HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES --------------- NGUYEN THI MY NGOC BUILDING AN ENGLISH - VIETNAMESE PARALLEL CORPUS OF CONTEMPORARY ART TERMS MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES --------------- NGUYEN THI MY NGOC BUILDING AN ENGLISH - VIETNAMESE PARALLEL CORPUS OF CONTEMPORARY ART TERMS MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CODE: 8220201 SUPERVISOR: PHAN THI THANH THAO PhD THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ --------------- NGUYỄN THỊ MỸ NGỌC XÂY DỰNG NGỮ LIỆU SONG NGỮ ANH - VIỆT VỀ THUẬT NGỮ NGHỆ THUẬT ĐƯƠNG ĐẠI LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ NGÔN NGỮ ANH MÃ SỐ: 8220201 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. PHAN THỊ THANH THẢO THỪA THIÊN HUẾ, 2022 i STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree in any university. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Signed: Nguyen Thi My Ngoc Date: 09/11/2022 ii ABSTRACT The current study aims at building an English-Vietnamese parallel corpus of contemporary art terms to meet the current pressing demand in Vietnam for the translation of art-related documents from Vietnamese into English and vice versa.
To achieve its aim, the study adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research method to examine the original English texts and accurately translate them into Vietnamese with the aid of a cloud-based CAT tool called Smartcat, as well as generate the linguistic database statistics of the research products. The final products of the investigation include: an English-Vietnamese parallel corpus of contemporary art terms of about 130,000 words, an English-Vietnamese glossary of approximately 500 contemporary art terms, and a collection of 130 documents containing English-Vietnamese aligned sentences. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Above all, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Phan Thi Thanh Thao, for her enthusiastic support for every single step of the development of this thesis.
From the beginning to the end of the work, she was always willing to give me valuable detailed advice. Without her help, it would be impossible for me to complete this research paper. My greatest appreciation goes to all the staff and lecturers of Hue University, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies for giving me the opportunity to get such a great education. I also would like to express my deepest gratitude to my Master, my family, and my friends for having always given me unconditional love, as well as incomparable encouragement.
iv List of Tables Table 1. Details of the source materials used to build the corpus. Textual samples relevant to seven forms of contemporary art. Details of the text types with examples and the number of samples belonging to each type.
The shortest English text making up the corpus data. The total numbers of tokens, words, and sentences of each sub-corpus. Statistics of Part of Speech (POS) in the English sub-corpus. Examples of English-Vietnamese single-word terms.
Examples of English-Vietnamese multi-word terms. Examples of English-Vietnamese aligned sentences. 82 v List of Figures Figure 1. Structure of a mono-directional parallel corpus.
Structure of a bi-directional parallel corpus. Structure of a non-directional parallel corpus. Frankenberg-Garcia (2009)’s Possible Directions of Analysis in a Bidirectional Parallel Corpus. Copying the entire content of the original article into the word file.
Removing the redundant information. Saving the file in Word. The initial interface of Smartcat. Creating a new project on Smartcat.
Uploading files to Smartcat. Selecting files from personal computer. Finishing uploading the original English files. Setting up essential features to work with the project.
The first step to create a new glossary on Smartcat. The second step to create a new glossary on Smartcat. Adding new terms to the glossary. Downloading all the translated texts.
Copying the aligned English-Vietnamese texts. Creating a new corpus using Sketch Engine. Edit the settings to determine the corpus name and its type. Changing the corpus names and/or the automatically detected languages if necessary.
Completing the construction of the English- Vietnamese parallel corpus. Statistics of the total number of words. Getting the sub-corpus information. The sub-corpus information.
The figures for calculating the TTR of the English sub-corpus (on the left) and the Vietnamese sub-corpus (on the right). The WORD LIST interface. The nouns and their frequencies. The nouns and their frequencies.
The noun “art” in different contexts. The Keywords function. The extractions of single words and multi-word terms from the English texts using Keywords function on Sketch Engine .80 vii List of Abbreviations CAT. Computer-assisted translation TTR.Type-token ratio POS .Part of speech viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of Original Authorship.
iii List of Tables. iv List of Figures. v List of Abbreviations. vii Table of contents.
viii Chapter 1: Introduction. Background of the study. Statement of the problem. Research objectives and questions.
Significance of the study. Outline of the thesis .7 Chapter 2: Literature Review. Corpus and corpus linguistics. The definition of “corpus”.
Main terms related to corpora. Applications of corpora. The concept of corpus linguistics. A brief history of corpus linguistics.
Kinds of corpora. Parallel corpus and its applications in the translation domain. Contemporary art terms’ translation. Issues surrounding contemporary art terms’ translation.
Smartcat- a cloud-based CAT tool. An overview of the properties of the generated corpus. Data collection and processing procedures. Data collection procedure.
Translating English source texts into Vietnamese using Smartcat. Creating the glossary of contemporary art terms. Downloading the aligned English- Vietnamese texts. Building the English- Vietnamese parallel corpus of contemporary art terms .68 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion.
