VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HOCHIMINH CITY HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES LEÂ COÂNG THIEÄN AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF MODALITY “SHOULD” MADE BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT THE HCM UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS M. THESIS IN TESOL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTER DEGREE IN TESOL Supervisor: Dr. NGUYEÃN TIEÁN HUØNG HO CHI MINH CITY-2005 1 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF MODALITY “SHOULD” MADE BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT THE HCM UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 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, December 2005 LE CONG THIEN 2 RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, LE CONG THIEN, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Mater’s theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City, December 2005 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my great thanks to Dr. Nguyen Tien Hung, who has given me invaluable advice and guidance without which I could not have fulfilled my work.
I am greatly grateful to Ms. Ngo Thi Phuong Thien, and Mr. Truong Hon Huy for their precious suggestions on my thesis, as well as to all the senior lecturers of the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature of the Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their lectures. Finally, I would also like to thank the students in my classes for their willingness to fulfill the portfolio assignments and the questionnaire.
4 ABSTRACT The thesis focused on analyzing the students’ errors in translating modality “should” into Vietnamese and was written for the purpose of identifying the students’ common problems in the process of translating this modal verb, as well as the causes of the problems. And from the study findings, solutions and implications to these problems were suggested as useful contribution to the teaching and learning grammar and translation, that is, the translating of modality in general and “should” in particular. The synthesizing and analyzing methodology was used in the thesis. 63 second- year students majoring in English were given an assignment as a portfolio one consisting of 11 daily speeches with “should” from the Web Concordancer website and textbooks.
Then, the data was collected and analyzed on the basis of theories on the modality used as the standard of evaluating the student’s translations of should. In addition, a questionnaire related to the students’ thought of, their habits of, and their problems of translating the modality should was given to the students after the test so that they could express their opinions, problems, suggestions and so on. The results showed that most of the students in the study had difficulty in translating modality “should”, especially its structures, aspects and the notion of time reference and tense. The problems were due to the students’ misjudgment 5 of the meanings of the English and Vietnamese modality, their way of learning grammar and translation, and the role of the teacher.
If further research on modality is studied, and if the students are taught all the structures of modality, the students will make much progress in their English study. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1. Aims and objectives 2 3. Scope of the Study 2 4.
Overview 3 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1. The Concept of Problems - Errors in Translation 5 1. The Concept of Translation Problems 5 1. The Concept of Translation Errors 9 1.
The Significance of Error Analysis 11 2. Source of Errors 13 2. Definitions and the Meaning of Modality 20 3. Modality and Aspects – Time Reference – Tenses – Moods 23 3.
Aspect – Time Reference 23 3. Modal Verb Should 26 4. Gaps and Research Questions 27 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 29 1. Data Analysis 31 CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 33 1.
Results and Discussions 33 1. Data Analysis - Findings 33 Table 1: The Result from the test of should translation 33 1. Analysis of Common Problems. 61 Table 2: How the students appreciate the modal should 61 Table 3: Some difficulties the students have in dealing with the modal should 62 Table 4: Causes of the difficulties with the modal should 64 Table 5: Approach to deal with the modal should 65 2.
Comments on The Common Problems - Implications 66 8 CHAPTER V. Limitation and Suggestions for Further Studies 81 APPENDIX 84 1. Appendix 1: Portfolio Assignment in Translation 84 2. Appendix 2: Questionnaire 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY 90 9 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION RATIONALE 1.
Rationale In the second year, the students begin to study English – Vietnamese translation at both basic and advanced levels. And since almost all other subjects in the next phases are related to linguistics, literature, culture, etc., students’ good capability of translating the source language into the target language properly is an indispensable requirement. As a matter of fact, for the first two years, the students have to attend grammar courses at the university and have to acquire a good command of language skills and a good knowledge of language usage. However, for several years of teaching advanced reading, British & American cultures, and, recently, translation, I have noticed that one of the difficulties many students have is that of translating modal verbs.
