ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ TS. VÕ THỊ LIÊN HƯƠNG (Chủ biên) TS. HOÀNG THỊ LINH GIANG TS. NGUYỄN VŨ QUỲNH NHƯ ThS.
LÊ THỊ HỒNG PHƯƠNG THỰC HÀNH DỊCH CƠ BẢN 1 (Tài liệu học tập dành cho Sinh viên Tiếng Anh) Huế, 2021 HUE UNIVERSITY THE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES VO THI LIEN HUONG (PhD) HOANG THI LINH GIANG (PhD) NGUYEN VU QUYNH NHU (PhD) LE THI HONG PHUONG (MA) GENERAL TRANSLATION PRACTICE 1 (A Course Material for EFL Students) Hue, 2021 ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to express our gratitude to the Rectorial Board of the University of Foreign Languages, Hue University for approving of the composition of this course material. We would also like to send our heartfelt thanks to the colleagues at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, the Faculty of English, for sharing with us their teaching experience, thanks to which more ideas were added and the course material completed. Special thanks go to Huyen Ton Nu Quy Tien, who allows us to use the findings in her assignment (submitted as part of the continuous assessment for the Translation Practice 1 of the academic year of 2018 - 2019) in Chapter 3. Moreover, we are fortunate to live and work in the era of Internet of Things, which enables us to search for and have access to useful non-commercial online resources to diversify the texts used for translation practice.
We owe our thanks to both named and anonymous authors who have made their materials available for free download and use. No less important, in addition, we are always grateful to our families for their love and support, as well as their tolerance for many no-leisure-time weekends while the composition of this course material was in progress. i ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgment. i Table of contents .iii Abbreviations and Conventions .1 What is translation and how important is it? .2 The contents of the book.
1 Part 1: TRANSLATING SENTENCES. 3 Chapter 1 Identifying and translating parts of a sentence .2 Identifying the main clause .3 Identifying the modifiers .4 Identifying the adverbials .1 Exercise1: Vietnamese-English Translation .2 Exercise 2: English-Vietnamese Translation. 7 Chapter 2 Translating different types of Adverbials .2 Translating Adverbials of Cause .3 Translating Adverbials of Time .4 Translating Adverbials of Place .5 Translating Adverbials of Manner .6 Translating Adverbial of Condition .7 Translating Adverbials of Purpose .8 Translating Adverbials of Result .9 Translating Adverbials of Contrast .1 Exercise 1: Vietnamese-English Translation .2 Exercise 2: English-Vietnamese Translation. 19 Chapter 3 Translating English Prepositional Phrases .2 The Functions of Prepositional Phrases .1 Prepositional phrases as adjectival phrases .2 Prepositional phrases as adverbials .3 Common mistakes in translating Prepositional Phrases .1 Translating too literally .2 Translating without considering idiomatic meaning .1 Exercise 1: English-Vietnamese Translation .2 Exercise 2: Vietnamese-English Translation.
25 Chapter 4 Translating Relative Clauses .2 An overview of relative clauses in English .3 Ways of translating English relative clauses .1 Translating clauses with WHERE and WHEN .2 Translating clauses with WHOSE .3 Translating clauses with WHO/WHOM and WHICH .4 Other ways of translating relative clauses .1 Exercise 1: English - Vietnamese translation .2 Exercise 2: Vietnamese - English translation. 33 Chapter 5 Translating Passive Voice .2 Ways of translating passive sentences into Vietnamese .3 Ways of translating passive sentences into English .1 Exercise 1: English-Vietnamese Translation .2 Exercise 2: Vietnamese-English Translation. 39 Part 2: TRANSLATING TEXTS. 41 Chapter 6 Translating texts of Sports and Entertainment .2 Building vocabulary for ‘Sports and Entertainments’ .1 Vocabulary related to Sports .2 Vocabulary related to Entertainment.
54 Chapter 7 Translating texts of Education and Healthcare.2 Building vocabulary for ‘Education and Healthcare’ .1 Vocabulary related to Education .2 Vocabulary related to Healthcare. 71 Chapter 8 Translating texts of Business and Services .2 Building Vocabulary for ‘Business and Services’. 90 vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS Abbreviations EFL: English as a Foreign Language SS: Source sentence ST: Source text TS: Target sentence TT: Target text Conventions * When an asterisk is put at the beginning of a phrase/sentence, it indicates that the phrase/sentence is not naturally expressed or grammatically structured [x.y] The square brackets indicate an example. Within the brackets, X stands for the chapter number, Y stands for the order of the example Adapted from This is used when a text taken from a reference source is rewritten to make it simple or culturally suitable.
Extracted from This is used when the text is part of a longer text from a reference source. Source This is used when a text is taken from a reference source. Synthesized from This is used when a text is written by synthesizing information about the topic/issue from different sources. vii viii INTRODUCTION 0.1 What is translation and how important is it? Ever since the written literature came into being, translation has been used as a means of communication and information exchange between parties speaking different languages.
Today, anything that is written can be translated: advertisements, books, games software, legal documents, websites, film subtitles, etc. and the list is almost endless. The verb ‘translate’ means to carry across. In the context of communication, it is understood as “carrying across a message or a text.” Thus, translation has been considered as a process of communication that involves a sender and a receiver of a message.
