THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT ------ GRADUATION PAPER A study on grammatical errors in translating Vietnamese-English made by third-year English majored students in Thuongmai University Hanoi, 2021 HÀ NỘI - 2015 1 ABSTRACT Considering the importance of translation in working, the goal of this research is to describe the difficulties in translation that are committed by third-year students of English Department at Thuongmai University. This study aims to find out students’ Vietnamese- English translation grammatical errors and identify the possible causes of those errors. The result showed that there were many grammatical errors made by students and the causes of them were also indicated. After that, some suggestions were given to assist teachers and students at Thuongmai University in improving teaching and learning translation.
2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and gratefulness to all teachers at English Department of Thuong Mai University for giving me permission to commence this thesis. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor - MA. Nguyen Thuy Linh, for her guidance and encouragement during my study. Furthermore, I really appreciate all her help and suggestions on various drafts of the thesis.
Without her valuable advice and support, this thesis could not have been completed on schedule. Moreover, I would like to state my special thanks to the third-year English-majored students at English Department. They helped me to collect and summarize the data to give research findings. Additionally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my dear friends for their help and warm encouragement throughout my hard times carrying out the study.
Without them, I could not have overcome such times and concentrated on my study. Finally, I am greatly indebted to my family, especially my loving parents for their continuous support during my study. Thanks to their intense devotion, I have overcome the difficult times and completed this thesis. Hanoi, December 12th, 2021 Student Quyen Duong To Quyen 3 ABSTRACT.3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.6 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.7 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Organization of the study.15 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Dynamics of translation (Peter Newmark).
SL norms and TL norms. SL culture and TL culture. SL setting and tradition and TL setting and tradition. Criteria of a good translation.
Rendering the cultural and historical context of original text. Being culturally appropriate for the target readers. Classification of grammatical errors.26 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS. Result of the study.1 Grammatical errors relating to tense.
Grammatical errors relating to active voice and passive voice. Grammatical errors relating to subject-verb agreement. Grammatical errors relating to misuse of relative pronouns. Grammatical errors relating to incorrect structure.
The negative influence of the mother tongue. Different characteristics of Vietnamese and English. Lack of background knowledge. Poor language competence.
Lack of study motivation.44 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. Suggestions for students. Suggestions for teachers. Suggestion for further studies.51 5 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a foreign language DNTU: Dong Nai Technology University TMU: Thuongmai University SL: Source language TL: Target language L2: Second language CPTPP: Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership 6 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Diagram 1: Dynamics of translation (Peter Newmark) Chart 3.1: Common grammatical errors in Vietnamese-English translation Chart 3.2: Common causes of errors in Vietnamese-English translation Chart 3.3: The students' attitude toward translation Chart 3.4: The students' point of view about translation 7 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.
Rationale During the period of international integration, Vietnam constantly exchanges cultural, economic, political, and social with many other countries in the world. However, the language barrier between countries greatly affects activities such as trade, tourism, medical, education, investment cooperation,… Translation acts as a bridge, the most accurate method of information transmission between languages of different countries. It is the translation field that helps the above activities to take place quickly and smoothly. Especially in business, translation is a fundamental condition for companies to sign contracts.
For large enterprises and prestigious international organizations, accuracy in contract language is crucial for success. Nowadays, English is the most widely spoken language in the world. The role of English is more and more asserted, especially in the rapid development era of information and technology. It is the second language in most countries in the world.
In most companies, candidates with good English skills will have a competitive advantage. Most trading contracts are written in English along with their native language. Besides, the literature and specialized books of authors from different countries around the world are also translated into English to help people in the world easily access them. It is essential to master translation to translate documents more exactly so as to avoid regrettable misunderstanding.
As a result, English is one of the most important factors that set the path for the success of an individual besides specialized knowledge, soft skills, and computer skills. Therefore, it is necessary for Vietnamese students who will become the main human resource in society soon to have professional Vietnamese-English translation skills in order to meet the demand of integration and globalization. However, translating from Vietnamese to English is a difficult task because it involves not only the substitution of words from one language into another but also the transfer of meanings and senses that the authors want to convey in the most natural way possible, so almost all learners can avoid mistakes. 8 In reality, students of all majors, even English majors still make many grammatical errors in translating process.
