VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DAO DAT CUONG ANALYSING ERRORS IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH QUESTIONS WITH A BIAS TOWARDS ASSERTION OR NON- ASSERTION MADE BY ENGLISH – MAJORED STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Supervisor Senior lecturer TOÂ MINH THANH, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY-2006 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled ANALYING ERRORS IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH QUESTIONS WITH A BIAS TOWARDS ASSERTION OR NON – ASSERTION MADE BY ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee. The thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree. Ho Chi Minh City, October 2006 ÑAØO ÑAÏT CÖÔØNG i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my great thanks to Dr.
Toâ Minh Thanh, who has given me invaluable advice and guidance without which I could not have fulfilled my work. I would also like to thank the students in my classes for their willingness to fulfill the portfolio assignments and the questionnaire. Finally, thanks go to my family and my friends for their unwavering encouragement and support. ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, ÑAØO ÑAÏT CÖÔØNG, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL), accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Mater’s theses deposited in the University Library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the University Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City, October, 2006 ÑAØO ÑAÏT CÖÔØNG iii ABSTRACT The study done for this M. thesis aims at investigating pragmatic errors made by 50 fourth-year students of the Department of English Linguistics and Literature at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (abbreviated to USSH) when translating into Vietnamese 18 English assertive and non-assertive oriented questions. Being analysed are only pragmatic errors.
In other words, within the scope of the study are the errors which result from the student subjects’ “production of the wrong communication effect e. through the faulty use of a speech act” [Richards et al, 1993: 127]. The data was collected from the student subjects’ translated versions done right in class within 60 minutes at the beginning of their seventh semester at USSH, which is in the school year 2006-2007. The results showed that most of the student subjects produced ill-translated English-Vietnamese versions because they did not understand the effect of assertive and non-assertive orientation on possible changes of the illocutionary acts of English questions, especially from direct to indirect.
Using findings drawn from the analysis of the pragmatic errors, the author of the thesis firstly raises some recommendations concerning (1) a couple of adjustments in introducing part of pragmatics to the very content of such courses as English grammar, phonology, and semantics and (2) a number of supplement textbooks for the student subjects. Hopefully, these remedial suggestions will appropriately be applied to enhance the students’ understanding of English questions with a bias towards assertion or non-assertion for their better translated versions in the near future. iv TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS.
iv TABLE OF CONTENT. v LIST OF TABLES. ix LIST OF CHARTS. x LIST OF SYMBOLS.
xi Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION .3 Aims and Objectives.4 Scope of the study. 3 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 The concept of equivalent translation .2 Locutionary meaning vs.3 Locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts .4 Five categories of illocutionary acts .5 Direct and indirect illocutionary acts of a speech act .6 Three degrees of indirectness found in an illocutionary act .2 Sources of errors .3 Pragmatic errors in translation.4 Significance of Error Analysis.4 Five tones in the English intonation.1 The falling tone.2 The rising tone .3 The level tone .4 The fall-rise tone .5 The rise-fall tone .5 Gap in related research. 18 Chapter 3: ASSERTIVE AND NON-ASSERTIVE ORIENTATION ASSOCIATED WITH VARIOUS SYNTACTIC FORMS OF ENGLISH QUESTIONS.1 Syntactic forms of English questions .1 The mood structure in English clauses .1 The mood element.2 Types of the mood structure in English clauses.3 Syntactic forms of the English question.1 Yes-no questions .2 Assertive and non assertive orientation in English questions.1 Assertion and non-assertion.2 Types of questions .1 Yes-no questions.3 Non-assertive questions .1 Yes-no questions. 44 Chapter 5: ERROR ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .1 Question 1 and Question 18.4 Question 4 and Question 5.6 Question 7 and Question 9.73 vii Chapter 6: RECOMMENDATION.
I viii LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER 5 Table 1 Result of students’ translating the tag response in (1). 47 Table 2 Result of students’ translating the tag response in (18). 49 Table 3 Result of students’ distinguishing the meaning of the tag response in (1) from that in (18). 50 Table 4 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (2).
51 Table 5 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (3). 54 Table 6 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (4). 56 Table 7 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (5). 57 Table 8 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (6).
58 Table 9 Result of students’ translating the exclamative in (7). 60 Table 10 Result of students’ translating the exclamative in (9). 61 Table 11 Result of students’ translating the wh-question in (8). 63 Table 12 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (10).
64 Table 13 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (11). 65 Table 14 Result of students’ translating wh-question in (12). 66 Table 15 Result of students’ translating the wh-question in (13). 67 Table 16 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (14).