The English - Vietnamese parallel corpus of contemporary art terms. Statistics of the number of tokens, words, sentences, and the type-token ratio (TTR) 69 4. Statistics of Part of Speech (POS) in the English sub-corpus. The English- Vietnamese glossary of contemporary art terms.
Bilingual documents including English-Vietnamese aligned sentences .83 x Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications. Conclusion and Implications. Limitations and suggestions for further research. 98 1 Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter sets the stage for the current study with a clear context, the statement of the problem, as well as an overview of the existing literature gap.
Moreover, it presents the research objectives and research questions, as well as declares the importance of the investigation. Finally, the thesis outline and the chapter summary are provided. Background of the study Since the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the world has been considered a global community ruled by information and knowledge (Rogers, 2015). In all scientific domains, as knowledge undoubtedly does not flow in only one direction, scholars throughout the globe have always gained substantial benefit from their overseas colleagues’ research results (Aslam et al.
As a consequence, the work of translating specialized texts including technical jargon of a scientific discipline from a language to another one and vice versa is inevitable. In this context, whether corpus linguistics is considered a newly-emerging methodological basis for carrying out linguistic investigations or a sub-branch of linguistics with the theoretical disciplines of its own, corpus linguistics has long affirmed its significant position in the translation arena. In the realm of translation alone, corpora have been exploited in a plethora of specialized subject fields ranging from legal translation, medical translation, to economic translation, etc. For example, while Delégerab et al.
(2009) researched the translations of medical terms based on word alignment in parallel text corpora and tested them in English and French, Klabal (2019)’s study centered on the role of small-scale corpora of legal language in bridging the gap between Czech and English terminological and phraseological asymmetries. Obviously, corpora can also assist in translating art-related documents that often pose great obstacles for translators since they are filled a large amount of emotional- expressive vocabulary, adjectives, extended metaphors, comparisons, parallelisms or 2 emotional reversals (Boyarkina, 2021). Besides those professional applications, corpora are of pedagogical values in the translation classroom. They relate to a form of inductive instruction known as data-driven learning (Granger, 2003) or data-driven discovery learning (Stubbs, 2004).
In particular, if monolingual corpora provide students with a deeper insight into the linguistic patterns of a given language, parallel corpora enable them to examine translation procedures, recognized equivalents, as well as recurring solutions presented by different experienced translators. All in all, corpus linguistics has proved to be a powerful weapon for translation studies (Shen, 2010), expanding the research scope and leading to brand-new perspectives on the existing theories. Statement of the problem Since the introduction of the Doi Moi economic reform in 1986, especially after the promulgation of the National Strategy for the Development of Vietnamese Cultural Industries to 2020, cultural interaction between Vietnam and other nations in the world has received great attention and promotion from the Vietnamese government, thereby obtaining many positive results (Le, 2021). In the field of art, Vietnamese fine arts are emerging rapidly and initially making impressions on the international arena.
Generations of Vietnamese artists have won the Ho Chi Minh Prize, as well as other prestigious national and international awards. By attending exhibitions, composition camps, and international seminars, etc., they are given more opportunities to interact with their colleagues from all over the world. There have been hundreds of galleries in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, which not only frequently show and sell works but promote artists and their works to the public as well (Tran, 2009). Moreover, many of the galleries across the country have collaborated with international partners to exhibit artworks, making valuable contributions to the worldwide spread of Vietnamese fine arts (Tran, 2009).
According to Ta (2020), certain exceptional art products and services such as “A O show”, “The Quintessence of the North”, “Memory of Hoi An”, 3 “The rhythm of the homeland” puppet show, among others, have left strong impressions and attracted both Vietnamese audiences and foreign tourists. These newly-born performing and entertainment arts demonstrate the potential flourish of the country’s contemporary art field. As a result of Vietnam’s rising international cooperation in the realm of arts, there is a high demand for the translation of Vietnamese artworks into foreign languages, especially into English- the most prominent language in the globe with more than 1.4 billion internationally users nowadays ("English," 2022). The concept of “contemporary art” comes in bursts of special usage in the 1920s and 1930s, and again in the 1960s, though it remains a subordinate term to terminologies like “modern art”, “modernism”, and “postmodernism”, which emphasize art’s close but controversial ties to social and cultural modernity (Smith, 2014).
Contemporary art is nowadays the established name for today’s art in professional settings, having extensive resonance in public media and popular speech (Smith, 2014). Over the last few years, Vietnamese art-majored students have had opportunities to study and gain access to contemporary art through various theory and composition courses. In Hue University- University of Arts, there are modules on Aesthetics, Art History, Painting, Sculpture, and Fine Arts Pedagogy, providing students with specialized knowledge of fine arts, along with hands-on experience in both traditional and contemporary art. In the second academic year, students familiarize themselves with traditional technical materials, while the fourth and fifth academic years offer other specialized modules, including Composition 1, Composition 2, Composition 3, Composition 4, and Composition 5, along with the Graduation Project.