There are many reasons leading to mistakes in Vietnamese-English translation and the most effective method for students to avoid making such mistakes again is identifying and analyzing the errors carefully because they will learn more from their own mistakes. Therefore, “A study on grammatical errors in translating Vietnamese-English made by third-year English majored students in Thuongmai University” is carried out with the hope that it will be a useful reference helping third- year students improve Vietnamese-English translation skills to avoid regrettable mistakes. As a consequence, it may be able to assist students in developing an appropriate strategy for adjusting learning methods to get the best effective result. Previous studies The first study was researched and written by Hendra Kuswara ( Universitas Islam Malang, 2020), entitled " Students’ Grammatical Errors in Their Indonesian-English Translation of the Third Semester Students at Universitas Islam Kadir".
One of the language aspects required in translating English text is grammar. In addition to word choice for example whether or not a product of translation is good can be identified by its grammatical structure of sentences. Wrong or incomplete grammar in writing may sometimes cause readers to get confused in understanding the message. This study aims at analyzing grammatical errors made by students of the sixth semester of English Department of Universitas Islam Kadiri academic year 2018, in translating first language (Bahasa Indonesia) into the target language (English).
The major types of errors made by the students were related to incomplete clauses having no either subject, verbs, or either both, subject-verb agreement, and the absence of subordinators and plural nouns. Out of the six types of identified grammatical errors, incomplete plural nouns ranked number one followed by the absence of verb and subject-verb agreement. The highest number of students making mistakes on using plural nouns was 41 (29%), and the lowest one on the absence of subject and verb was 7 (5%). From the error analysis, it could be generalized that the students were probably influenced by their native language 9 system which does not exist in English.
Therefore, differences in the language system especially in grammar should be introduced to the students during the translation studies. The other study is “Common translation errors (Vietnamese-English) committed by the third-year English majors: A case at Dong Nai Technology University” made by Tran Thi Hoai Nam in 2016. The study had the advantage of providing some of the most common types of errors that occur in Vietnamese-English translation, as well as the reasons for these errors, in order to help students and teachers of English faculty at DNTU clearly understand the situation of their teaching and learning translation. The participants of the study are third-year English-majored students at Dong Nai Technology University.
This study is different from other similar studies on data collection instruments. It includes both translation tests and interviews while most studies only use translation tests. The results of the study revealed that the vast majority of translation errors made by third-year English-major students at DNTU, accounting for 91 percent, are micro-level errors related to vocabulary and grammar. There are too many errors related to grammar such as tenses, sentence structure, word order, passive voice,….
The students are confused by the diversity of vocabulary, which includes technical terminology, compounds, collocations, word choice,…Cohesion mistakes account for 42% of all errors at the macro level, accounting for 9% of all errors. According to the study, the causes leading to these errors are both subjective and objective. Subjective causes concern the lack of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, culture, as well as the capacity to overcome the detrimental impact of the mother tongue on language acquisition, concentration, and motivation. Objective causes concern the difference between Vietnamese and English and inappropriate teaching documents and methods.
After analyzing the errors and the causes, the study suggests some recommendations that improve the current teaching and learning translation at DNTU. 10 The next study was researched and written by Pham Phu Quynh Na. Her research is titled “Errors in the translation of topic-comment structures of Vietnamese into English”. The goal of this study is to see how much the typological distinctions between Vietnamese and English influence the process of translating authentic Vietnamese sentences into English.
This investigation uses preliminary data from an error analysis of the Vietnamese-English translations by EFL students. The focus of the analysis is on the faults made when translating dropped subject and empty elements of Vietnamese. This is essential given the fact that the grammatical subject is always required in English but not in Vietnamese sentences. The translators for this study were 95 students from the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, who were in their first, second, third, and fourth years.
The data was gathered from translated texts of these students, which were all based on the same source text. This study could aid in identifying potential problematic errors that students may make when translating Vietnamese's topic-comment structure, as well as providing teachers with some practical guidelines for preventing these errors from learners in the teaching of Vietnamese-English translations. The analysis of the translations made by 95 students shows the five different types of errors in the process of locating and translating the sentence's subject. These include omission of subject, repetition of subject, inappropriate choice of subject, no logical connection between subject and predicate, the inappropriate connection between subject and passive verbs.
The researcher demonstrates that the omission of subjects may be traced to two factors: first, students may be unable to identify the missing subject's referent, or second, they may be unaware that finding the missing subject is necessary for it to be rendered into a correct English sentence. The effect of the mother tongue's Vietnamese topic-comment structures is the biggest cause of the common errors relating to the translation of the subjects that are mentioned above. 11 After identifying typical faults and the causes leading to these errors, the researcher offers some translation strategies for Vietnamese topic-comment structures that can be used to avoid possible problems arising while translating Vietnamese topic-comment structures into English. Another study which is also about common structural errors was written by Bui Thi Kim Phung.
The title of her study is “Common structural errors in Vietnamese-English translation made by English-majored students at Duy Tan University”.