NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGAUGES ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENT A STUDY OF ESOFT VIETNAM’S DOCUMENTS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE TRANSLATION Hanoi, June 2020 NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGAUGES ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENT A STUDY OF ESOFT VIETNAM’S DOCUMENTS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE TRANSLATION Supervisor: Mrs. Tran Thi Thu Giang, MBA. Hanoi, June 2020 Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In this part, I would like to show my gratitude by giving special thanks to all the people whose direct and indirect support have helped me complete this research. Firstly, I would love to send my deepest thanks to my supervisors, Mrs.
Tran Thi Thu Giang, MBA. She has supported us with all of her heartfelt, spent many long hours giving detailed comments on our works, and offered suggestions to navigate us the right way to access the knowledge in all stages of such long reports. I appreciate the opportunity to work with her, and wholeheartedly wish her luck and success in her future endeavors. Secondly, I also want to thank Mrs.
Nguyen Thu Trang — Supervisor of the HR department. She is my supervisor during my internship at Esoft Vietnam. Despite her hefty workload, she still managed her time to guide and provide me every related information in the company that I required. She also gave advice for my better research results and kindly supported me in sending my questionnaires to the employees.
Last but not least, I gratefully give my thanks to all the authors of all the books and articles which refer me to the valuable theory for this research. Without their time and effort, I believe young researchers like me will definitely have difficulty in finding the necessary knowledge. Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.ccccsscssscssscscccssssccesccssccsscsscsssecssecscsssccsscsssesssesscessees i TABLE OF CONNTTENN TYS. nọ họ TT 0H 00000 1 n6 ii EXECUTIVE SUMMA RRYY.
000000 iv LIST OF ABBRIEVIA THONNS. 0 5< TH HH 00008 vi LIST OF TABLES AND EFIGURES. c cọ TH TH HH. 000000006006 880 Viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION OF ESOFT LTÌD.1 Main activities and achievements of Esoft Vietnam.2 The organizational structure and values of Esoft Vietnam.
The channels at Esoft Vietnam for internal communication and theirs Issues With fTanSÏAfIOTI.- - G3 11 9191 HH HH HH HH 4 CHAPTER 2: THEORICAL FRAMEWORK. so Sen sse 5 2.1 The definition of tranSÏafiOTI.2 __ Translating DTOC€CUT.- SG 1111911 HH ng ng ry 6 2. s1 9019 9 HH ng gà 9 2.4 What1s semantic and communicative translation? .5 What is the morale Of WOTEK€TS .6 Translation vs employees’ mOFaÌ€.- -- ¿+5 +ss + +vkseereeerereeerres 13 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.1 Semantic features of words and phraS€S. Translation by a loan word or a loan word plus explanation.
Translation by using a more general WOFỞ. Translation by paraphrase using unrelated word. Translation by using a more neutral/less expressive word. Translation by using OTTISSIOH.
Translation by using co-hYDOTIYI. Translation by using ©€XDATSIOTI.2 Frequency of semantic translation straf€Ø1€S.1 Translation as per Specific PUTDOS€S.2 Translation as per Vietnamese Readers’ CustoIs.4 Frequency of communicative translation straf€g1©s.5 _ The morale of Esoft’s employees vs. the semantic and communicative traNslatiON.cccccccceccccscecccccsssesssessssessssscsseesssssssscsscecsessesssseeesesessssesecsaseeseasesegs 27 il Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A 3.- SG HH gi krưy 29 3.6 Summary of the findings .-- -- << << kg 31 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDA TIONN.1 Limitations of the research .- G1 129v ng ng Hy 34 4.2 Suggestions for further researCHh. Suggestion for the further improvements of translation at Esoft Vietnam.
cọ TH n0 000090098090090 xii APPENDIYX.--GG SG Si 009 0080.010400 060080980 xiii 11 Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Language is various and different from a country to another country; moreover, the same way of using words and expressing the meaning cannot exist between two languages. There are many difficulties in finding out a better way to translate formal and technical documents with full ideas of the writer obtained. Newmark (1981) suggests, “The solution of restricting the gap between the emphasis on the source and target language by replacing such old terms as a word for word, sense for sense, literal, free, and faithful translation with those of semantic and communicative translation.” In Esoft Vietnam, all documents in the company were translated into English or Vietnamese, and the re-check process translation has been done so far. However, using unsuitable words, spelling mistakes, inflexible arrangements, grammatical inaccuracy, and setting misunderstanding context in documents cannot be completely avoided and need further consideration.
Up to now, there have been numerous researches on semantic and communicative translation in various categories of documents, but few researches have investigated the presentation of semantic and communicative translation in company’s documents. Therefore, I decided to look up which and how semantic and communicative translation are efficiently used in some documents at Esoft Vietnam. The purpose of this report is to collecting lexicon (words and phrases) and sentences from eleven emails, ten monthly newsletters, two articles, and five announcements (Vietnamese and English versions) in the data, do a review of the collected documents, classify the words - phrases and phrases - sentences according to the sets of strategies suggested by Peter Newmark and Mona Baker, calculate the exact percentage for each strategy used in translating the lexicon and phrases and sentences from Vietnamese to English and English to Vietnamese, investigate the linguistic and non-linguistic factors influencing the choice of using each strategy in translating the lexicon and phrases and sentences from Vietnamese to English and English to Vietnamese translated versions and make some recommendations concerning the translation of Esoft Vietnam documents as well as putting forward some suggestions for translation and the effects of its working environment and employees’ morale. This paper will be divided into four main chapters; the introduction and conclusion are not concluded.
