GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” DECLARATION I declare that this thesis with the title “A Study on English – Vietnamese Translations of Online Newspaper Headlines” and the work presented in it is my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own original research. I confirm that when I quoted from the work of others, the source was always given. No part of this work has been published before submission. Hanoi, 04 May, 2015 Student Supervisor Signature Signature Full name Full name GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Ho Ngoc Trung for his enthusiasm, kindness and helpful advice which encourages me much during my time of implementing the thesis. Special thanks also go to my lecturers at the Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University. They assist me much in arranging me enough time to carry out the thesis. I owe great debt to other helpful friends who are working journalism.
I am especially grateful to them for their commitment to teaching and for open discussions which are really meaningful to help me overcome difficulties that I encountered, for their patience when answering my restless questions about news on the internet. Finally and most importantly, I would like to express my whole-hearted gratitude to my family for believing me all along. I could not have come this far without their love, their support and their understanding. Hanoi, 04 May, 2015 Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” ABSTRACT This study is aimed at analyzing the translation of English newspaper headlines into Vietnamese.
It emerges from the two following motives. First, while there exists a multitude of studies that makes a contrastive analysis on Vietnamese and English headlines, little analysis has been carried out at the level of their functions and syntactic structures. Second, the explosive growth of internet in recent years has made a remarkable contribution to the blooming of a new press type: internet/online newspaper and the pressure of globalization, especially when Vietnam joins World Trade Organization, forces mutual understanding among nations. The corpus of the study consists of 150 headlines of news stories/articles collected from famous online newspapers on worldwide webs such as BBC, Reuters, AP, AFP and their translated versions on online newspapers.
All of the news stories/articles are presented on the internet so they share some common features. Nevertheless, there are a lot of distinguishable characteristics between English and Vietnamese newspapers headlines because of the differences in nature of language and other subjective elements such as readers, and special rules/principles of each news agency. This thesis analyzes translation of English newspaper headlines into Vietnamese on online newspapers in terms of their functions and syntactic structures under the light of Newmark’s (1995) approaches to semantic and communicative translation. And at the end of the thesis suggested rules are drawn out for translators working for online newspapers in particular and for other Vietnamese newspapers in general.
GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS SA: Subject Adverbial SC: Subject Complement SL: Source Language ST: Source Text TL: Target Language TT: Target Text GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” LIST OF FIGURES Figures 1.1: logos of some famous English internet newspapers………page 16 Figures 1.2: logos of some famous Vietnamese internet newsapapers…page 16 GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF FIGURES PART A: INTRODUCTION. 6 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. What is newspaper headline?. Functions of newspaper headlines.
Types of headlines in terms of functions. Language structures of headlines. Some major studies on newspaper headlines. Language structures of English newspaper headlines.
Complexity in headlines. Language structures of Vietnamese newspaper headlines. Internet and the birth of internet newspapers. Characteristics of internet newspapers.
Advantages and disadvantages of internet newspapers. 17 GRADUATION PAPER ON “A STUDY ON ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF ONLINE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES” 2. Functions of online newspaper headlines. Translation theory related to the study.
What is translation? .Approaches to headline translation. Equivalence in translation. Method of Translation criticism. 28 CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS OF TRANSLATING ENGLISH HEADLINES INTO VIETNAMESE IN TERMS OF FUNCTIONS.
33 CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS OF TRANSLATING ENGLISH HEADLINES INTO VIETNAMESE IN TERMS OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES. Simple sentence headlines. Complex sentence headlines. Compound sentence headlines.
Summary of findings. Implication for translators. Summary of findings. Implication for translators.
Suggested further studies. Rationale Mass media in general and newspapers in particular nowadays play a very important role in our lives. Many people even say that living in the world without newspapers is like living in an isolated island. We are living in an era of globalization, in which all nations are closely interrelated.
They need to have deep understanding of their counterparts in every issue. International news on the internet meets their information thirst. No one can deny the roles of Internet in society, which provides a huge volume of information in the quickest, most effective way with the greatest impact. Thanks to the Internet, all countries of the world can know about each other.
All the advantages of other mass media are encompassed in the Internet. The development of the Internet has brought about great revolutions in mass media, among which internet newspapers see their birth. With the overwhelming advantages of the Internet (limiting the time and space distance, updating information anytime and anywhere, combining both audio and visual means, being a huge research stock and a effective means of entertainment, etc…), internet newspapers nowadays attract the largest number of readers all over the world. Meanwhile headlines are considered to be one of the most important parts of newspaper articles.
