitive approach to English nominalization .7 Halliday’s systemic-functional approach to English nominalization .1 Nominalization as a part of grammatical metaphor .2 Classification of nominalization .8 Summary of subsection 2.1 The addition of nominal classifiers.3 Summary of subsection 2.3 Explicitation in translation .1 Definitions of explicitation .2 Taxonomies of explicitation .1 Klaudy’s typology of explicitation .2 Perego’s typology of explicitation .3 Pápai’s explicitation strategies.4 Gumul’s taxonomy of surface manifestations of explicitation .5 Summary of subsection 2.4 Previous studies on explicitation in translating nominalization. 46 Chapter 3: Research Methodology .3 Data processing and analysis .4 Reliability and validity. 56 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion .2 Nominalization via suffixation in the English version .3 Summary of Section 4.3 Explicitating shifts in the translation of English nominalization into Vietnamese .2 Replacing nominalizations with verb phrases .4 Disambiguating lexical metaphors.7 Providing descriptive equivalents and additional explanatory remarks .8 Summary of Section 4. 86 Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications .1 Characteristics of English nominalization in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” .2 Explicitating shifts in the translation of English nominalizations into Vietnamese .3 Implications of the research .1 Theoretical implications for linguistics and translation studies .2 Practical implications for translation teaching and practice .4 Limitations and recommendations for further research .1 Background and rationale for the research Nominalization has been widely regarded as a type of lexical and grammatical resource that plays an important role in language activities and garners significant attention in academic circles (Lei & Yi, 2019).
Having said that, understanding its meaning, structure, and functions remains a stumbling block among generations of linguists due to its trans-categorial status (Roy & Soare, 2011). With its complicated nature, nominalization might pose challenges to translators who come from linguistic backgrounds where this phenomenon does not exist or is less widespread. This reality necessitates a growing number of studies into translating nominalization (e., Sayfouri, 2010; Jalilifar & Shirali, 2014; Hu & Gao, 2019; Milić & Erdeljić, 2019; Khalil, 2020), many of which place great emphasis on transfer operations and shifts stemming from this translation process. Among various deviations from the source text (ST), explicitation, which is a universal characteristic of translated texts (Blum-Kulka, 1986; Baker, 1993), is the primary focus of the current research.
Explicitation is highly apposite to the discussion of nominalization in translation due to the discrepancy between their natures. While a nominal structure describes the state of affairs in a more sophisticated and implicit manner (Kazemian & Hashemi, 2014), explicitation is the tendency to spell things out rather than leave them implicit in the translation (Baker, 1996). In the same vein, Marshall (2019) noted that explicitation is the inclination towards clarity when translating, in contrast to the implicitness present in nominalizations’ compressed structure. This disparity raises the question of whether translators show a propensity to explicate in the target text (TT) what is subtly conveyed in the nominalization in the ST.
In fact, several attempts have been made by researchers over the last decade to shed light on the tendency for explicitation in rendering nominal structures and different ways in which this phenomenon is 2 manifested in translation (e., Južnič, 2013; Le, 2014; Vesterager, 2017; Nguyen, 2018; Marshall, 2019). Having said that, the discussion in this area is far from sufficient and thus should be further investigated in different language pairs to provide a more complete picture of the issue at hand. Under such circumstances, this study endeavors to probe into explicitation in the translation of English nominalization into Vietnamese with a view to narrowing down this research gap. Among a vast array of genres, this research has chosen to focus on English nominalization in the non-fiction discourse since English nominalization appears more frequently as a standard feature of some special functional registers of language use (Radovanovic, 2001), such as non-fiction works.
Furthermore, of the existing studies into explicitation in translating nominalization, most of their objectives are specified to explore the scientific, legal, political, and literary discourses. Therefore, an investigation into non- fiction material will contribute to the expansion of the current body of literature on nominalization in translation. These aforementioned reasons have prompted this research to explore explicitation in translating English nominalization found in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” into Vietnamese via the lens of a corpus-based contrastive approach.2 Research objectives and research questions The present research paper aims to explore the tendency for explicitation in translating nominalization from English to Vietnamese in a parallel corpus of the said languages. To start with, this study aims to gain insights into the characteristics of nominalizations found in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”.
Furthermore, special importance will be given to the question of whether explicitation occurs as a by-product of the translation process, as well as different explicitating shifts identified in the Vietnamese 3 translation. Additionally, this study attempts to investigate the situations in which each type of explicitating shift arises, and the various lexical, syntactic, or stylistic effects observed in the translated text as a result of explicitation. In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, the study seeks to address the following research questions: 1. What are the characteristics of English nominalization in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”? 2.
What types of explicitating shifts occur as a result of translating English nominalization into Vietnamese? 1.3 Significance of the research The findings of this study will expound on several aspects of explicitation in the Vietnamese translation of English nominalization, hence benefiting various stakeholders listed below. To begin with, translation students and novice translators can be equipped with the necessary knowledge regarding nominal patterns and expressions in the English language, thereby preparing them for future encounters with these structures. Furthermore, by providing an insight into the explicitating shifts that might occur as a result of translating nominalization, this study can raise translation practitioners’ awareness of the importance of explicitation in translation and thus assist them in developing their strategies for dealing with nominalization. Second, the results of this study can provide translation course designers and teachers with the necessary information about the realistic picture of how different explicitation strategies are employed by translators to improve their translation quality.
As a result, training modules and guidance can provide students with more practical knowledge and translation strategies needed when students embark on the professional translation career path.