Chapter 1, INTRODUCTION, concerns with the statement of the problem, the justification for the study, scope of the study and research questions. The organization of the study is also given out. Chapter 2, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, deals with some previous studies related to the problem and presents the theoretical background of theory of translation, definition of morale, translation procedures and methods. Chapter 3, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS, this chapter is divided into three parts: Section 1: The semantic features of the lexicon in Esoft Vietnam documents when being translated from Vietnamese into English and vice versa.
Sec iv Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A Section 2: The syntactic features of phrases and sentences in Esoft Vietnam documents when being translated from Vietnamese into English and vice versa. Section 3: The effects of two features on employees’ morale and the role of translation in the multi-cultural working environment. Chapter 4, RECOMMENDATION, summarize what has been discussed in chapter 4 with some comments on the limits of this study and make suggestions for future Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HRM Human Resource Manager BOD Board of Managers QW Question word SL Source language ST Source text TL Target language TT Target text vi Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables Table 1: The appearing times and percentage of semantic strategies. 23 Table 2: Percentage of communicative transÏation.
Organizational structure in Esoft Vietnam. -- 2 Figure 2: The percentage of semantic strategies. --‹‹- 24 Figure 3: The percentage of communicative translation. 27 Figure 4: Opinions on the way of reading documents at Esoft Vie(nam‹‹ ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹ + + «+ + + << + + << << 55+ 28 Figure 5: Department of respondents who read documents carefully ------------<<<<<< «+ + = << <<<<<<<*<<<* 29 Figure 6: Opinions on evaluation for a good translation at Esoft VUCTIAM.
30 Figure 7: Opinions on improvements for translated documents shortly At EsOft 0 1. 31 Vil Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A INTRODUCTION This part includes introduction of the research, rationales, purpose and scope of the research, research questions, methodology and structure of the research. Background and Rationale of the study: Esoft Vietnam is part of the Esoft Systems Group founded in the year 2000. Esoft Systems is an international full-service provider of imagery infrastructure for the real estate sector.
Focus is on developing and delivering wise solutions enabling the realtors to be prominent in their marketing endeavors. In 2007, Esoft Systems was listed on Nasdaq First North, and combined with a strong market position in Denmark; it has allowed us to grow internationally. Nowadays, we serve customers in Europe, Australia, and North America with offices in Denmark, Sweden and Vietnam. The rapid growth of Esoft Vietnam over the past five years has increased the number of employees up to 700 people, including about 50 foreigners and over six-hundred Vietnamese.
Foreign employees come from different nations such as Denmark, Norway, France, England etc. and most of them are senior or high-end managers. Therefore, all documents in the company, especially in announcements, monthly newsletters, weekly updated news, or management blogs, must be in both English and Vietnamese. Language is various and different from a country to another country; moreover, the same way of using words and expressing the meaning cannot exist between two languages.
There are many difficulties in finding out a better way to translate formal and technical documents with full ideas of writer obtained. Newmark (1981) suggests, “The solution of restricting the gap between an emphasis on source and target language by replacing such old terms as word for word, sense for sense, literal, free, and faithful translation with those of semantic and communicative translation.” In Esoft Vietnam, all documents in the company were translated into English or Vietnamese, and the re-check process translation has been done so far. However, using unsuitable words, spelling mistakes, inflexible arrangements and grammatical inaccuracy and setting misunderstanding context in documents cannot be avoided entirely and need further consideration. Up to now, there have been numerous researches on semantic and communicative translation in various categories of documents, but few researches have investigated the presentation of semantic and communicative translation in company’s documents.
Therefore, I decided to look up which and how semantic and communicative translation is Vili Quach Minh Anh — 11160403 — Business English 58A efficiently used in some documents at Esoft Vietnam and how they affect their employees’ morale. “A STUDY OF ESOFT VIETNAM’S DOCUMENTS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE TRANSLATION” has been carried out for the reasons listed above. Scope of the study: This paper is expected to gain general perceptions into the practice of translating Vietnamese into English and vice versa, particularly the approaches in managing the complexities of semantic and communicative features of some documents in Esoft Vietnam. Besides, as an undergraduate student in a most prestigious economics university in Vietnam, I am truly interested in finding out its effects on employees’ morale and desire to learn the role of employees’ morale in productivity of their business.
In addition, due to the limited time for this study, I only concentrated on eleven emails and blogs, ten monthly newsletters, two articles and five announcements from March 2019 to April 2020 to go deeper and analyze productively the collected data to achieve the purpose of this study. Research question: This research will try to find the answers to the following questions: (1) What are the effects of translation on morale? (2) How does the semantic translation of HRM and BOD documents affect employees’ morale? (3) How does the communicative translation of HRM and BOD documents affect employees’ morale? (4) | What recommendations can be made for the company to improve its translation of documents? 4. Methodology: The research aims at analyzing which strategies of semantic and communicative translation effectively used in Esoft Vietnam’s documents by using descriptive and contrastive method and proposing an effective improvement for translation at Esoft Vietnam by connecting the efficiency of translation with employees’ morale.