VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** NGUYỄN THỊ OANH A STUDY ON ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF COMPOUND NOUNS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC DỊCH ANH-VIỆT CÁC DANH TỪ GHÉP CHUYÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Hanoi - 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** NGUYỄN THỊ OANH A STUDY ON ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF COMPOUND NOUNS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC DỊCH ANH-VIỆT CÁC DANH TỪ GHÉP CHUYÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc. Kiều Thị Thu Hương Hanoi - 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi Oanh, hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled “A study on English-Vietnamese translation of compound nouns in information technology” is the study of my own research to fulfill the Degree of Master of Art at Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. The substance of this research has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution. Hanoi, 2016 Signature Nguyen Thi Oanh i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout the process of accomplishing the thesis, I have received the support and encouragement of teachers, family and friends.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Kieu Thi Thu Huong, for her patient guidance, critical feedback, encouragement and contructive provision throughout my research. I would also like to send my sincere thanks to all my lecturers at the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures during my M. Finally, my special thanks go to my family and friends for their considerable assistance during the time of the research conduction.
Without their help and support, this study could not have been completed. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the translation of English compound nouns in the information technology (IT from now on) into Vietnamese. It aims at investigating the five common strategies normally applied to translate IT compound nouns from English into Vietnamese. The study starts with the theoretical background that elaborates on the notion of translation, translation methods as well as translation procedures and equivalence.
Then it touches upon the typical features of English compound nouns in information technology. In the main part, a detailed investigation and examination of the translation of these English compound nouns is carried out, from which it identifies the common translation strategies used in this field. The five common strategies, namely transposition, transference, naturalization, couplets procedure (combining both transference and naturalization) and communication methods are common choices that translators often make in different situations or for different types of compound nouns, through each procedure embodies in itself both advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully, the results of the study will be of some help to people who are in charge of teaching, studying and translating English IT terms into Vietnamese.
iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS ABBREVIATIONS IT: Information technology SL: Source language TL: Target language TABLES Table 1: Classification of compound words according to part of speech Table 2: Formations of compound nouns Table 1: Acronyms in information technology Table 2: Compound nouns formed by Noun and Noun Table 3: Compound nouns formed by Adjective and Noun Table 4: Compound nouns formed by Preposition and Noun Table 5: Compound nouns formed by Verb and Noun Table 6: Translation of compound nouns by transposition procedure Table 7: Translation of compound nouns by transference procedure Table 8: Translation of IT acronyms by transference procedure Table 9: The translation of IT compound nouns by naturalization procedure Table 10: The translation of IT compound nouns by both transference and naturalization procedure (couplets) Table 11: The translation of IT compound nouns by communicative method FIGURES Figure 1: The two main parts of information technology Figure 2: The five functions of information technology iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .iii LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS. iv PART A: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the study. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study. 4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Definition of translation. Definition of translation equivalence. Compound nouns in English. Classification of compound words.
An overview of information technology. What is information technology?. What are the main parts of information technology?. What are the main functions of information technology?.
20 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS. English IT compound nouns in some IT documents and their Vietnamese equivalents in the dictionary or on the Internet. Translation strategies applied to translate IT compound nouns from English into Vietnamese. Translation of compound nouns by transposition procedure.
Translation of compound nouns by transference procedure (use of loan words). Translation of compound terms by naturalization procedure. Translation of compound nouns by both transference and naturalization procedure (couplets). Translation of compound nouns by communicative method.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further research. XV vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study In the globalized world, translation has played an important role and has had remarkable influences on facilitating international exchanges and cooperation in various fields, particularly in information technology.
Information technology (IT) has been crossing geographical boundaries in serving clients and other industries. In Vietnam, information technology has an indispensable role in the country’s industrialization and modernization. Information technology with its superhighway has revolutionized man’s ways of working. In the situation of an open market economy with international cooperation and fast-pace development of IT, translation of IT terminologies, therefore, has become an urgent need to exchange information and update modern technology.
