VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NONG VAN HAI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép thế như phương tiện liên kết ngữ pháp trong vantran M. Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.15 HANOI, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NONG VAN HAI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép thé như phương tiện liên kết ngữ pháp trong van M. Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60. DUONG THI NU HANOI, 2011 IV TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS PAGES DECLAIRA TION.
Wl TABLE OF COINTTIETN TYS. o5 5< 5< HH HH H000 IV LIST OF TABLES AND EIGURES. 2-5 << <5 S000 5 gu” VỊ PART A: INTRODUCTTOÌN. AIMS OF THE STUDY 115.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY 0. METHODS OF THE S'TUIDŸY. DESIGN OF THE STUDY 15. 5-5 <0 g0 5 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.
Ọ TH HT TT Họ T0 0000800 5 1.1 The Concept of DiSCOUTS€.2 Spoken and written discourse. ccc cece cence ence nee n tent eee eee nee eee aes 9 1.1 The concept of coheslon .3 Types of Cohesion .-cccn ng ng nh nhà hy 12 1.1 Grammatical Cohesion " de ede ede eee n cence eee neeeentne ne eneene ee eaeenenee ed 14 1.3 Overview Of translation .1 The Concept of Translation .2 Important factors of Translation .3 The basis of translation .4 Source Language and Target Language .1 English Substitution D@VÏC€S.2 Vietnamese Solutions to the English Substitution Devices. cece cee nc ence eee eee e ne HH nh nh kh eas 28 2.1 Grammatical Cohesion Devices Leben eden cence needs ene eae ea sees ne ene ene naegs 28 2.2 Lexical Cohesion Devices .ccccececceceee eee eee ene eeenees 31 2.0 G5 G5 0 cọ TH TH TH 0000009 0033 REEFERENGCCE:. 00 0060080480404080000801000086 35 vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1.
Type of cohesion Table 2. Grammatical and Lexical cohesion Table 3 Occurrences and frequency of cohesive items of substitution in Corpus A Table 4. Occurrence and frequency of Vietnamese solutions to the English substitution device Figure 1: Reference PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE Discourse Analysis, or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written and spoken language use or any significant semiotic event.
From the beginning of its appearance, Discourse Analysis has taken up in a variety of social science disciplines. It is now a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language in use and therefore of great importance to language teaching. In the early days, language teaching has been concerned with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; however, it was not until Discourse Analysis turned up that our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gain successful communication was raised. Literature, which plays a very important role in our spiritual life, has been greatly developing as a consequence of the high living standards.
As a matter of fact, there have been more and more people choosing to work in the literary field and their efforts have created so many famous works. It is open to questions as to which factors have to be taken into consideration to make a successful work. How important are those factors to the completion of a coherent and cohesive text? Added to this, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence are actually regarded as the crucial aspects of language usage. Cohesion is considered one of the most challenging aspects of translation, as any language has its own unique manners in which it employs cohesive devices in the creation of a cohesive text.
Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships between persons and events; these patterns may not be ignored in a language if the readers understand what the translator wants to convey. The topic of cohesion has always appeared as the most useful constituent of discourse analysis that is applied to translation. English and Vietnamese have different grammars and vocabulary structures, and it is only natural that they pose great difficulties and challenges for a translator to deal with, especially in the field of literature. Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have encouraged the author to conduct the study entitled “Substitution as a Grammatical Cohesive Device in English Narrative in Comparison with Its Translation into Vietnamese”.
| hope that this study may help teachers and learners of foreign language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical cohesive devices. AIMS OF THE STUDY Based on the detailed classification of cohesive devices in English of Halliday and Hasan (1976), this study provides a close analysis of a particular grammatically cohesive device employed in English and its equivalence in the Vietnamese translation. This paper aims to study from a quantitative and a qualitative point of view the possible shifts of cohesion in translation in literary texts and solutions adapted to the Vietnamese translation. Furthermore, this study compares the translation strategies that translators use in transferring substitution from an English literary text to its Vietnamese translation.
This may pose great difficulties and problems because of the difference between the two languages. In order to achieve the aim of the study, some following research questions are raised. What are the possible shifts of cohesion within the text of translation in the field of literature? 2. What are the main problems that may occur in translation through the use of substitution? 3.