According to Loic Hervouet (in Vu Quang Hao, 2001), headline is a decisive factor to the fate of an article. An interesting article with a bad, unattractive headline will cost half number of possible readers. In addition, we are living in the world of mass media, mass communication with the booming of internet. We have demands to know, communicate, and exchange news and information beyond our own countries.
But language difference is one of the barriers for us. So the job of translating foreign newspaper articles, especially English newspaper articles, is very important. Observing Vietnamese newspapers, especially online newspapers, we can see that a large number of information is taken from foreign news agencies such as Reuters, AP, AFP, and BBC… So that is why I carry out the research on Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh – Group K18A2 – Course 2011-2015 1 titled “A Study on English – Vietnamese Translation of Online Newspaper Headlines” 2. Aims of the study The study aims at: - Investigating the features of news headlines.
- Exploring the characteristics of news headlines. - Analyzing translations of English headlines into Vietnamese in terms of functions. - Analyzing translations of English headlines into Vietnamese in terms of syntactic structures. - Giving some suggestions for improvement of the translation of newspaper headlines.
Research questions The study is an attempt to analyze international news on English and Vietnamese internet newspapers, and then make a comparison between them. Thus, it seeks answers to the following questions: - What are characteristics of English newspaper headlines? - What are features of Vietnamese newspaper headlines? - How are English news headlines translated into Vietnamese in terms of functions? - How are English news headlines translated into Vietnamese in terms of characteristics? - What are some suggestions for translations of online newspaper headlines from English into Vietnamese? 4. Research methods and data analysis procedure 4. The methods - Descriptive: In order to give in-depth and detailed description of international news, the descriptive method is employed.
- Comparative: The thesis will provide a comparison relevant to differences between the two groups of subjects;. Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh – Group K18A2 – Course 2011-2015 2 - Inductive: After the analysis to identify typical features of international news on internet newspapers, the thesis will reach some generalizations and comparisons based on those analytical results. - Qualitative: This method is used in collecting data. It categorizes data into patterns as the primary basis for organizing and reporting results.
It is concerned about smaller but focused samples rather than large random samples. - Quantitative: The quantitative method is the systematic scientific investigation of properties, relying exclusively on the analysis of numerical or quantifiable data. Beside the above methods, some other supplementary methods such as personal observation, surveying literature or seeking specialist information about online news and news on print newspapers, etc… have also been referred to in order to accomplish the goals of the study. Data analysis procedure In this thesis, a random collection of about 300 pieces of news (half of which are from English internet newspapers, and the other half 150 are from Vietnamese internet newspapers) will be representatives for the whole population.
Sources of the English international news are mostly from big communication corporations on the World Wide Web such as BBC, CNN, Fox News, REUTERS, and CBC. The other group of data roots from some famous Vietnamese internet newspapers such as VnExpress, VietnamNet, VnMedia, Thanhnienonline, Tintuconline, Dantri. And the translation is seen under the light of Newmark’s (1988) approaches which are semantic and communicative translations. Besides, Mårdh's (1980) model and Loic Hervouet’s classification of newspaper headlines are used to analyze English and Vietnamese headlines.
Scope of the study The internet newspapers are definitely a huge stock of information in which there is a great variety of news on all issues: sports news, entertainment Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh – Group K18A2 – Course 2011-2015 3 news, cultural news, social news, political news, etc. In this study, the writer only desires to focus on the internet news of international affairs (among them are international policies, conflicts, global problems, multilateral relationship, etc. Detailed analysis and extensive comparative study requires much time and effort. Additionally, the amount of international news on internet newspapers is continuously blooming and may be uncountable now.
This thesis has no other ambition than making itself a “selective” one, in which a limited random number of news pieces on some famous English and Vietnamese internet newspapers are examined. The ultimate goal of the study is to identify major similarities and differences between these two groups of subjects. Therefore, instead of supplying full descriptions of generic structures as well as linguistic features relevant to each group, the thesis will just focus on their typical comparable features. Design of the study The study is composed of three parts: Part 1: INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, aims, research questions, research methods and data analysis procedure, scope, significance and design of the study.
This is the main part in the study with 3 chapters: Chapter 1: provides the theoretical background of every matter mentioned in the title of the study related to newspaper headlines and translation. Chapter 2: gives the description of informative headlines and combined headlines. Chapter 3: analyze the translations of English news headlines into Vietnamese in terms of syntactic structures. Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh – Group K18A2 – Course 2011-2015 4 Besides, these chapters also include findings and investigation of problems underlying the mistranslated headlines, their causes and suggested ways to improve the translation of newspaper headlines.
This part is a final conclusion of theoretical framework and analysis results. Also, it suggests some implications for teachers and learners when using news as materials in the classroom. Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh – Group K18A2 – Course 2011-2015 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. What is newspaper headline?