Being a project assistant in the FPT Corporation, one of the biggest IT corporations in Vietnam, I am fully aware that the translation of IT terms is a difficult job. It requires translators to continuously improve knowledge in the IT field as well as translation skills. That is the main inspiration to me to carry out this research. All the things concerned above have offered the researcher an opportunity to conduct a study on “English-Vietnamese translation of compound nouns in information technology.
Hopefully, the thesis will bring benefits to translators/interpreters, researchers, IT engineers, and those who are interested in the field. Aims of the study In brief, the study is aimed at: Identifying common English compound nouns in information technology and their Vietnamese equivalents; 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Analyzing the translation strategies applied to translate these terms. Research questions To achieve the above-stated aims, the following research questions are raised: 1. What are English IT compound nouns in some IT documents and their Vietnamese equivalents in the dictionary or on the Internet? 2.
What are translation strategies normally applied to translate IT compound nouns from English into Vietnamese? 4. Scope of the study The English compound words in information technology are innumerous and diverse in many materials and documents. Due to the author’s limited time and experience, it would be impossible for her to cover all compound terms. Moreover, among different types of IT compound words such as compound adjectives compound adverbs and compound verbs, compound nouns are considered to be the largest in number and variety.
Thus, the study only focuses on the English compound nouns mainly in computer technology section. Methods of the study Since the aim of the study is to analyze and pinpoint some common translation strategies used in the translation of English IT compound nouns into Vietnamese, the main method of the study is descriptive. Also, some other additional methods have been used, namely analytic, statistical, comparative and contrastive methods. In the research, a number of IT compound nouns in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese are collected, and processed with various activities of sub-group classification, description, analysis, and compare and contrast.
Design of the study The present thesis is divided into three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Part A entitled INTRODUCTION, which gives the rationale, aims, research questions, scope, method and design of the study. Part B with the title of DEVELOPMENT, is divided into three chapters: Chapter 1 reviews theoretical background of the study. Some concepts of translation theory such as translation definition, translation methods, translation equivalence and translation procedures have been reviewed.
The chapter also provides theories of compound words and compound nouns in English. Chapter 2, entitled “The translation of compound nouns in information technology from English into Vietnamese”, investigates typical translation strategies employed in the translation of IT compound nouns from English into Vietnamese. Analysis and discussion are made to bring out more insight to those translation patterns and some methods are drawn out for better translation of these terms in the information technology field. Part C, namely CONCLUSION, presents major findings as well as some limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further study are also included. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW To support the analysis, this chapter discusses relevant concepts and theories that help build the theoretical aspect of the study. The first part of this chapter mainly addresses the conceptions concerning translation, its types and the translation methods or procedures; and the second part devotes to features of compound noun and its classification. Definition of translation The concept of translation has been defined in various ways by different linguists, among which the followings stand out.
Let us now start with the definition from Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, which says translation is the process of translating words or texts from one language into another. According to Newmark (1988), translation is a craft consisting of the attempt to replace a written message and statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language. Bell (1991) simply provides the goal of translation as the transformation of a text originally in one language into an equivalent text in a different language retaining, as far as possible, the content of the message and the formal features and functional roles of the original text. Although these definitions have some differences, they still have common features that translation is considered as the conversion from a source language to a target language to find appropriate equivalents.
4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Definition of translation equivalence Translation equivalence is considered as a principal concept in Western translation theory. As Catford (1965) concludes, “the central problem of translation-practice is that of finding target language equivalents. A central task of translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence”.21) Translation equivalence is the similarity between a word (or expression) in one language and its translation in another.
This similarity results from overlapping ranges of reference. Technical translation In terms of nature of SL text, Sofer (1991) classifies translation into translation of literary works and translation of scientific and technical matters. According to him, literal translation covers such areas as fiction, poetry, drama and humanities in general. Meanwhile, technical translation covers scientific and technical matters such as books written on science, techniques like books on computers, instruction manuals on TV, washing machine, etc.
Technical translation is normally done by the one with significant knowledge of linguistics and technical field. To define it he writes: One way of defining technical translation is by asking the question, does the subject being translated required a specialized vocabulary, or is the language non-specialized?