MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LE THI THU HUONG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS' EXPECTATIONS OF ENGLISH - VIETNAMESE COMMERCIAL TEXT TRANSLATION STUDY AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FIELD OF STUDY: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.10 MA THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: TON NU NHU HUONG, Ph. D HUE-2011 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ LÊ THỊ THU HƢƠNG TÆM HIÃØU VÃÖ NHÆÎNG MONG MUÄÚN CUÍA SINH VIÃN NÀM BA TRÆÅÐNG ÂAÛI HOÜC NGOAÛI NGÆÎ HUÃÚ TRONG VIÃÛC HOÜC DËCH CAÏC VÀN BAÍN THÆÅNG MAÛI TÆÐ TIÃÚNG ANH SANG TIÃÚNG VIÃÛT CHUYÊN NGÀNH: LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƢƠNG PHÁP DẠY - HỌC MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.10 LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ GIÁO DỤC HỌC NGƢỜI HƢỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. TÔN NỮ NHƢ HƢƠNG HUẾ - 2011 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with the permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere.
Author Le Thi Thu Huong Ac know led ge men ts Firstly, from the bottom of my heart, I would like to give my deepest thanks to my respectable supervisor, Dr. Ton Nu Nhu Huong for having kindly supported my study. Although she is very busy with her work, she spent a lot of time giving the whole-hearted guidance, reviewing my paper and providing me with helpful advices and valuable materials. Without her aid and guidance, my thesis might not have been completed.
Secondly, I am very grateful to the third year students of English with the Translation - Interpretation Section at Hue College of Foreign Languages for their contribution. They helped me gather data and preparation for my research. To them, I owe special thanks. I would also like to express my hearty appreciation for English teachers at Hue College of Foreign Languages, who gave me suggestions from the beginning of the study and enthusiastically spent their time participating in the interviews.
My special thanks to the examiner, Nguyen Viet, M. who gave me detailed comments to improve this study. I am grateful to my friends for sharing experience and supporting my research work. Last but not least, my warmest thanks go to my dear family and my close friends for having supported me both materially and spiritually.
Their love is motivation that helped and encouraged me to implement this thesis. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. 4 LIST OF APPENDICES.
5 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES. Background and rationale of the study. Structure of the study.12 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definition of Translation.
The roles of Translation in the world‟s market. Types of Translation texts. Commercial text translation. Definition of Commercial texts.
Definition of Commercial text translation. The roles of Commercial text translation. Commercial translation and translators. Commercial texts in the curriculum at Vietnamese universities.
Vietnamese learners of English and their learning styles. Data collection tools .48 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Reality of learning English-Vietnamese commercial text translation. Issues related to students‟ self-study.
Students' perspectives of the role of English-Vietnamese commercial text translation study. Students' confidence in translating E/VCT. Frequency of reading English - Vietnamese commercial documents outside the class. Frequency of receiving extra commercial texts given by the teacher as homework.
Chances to translate English - Vietnamese commercial texts outside the class. Issues related to translation activities inside the class. Students' ideas on time allocation for E/VCT translation classes. Frequency of being asked to translate English – Vietnamese commercial texts in the class.
The ways teacher holds the commercial text translation classes. The skills often combined in English – Vietnamese commercial text translation classes. Frequency of being assessed by the teacher in E/VCT translation. Frequency of being instructed to use computer skills in studying E/VCT translation.
Students' evaluation of materials used in E/VCT translation classes. Difficulties in learning English-Vietnamese commercial text translation. Frequency of facing difficulties in learning English-Vietnamese commercial text translation. Students' evaluation of Commercial terminology.
Kinds of difficulties students often encounter in translating E/VCT. Ways to deal with commercial vocabulary problem. Expectations of students of E/VCT translation study. Students' ideas on the usefulness of teaching of English - Vietnamese commercial text translation at their college.
Students‟ expectations of teacher's roles. Expectations of students of commercial text translation course. Expectations of students of their efforts .83 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the key findings.
For translation curriculum designers and administrators. Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further study. 93 APPENDICES 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ST: Source text TT: Target text SL: Source language TL: Target language E/VCT: English - Vietnamese commercial text EFL: English as a Foreign Language %: Percentage 4 LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix 1A: Questionnaire for students (English version) Appendix B: Questionnaire for students (Vietnamese version) Appendix 2: Interview questions (for students) Appendix 3: Interview questions (for teachers) 5 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Table 3.
Students' perspectives of the role of English-Vietnamese commercial text translation study. Students' confidence in translating E/VCT. Frequency of reading English - Vietnamese commercial documents outside the class. Frequency of receiving extra commercial texts given by the teacher as homework.