In this case, the sender sends a message that is coded in the source language (the language being translated from). The code is decoded into the target language (the language being translated to) by a translator before handing over to the receiver of the message. Therefore, the purpose of translation is to pass on an understanding to people in their own language and create the same impact as the original text. In the globalized world, the social, economic and technological boundaries between nations have disappeared.
Translation has become an allied activity, helping to lift up the restrictions between nations. Translation has also grown into a major form of communication, a strong channel for the circulation of ideas and opinions, information and influence.2 The contents of the book This course material is written for students of English as a Foreign Language, focusing on the practical aspects of translating familiar topics between English and Vietnamese. Theoretical issues will be discussed in simple terms and only where necessary. It is 1 designed based on the unit descriptions (2018) for the compulsory course of Translation Practice 1 (course code ANH4172), issued by the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Faculty of English.
Therefore, the objectives of this course material are consonant with the objectives of the mentioned course. Particularly, it aims to provide students with the fundamentals of general translation of sentences and short texts; raise students’ awareness of the similarities and differences in sentence structures and meanings between English and Vietnamese; build students’ skills to analyze and reproduce a text of medium length in the most appropriate language and layout. The contents of the course material are divided into two parts. Part 1 focuses on translating sentences, providing students with tips of analyzing sentences and translating special segments in the sentence, such as adverbials, or grammatical aspects of sentence structure such as passive voice and relative clauses.
Part 2 focuses on translating short texts, including topics of Entertainments and Sports, Education and Healthcare and Business and Services. Texts for translation in this course material vary in terms of genres and styles with the view to familiarizing students to the translation of different text types. The language of the texts is suitable to learners at the intermediate level of proficiency. 2 PART 1: TRANSLATING SENTENCES CHAPTER 1 IDENTIFYING AND TRANSLATING PARTS OF A SENTENCE 1.1 Introduction A sentence is, no doubt, the fundamental element of a text.
No matter how long or short the text is, it is made up of sentences. Therefore, translating a text is based on translating sentences. In general, a sentence is constructed from clauses. Identifying componential clauses of a sentence is essential to understand the sentence well before the translation process takes place.
In this chapter, the basic steps to translating a sentence is presented with tips and techniques.2 Identifying the main clause A sentence, in the simplest term, includes the subject represented by a noun phrase and a finite verb or verb phrase. In practice, the noun phrase as the subject is often modified by one or more phrases/clauses, and so is the verb phrase. Consider the following sentence: [1.1] SS: Theo tin từ Bộ Thông tin - Truyền thông, trong giai đoạn từ 2011 đến 2015, nguồn ngân sách nhà nước đầu tư cho phát triển lĩnh vực Thông tin - Truyền thông là 5. In this sentence, the main idea lies in ‘nguồn ngân sách nhà nước đầu tư cho phát triển lĩnh vực Thông tin - Truyền thông là 5.000 tỉ đồng,’ and thus the main clause of the whole sentence.
In 3 this main clause, the subject is ‘nguồn ngân sách nhà nước’ and the complement is the amount of VND 5,000 billion. The core part of the sentence is as follows: TS: The state budget is (worth) VND 5,000 billion.3 Identifying the modifiers There is further a question to solve in the subject of example [1.1]: What is the role of the phrase after the subject (‘đầu tư cho phát triển lĩnh vực Thông tin - Truyền thông’)? Answering this question helps to identify the function as well as the syntactic structure of the phrase in the sentence. The phrase is apparently adjectival. It gives particular information about the noun phrase as subject.
As often happens in an English sentence, this phrase can be structured in the form of a relative clause, a participial phrase or a prepositional phrase: a relative clause: The state budget which is used for the development in the field of Information and Communication a participial phrase: The state budget allocated for the development in the field of Information and Communication a prepositional phrase: The state budget for the development in the field of Information and Communication The complete main clause of the sentence is TS: The state budget which is used for/allocated for/for the development of the field of Information and Communication is (worth) VND 5,000 billion. 4 When the main clause is identified and translated, the remaining of the SS will be identified in terms of function and syntactic structure.4 Identifying the adverbials Also take example [1.1], the beginning of the sentence (‘Theo tin từ Bộ Thông tin - Truyền thông, trong giai đoạn từ 2011 đến 2015’) can be divided into two parts as they are separated by a comma. The first part (Theo tin từ Bộ Thông tin - Truyền thông’) gives the source from which the information in the main clause comes, which is equivalent to the phrase ‘according to the Ministry of Information and Communication’ in English. The second part (‘trong giai đoạn từ 2011 đến 2015’) is an adverbial of time, equivalent to ‘in the period of 2011 - 2015’, ‘between 2011 and 2015’, or ‘from 2011 to 2015’.
The English version for [1.1] is as follows: TS: According to the Ministry of Information and Communication, in the period of 2011 - 2015, the state budget allocated for the development in the field of Information and Communication is (worth) VND 5,000 billion. The phrases in the English sentence, nonetheless, are not usually in the order as above. There should be an adjustment, including re-ordering different parts of the sentence and conjugating the verb in the proper tense. Firstly, since the adverbials are subordinate, they often come after the main clause in an unmarked (not showing any particular feature or style) sentence.
Secondly, an adverbial must appear together with the verb phrase it modifies. In the case of SS [1.