69 Table 17 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (15). 70 Table 18 Result of students’ translating the wh-question in (16). 72 Table 19 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (17). 74 ix LIST OF CHARTS CHAPTER 5 Chart 1 Result of students’ translating the tag response in (1).
47 Chart 2 Result of students’ translating the tag response in (18). 49 Chart 3 Result of students’ distinguishing the meaning of the tag response in (1) from that in (18). 50 Chart 4 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (2). 52 Chart 5 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (3).
54 Chart 6 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (4). 56 Chart 7 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (5). 57 Chart 8 Result of students’ translating the yes-no question in (6). 59 Chart 9 Result of students’ translating the exclamative in (7).
61 Chart 10 Result of students’ translating the exclamative in (9). 61 Chart 11 Result of students’ translating the wh-question in (8). 63 Chart 12 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (10). 64 Chart 13 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (11).
65 Chart 14 Result of students’ translating wh-question in (12). 66 Chart 15 Result of students’ translating the wh-question in (13). 68 Chart 16 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (14). 70 Chart 17 Result of students’ translating the tag question in (15).
71 Chart 18 Result of students’ translating the wh-question in (16). 73 Chart 19 Result of students’ translating the yes-noquestion in (17). 74 x LIST OF SYMBOLS Unacceptable translation version * \ Falling tone / Rising tone ◡ Fall-rise tone ⌢ Rise-fall tone _ Level tone xi Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Vietnam has been attracting a lot of foreign visitors. The majority of them can manage to use English in communication.
Therefore, the need of translating English to Vietnamese and vice versa is ever-increasing. The teaching of translation at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities aims to satisfy this need. The students begin to study English-Vietnamese translation from their third semester at the university. By the beginning of their seventh semester, the students have covered a number of subjects in linguistics such as phonology, morphology and syntax which are all of some help to the students in learning translation.
My years of teaching linguistics and translation at the university allow me to get aware of potential difficulties encountering the students in translating English sentences, especially where the students can not rely on syntactic and semantic features to produce good versions. They almost certainly lack knowledge of pragmatics when translating the sentences. The study of this M. thesis has been carried out to have a close look at the student subjects’ problem in order to check how serious their pragmatic errors are.
It is hoped that the study will result in some recommended adjustments for improving the quality of teaching translation with the focus on the pragmatic meaning of English questions. Do the student subjects find it really difficult to translate into Vietnamese English questions with a bias towards assertion or non-assertion? b. What are possible causes of the student subjects’ ill-versions? c. What recommendations can be raised from the study’s findings to help the students deal with pragmatic errors? 1.3 Aims and Objectives This paper covered basic concepts of equivalent translation, speech acts, translation errors, the five tones in English intonation, the theories of functional grammar and English assertively or non-assertively oriented questions to analyse pragmatic errors in English-Vietnamese translation made by the students majoring in English at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
In the light of the analysis of translation errors, recommendations were made in order to help the students produce appropriate translated versions from English questions with a bias towards assertion or non-assertion and avoid such pragmatic errors in their future translating activities. The study’s subsequent recommendations on applying a few supplement textbooks for the translation course and introducing part of pragmatics to other related courses such as English grammar, phonology, and semantics could be of great help for the sake of more efficient teaching and learning translation as well as of better-translated works.4 Scope of the study English negative, assertive and non-assertive forms combined with tones in intonation were mentioned in this paper to find out their effect on changing the direct illocutionary act of a question to indirect ones. In the light of this understanding, the techniques of equivalent translation were used to render English questions with a bias towards assertion or non-assertion into Vietnamese. The study was applied to the fourth-year students at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities who have captured some background knowledge of phonology, morphology and syntax.
The assignments with the most representative structures of English questions with a bias toward assertion or non-assertion were used to check the students’ capability of English-Vietnamese translation.5 Overview The study consists of 6 chapters. Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 1 describes the study’s rationale, research questions, aims and objectives, and scope as well. The chapter ends with its overview. Chapter 2: Literature Review The chapter reviews the concepts of equivalent translation, speech acts, translation errors and five tones in the English intonation.
In the process of studying the literature review of the study, the gap of a number of previous studies was realized, and on the condition of such a fact that the study’s research questions were made. 3 Chapter 3: Assertive and non-assertive orientation associated with various syntactic forms of english questions The chapter aims to identify the syntactic forms of the English questions and then represents questions with a bias towards assertion o non-assertion Chapter 4: Methodology The chapter deals with a number of methodological aspects including the population, the material and the procedure.