What are the possible solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation of a literary text? 3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for the author to refer to all of its characteristics. Thus, within this study, the author just mentions some background knowledge about Discourse Analysis as well as coherence and cohesion. Halliday and Hasan (1976) make a detailed classification of the cohesive devices in English.
These authors distinguish between grammatical and lexical cohesion. According to them, grammatical cohesion embraces four different devices: Reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. This study will only focus on analyzing how substitution is used as a device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative and its translated version into Vietnamese. METHODS OF THE STUDY To carry out this study, two literary corpora were used.
They were identified as Corpus A and Corpus B. The former was composed of the original texts written in English entitled “pride and prejudice” and it was made up of 121. The latter consisted of 141.370 words which was the Vietnamese translated version of those very same texts. The literary text was chosen for analysis because it is a famous literary work of Jane Austen.
Added to this, I have read both the original and the Vietnamese translated version for several times and find this story very interesting to make an analysis. Both corpora have a digital format and are available on the internet. Detailed information about the translations was not available. In the study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted for analysis.
And the analysis was conducted in the following steps - Firstly, make an identification in corpus A of the substitution devices employed in English based one the classification theory of Halliday and Hasan. The identification of such items was carried out with the help of a concordance programme named Antconc 3. - Then, locate the equivalent linguistic expressions in Corpus B. - Finally, discuss and analyze the solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation.
DESIGN OE THE STUDY This study is divided into three main parts. Part A is the introduction which includes rationale, aim, scope, method and design of the study. Then Part B is the development which consists of 2 chapters in which chapter one is about the theoretical background of the study and chapter two is the analysis of substitution as the device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative in comparison with its Vietnamese translated version. Part C is the conclusion which describes a summary of the present study with some interesting findings.
PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 The Concept of Discourse. There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse. Halliday (1985) defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process”. According to Crystal (1992) discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative”.
Cook (1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive”. In other words, as Brown and Yule state, discourse is language material, either spoken or written, in actual uses by speakers (and writers) of the language. Since its introduction to modern science the term “discourse” has taken various, sometimes very broad, meanings. In order to specify which of the numerous senses is analyzed in the following dissertation it has to be defined.
Originally the word “discourse” comes from Latin “discursu’" which denoted “conversation, speech”. Thus understood, however, discourse refers to too wide an area of human life, therefore only discourse from the vantage point of linguistics, and especially applied linguistics, is explained here. There is no agreement among linguists as to the use of the term discourse in that some use it in reference to texts, while others claim it denotes speech which is for instance illustrated by the following definition: "Discourse: a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative" (Crystal 1992:25). On the other hand, being aware of the differences between kinds of discourses indicates the unity of communicative intentions as a vital element of each of them.
Consequently she suggests using terms 'text' and 'discourse' almost interchangeably betokening the former refers to the linguistic product, while the latter implies the entire dynamics of the processes. According to Cook (1994:7) novels, as well as short conversations or groans might be equally rightfully named discourses. Seven criteria which have to be fulfilled to qualify either a written or a spoken text as a discourse have been suggested by Beaugrande (1980). These include: e Cohesion - grammatical relationship between parts of a sentence essential for its interpretation; « Coherence - the order of statements relates one another by sense.
¢ Intentionality - the message has to be conveyed deliberately and consciously; ¢ Acceptability - indicates that the communicative product needs to be satisfactory in that the audience approves it; e Informativeness - some new information has to be included in the discourse; e Situationality - circumstances in which the remark is made are important; ¢ Intertextuality - reference to the world outside the text or the interpreters' schemata; Nowadays, however, not all of the above mentioned criteria are perceived as equally important in discourse studies, therefore some of them are valid only in certain methods of the research (Beaugrande 1980: 49).2 Spoken and written discourse Talking and writing represent different modes of expressing linguistics meanings. As stated by Halliday (1985) “Speaking does not show clearly sentence and paragraph boundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing leaves out the prosodic and paralinguistic contribution”. While written discourse comprises complete sentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent modifications via adjectives and adverbs, spoken contains incomplete sentences. Although spoken and written discourses share the communicative functions, they serve various functions.
The former is concerned with interact ional use and the latter with the transactional use (Brown and Yule, 1983: 13) By comparison, writing language is under no temporal, spatial pressure. The writer has time to choose lexical items, check words and structures to make necessary correction which is primarily concerned with the transactional use.