Chances to translate English - Vietnamese commercial texts. 57 outside the class. Students' ideas on time allocation for E/VCT translation classes. Frequency of being asked to translate English – Vietnamese commercial texts in the class.
The ways teacher holds the commercial text translation classes. The skills often combined in English – Vietnamese commercial text translation classes. Frequency of being assessed by the teacher in E/VCT translation. Frequency of being instructed to use computer skills in studying E/VCT translation.
Students' evaluation of materials used in E/VCT translation classes. Frequency of facing difficulties in translating E/VCT. Students' evaluation of Commercial terminology. Kinds of difficulties students often encounter in translating E/VCT.
Ways to deal with commercial vocabulary problem. Students' ideas on the usefulness of teaching English - Vietnamese commercial text translation at their college. Students‟ expectations of teacher's roles. Expectations of students of commercial text translation course.
Expectations of students of their efforts. 81 6 ABSTRACT This research investigates the third year students' expectations of English - Vietnamese commercial text translation study at Hue College of Foreign Languages. First, it attempts to clarify the reality of students' learning English- Vietnamese Commercial text translation, including issues related to self-study of students and issues related to activities inside the translation classes. Second, it seeks to find difficulties in students' learning English-Vietnamese Commercial text translation.
Third, it aims to identify students' expectations of English-Vietnamese Commercial text translation study. The participants of this study consisted of 58 third year students and three teachers of English at HCFLs. The data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and analyzed based on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The findings of this study indicate that a large number of students acknowledged the vital role of English - Vietnamese commercial text translation in their study and their future jobs.
Thus, most of the students endeavored to self-study E/VCT translation as much as possible in order to be more proficient in this field. However, they still faced a lot of difficulties in learning English - Vietnamese commercial text translation. So, the research shows students' expectations of their teacher's roles, their expectations of commercial translation course and expectations of their efforts to better the results of English - Vietnamese commercial text translation study. Based on these findings, in-depth implications are made at the end of the study with the hope of contributing to the improvement of the process of learning and teaching English - Vietnamese commercial text translation at HCFLs.
7 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 presents briefly the background and the rationale of the study that lead to the choice of this topic. At the same time, this chapter includes purposes of the study and research questions. The structure of the study is also included in this chapter. Background and rationale of the study Each country has their own language that contributes to creating its own cultural identity.
However, because of the development of social relationship and the spread of global cooperation, we need to have a common language to interact with each other in a certain circumstance. For a long time, English has been considered an international language that is used as the main mean to communicate and exchange among people from different countries and different languages. One of scholars who take the role of English into consideration, Al-Salman (2007), claims, "English is the most widely-used language for international communication. Statistics shows that English is more likely to be translated since it is still the leader in the publishing industry".
With the belief that English is the most popular language in society, Al-Salman affirms "writing in English is advantageous in two ways: (1) it enables writers to reach a large audience, and (2) it gives them a better chance to be translated to other languages (2007). Concerning the effect of English in the world, Newmark (1991) affirms, "since the eighteenth century, English has increasingly dominated all international means of communication; it is spoken in over the world, is the language of North America, Australia and the UK, and is the main language of communication in many Asian and African states" (p. As Pham (2006) emphasizes, one sign of globalization in the world today is the rapid spread of the English language. English has been used by more and more countries and people as a vehicle of communication in business, science, technology, education and entertainment (2006, p.
That is the reason why phrases such as 'international language' or „global language' or 'lingua franca' are very often used both in daily conversations and writings to refer to the role of the English language in the world (Pham, 2006, p. 8 In Vietnam, foreign languages in general and English in particular have been paid attention to in numerous schools and universities as Ton and Pham (2010) point out, "English is now taught in schools, universities and evening classes across Vietnam. In the public education system, the main language is English (Ton and Pham, 2010, p. At the same time, the number of English learners is higher and higher.
According to the statistics given by the Ministry of Education and Training, 67% of students in lower secondary schools and 86% in upper secondary schools study English for at least three hours a week (Ton and Pham, 2010, p.50) In response to the increasingly important role of English, Vietnamese students learn English not only because it is a compulsory subject but they want to gain other purposes as well. For example, learning English well can help them have a good job in the future or study abroad or widen their relation in society. Public opinions hold that learning English is not only a 'fashion' but also a passport to travel, earn scholarships, get better jobs and so on (Tran, 2000, p. One of the main subjects related to English is Translation which is taught in many universities and colleges in Vietnam.
Numerous universities and colleges today show an increased interest in translation as an area in which to develop new course, majors and minors, and sometimes translation programs, often within foreign language departments (Colina, 2003, p. "More and more universities around the world are adding courses in translation to their curriculum" (Larson, 1984). Nowadays, in the door-opening and integration period, Vietnam has extended relationships with a great number of countries in the world.