This may be caused by their lack of translation experience and by insufficient knowledge of theories of modality. Perhaps, the students will have less difficulty in understanding the semantic features of the modal verbs, but they are likely to encounter the complicated English syntactic structures, and the functional grammar of modality, for modality, in addition to expressing the propositional meanings, can convey the notions of advisability, certainty or possibility, the speaker’s attitudes, expectation, criticism, and so on when used in its specific syntactic 10 forms, aspects and also when interpreted in a specific context. In fact, many students are unable to realize the complexity of the modality, and they find it hard to transfer it from the source language into the target language. So, I decided to make a thorough study on the issue in order to know the students’ common problems, causes, and from the result of my study I will be able to suggest solutions and implications to overcome these difficult problems.
Also, I strongly believe that the analysis of the problems could be useful for the teaching and learning of all other subjects. Aims and Objectives In this paper, basic concepts of translation problems, translation errors, sources of errors and the theories of the modality, especially the modal verb should were presented with an aim at analyzing common errors in English-Vietnamese translation made by the students majoring in English at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. And on the ground of the analysis of translation errors, suggestions to solve the problems were made in order to help the learners to have a right appreciation of the modality should and be able to avoid making mistakes in the process of translating in the future. And the implications from the study could be helpful to teachers who are teaching grammar and translation.
Scope of the Study Modality is a large category with pairs of modal verbs like will and would, shall and should, can and could, may and might, and with single modals like must, 11 ought to, dare and need. In this study, I mentioned only should in details. The study was applied to the students of two second year classes at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. The assignments with the most representative structures of the modal verb should as portfolio ones were used to check the students’ capability of English- Vietnamese translation.
Overview The study consists of 5 chapters. Chapter I: Introduction The chapter describes the rationale of the study, the scope of the study, and the aims and objectives. Chapter II: Literature Review The chapter reviews several concepts of problems, concepts of errors, the significance of error analysis, and sources of errors. In addition, this chapter also looks at several linguists’ opinions on modality, and their valuable researched work on it.
In the process of studying the literature review, the gap of the previous studies was realized, and the research question was made. Chapter III: Methodology The chapter explains the methodology which mentions types, the samples, the, materials, etc. This chapter also presents the methods of getting and analyzing the data. 12 Chapter IV: Results and Discussions The chapter presents the students’ common errors in the translating of should, their difficulties and reasons.
Also, in this chapter, modality forms, aspects, specific structures, context, and concepts of translation equivalence were closely discussed again as a criterion of evaluation applied to the student’s translations. Chapter V: Conclusion The chapter draws conclusions and suggests implications for the further study. 13 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2. THE CONCEPT OF PROBLEMS AND ERRORS IN TRANSLATION 1.
The Concept of Translation Problems The concept of translation problems is a large category which has been, up to now, controversial among linguists. However, as discussing only problems with the translation of the modality should, I would like to mention the most fundamental concepts that teachers and learners of grammar and translation should notice. In 1994, Basil Hatim & Ian Mason [p.7] mentioned that problems the translator would have were that of the levels of equivalence between the source language and the target language. Different languages, of course, have equivalence in structures, terms, meanings, etc.
With “formal equivalence” (closest possible match of form and content between source text and target text), the translator only needs to translate what is written and produces a certain degree of “insight into the lexical, grammatical or structural form of a source text”. Basil Hatim & Ian Mason also discussed “dynamic equivalence” (principle of equivalence of effect on the reader) that helps obtain “the intended meaning of the source language speakers” in order to create effects on the target language readers. In the introduction to “A Course in the Theory of Translation [1986]” Hung also 14 explained that one of the translation problems was associated with “semantic and pragmatic aspects of translation”. In several cases both the source language and the target language have the similarities in semantic and syntactic meanings, and thus it is easy for the translator to transfer the meanings.
For example, there is a straightforward word-for-word substitution between the two sentences “Everyone should drive carefully” and, “Moïi ngöôøi neân laùi xe caån thaän”. Unfortunately, this is not always the case; the translator sometimes has to rely on his competence of pragmatic translation, that is, he has to determine the meaning of the language components through the specific context, or the specific situation, in order to produce an equivalent translation in the target language from the source language. Peter Newmark [1981: 39] indirectly mentioned the problems that the translator encounters during the translation process by explaining the methods of “communicative translation and semantic translation” that the translator must decide on. Any translator is likely to make errors if he cannot determine which method is appropriately applied to a certain text.
In fact, in semantic as well as in communicative translation, providing that equivalent effect is secured, the literal word-for-word translation is not only the best, it is the only valid method of translation.