College of Foreign Languages (VHUN) Postgraduate Studies  BẠCH ÁNH HỒNG EQUIVALENCE IN THE TRANSLATION OF VIETNAMESE CULTURAL WORDS IN THE BOOK “WANDERING THROUGH VIETNAMESE CULTURE” BY HUU NGOC (TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG CÁCH DỊCH CÁC TỪ CÓ YẾU TỔ VĂN HÓA TRONG CUỐN SÁCH “WANDERING THROUGH VIETNAMESE CULTURE” CỦA HỮU NGỌC) Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Course: K13 M.A. Minor Thesis Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến - Hanoi, July 2007 - Abstract This paper is a linguistic study on equivalences and the translation methods rendered to achieve the equivalent effects in a book written by the writer and translator, Huu Ngoc. More specifically, the chosen subject of investigation is the translation of Vietnamese cultural words in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”. The reasons for this choice are both linguistic and practical. Linguistically, the translation of culture-related words has never been seen as an easy task, especially between such two distant cultures as Vietnam and English. The challenges may originate from cultural differences, the cultural knowledge of the translator etc. However, the hardest problems may be attached to non- equivalence which consists of the concepts unknown to target language readers, the non-lexicalization of the concepts, the lack of super ordinates of hyponyms etc. The main contribution of this paper is to draw out the main ways of dealing with the hurdles by investigating how an experienced translator and a famous Vietnamese cultural expert overcome the difficulty in his book. Practically, I hope that the lessons drawn from the study of his work could effectively assist me in my practical job at my university, where a Vietnamese Studies Department is to be opened with an aim to train new generation of youngsters who will narrow down the culture gaps between Vietnam and other countries. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On the completion of this thesis, I am indebted to many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Hung Tien for his valuable and prompt advice and helps, without which, this thesis could not come into being. My thanks also go to all my lecturers and officers from Post Graduate Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, who have facilitated me with the best possible conditions during my whole course of studying. Last but not least, let my gratitude go to my family and friends, whose encouragement and assistance are of extreme importance during the course of my writing this thesis. Hanoi, July 2007 Bach Anh Hong TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 PART A: INTRODUCTION 5 1. Rationale 5 2. Scope of the study 5 3. Aims of the study 6 4. Methodology 6 5. Design of the study 7 Chapter 1: Theoretical background 8 1.1. Translation theory 8 1.1.1. Definition of translation 8 1.1.2. Translation equivalence 8 1.1.2.1. The nature of equivalence in translation 9 1.1.2.2. Types of equivalence in translation 9 1.1.3. Common problems of non-equivalence 11 1.2. Notion of culture in translation 13 1.3. Cultural categories 14 1.4. Translation methods 15 1.5. Conclusion 17 Chapter 2: Vietnamese cultural words and their equivalences 18 2.1. The most common types of cultural words 18 2.2. The most common types of equivalence 18 2.2.1. Nil equivalence: 20 2.2.2 Other types of equivalence 28 2.2.2.1 One-to-part-of one equivalence 28 2.2.2.3 One-to-one equivalence 34 PART C: CONCLUSION 36 REFERENCES 41 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Translating from one language into another has never been an easy job even for the most experienced translators. Translation, involving the transposition of thoughts expressed in one language by one social group into the appropriate expression of another group, entails a process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding. However, the process of transmitting cultural elements is a complicated and vital task. Culture is a complex collection of experiences which condition daily life; it includes history, social structure, religion, traditional customs and everyday usage. This is difficult to comprehend completely. The more disparities that exist between any two languages, the greater the meaning loss in the translation is. As hard as it may seem, the translation of Vietnamese cultural words is now an inevitable part in our integrating life since we have become a member of WTO. Thang Long University is one of those where the Department of Vietnam Study is going to be opened with an aims of training Vietnamese students into those who can introduce Vietnamese culture to the world. This sooner or later will pose teachers of English at Thang Long University a problem of matching cultural equivalence between English and Vietnamese. However, not many empirical studies have been conducted so far on the issue of translation of Vietnamese cultural words into English. Those reasons may explain how this study came into being. The study investigates how a very famous and experienced translator, Huu Ngoc, dealt with all the Vietnamese cultural words his whole-hearted work “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”. It also raised the need for translators of Vietnamese-English texts, especially in treating cultural terms, to pay close attention to the linguistic and cultural elements of the source texts. 2. Scope of the study This study sets its boundary in studying cultural words in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc. It will look into the equivalence and non-equivalence of Vietnamese cultural words and their translations from the following points: • the most common types of equivalence • the possible reasons for the non-equivalence • their translations 3. Aims of the study The main aims of the study are: • To find out the most common type of equivalence used in his translation of Vietnamese cultural words • To draw out the common problems of equivalence seen in the translation of Vietnamese cultural words into English • To draw out the strategies and procedures that may apply to the translation of Vietnamese cultural words • To suggest some implications for the translation of the cultural words. On this ground, the study seeks answer for the retailing research questions: • What are the common types of equivalence used in the translation of cultural words in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc? • What are the most common problems in translating Vietnamese cultural words into English that can be seen in the book? • What are the common methods used in the translation of Vietnamese cultural words? 4. Methodology With the hope to go on the right track for the answers, the writer will conduct the study in following steps: • Building up a theoretical background for the paper. • Collecting and group the Vietnamese cultural words and their English equivalents for description, analysis, comparison and induction. • Finding out the similarities and differences and draw out the translation used in the translation of cultural words. • The main method is contrastive analysis. • Data collection: The Vietnamese cultural words and their translations appear in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc. 5. Design of the study This study consists of three main parts, a reference, and a number of appendixes. Part A: Introduction The introduction gives rationale for the study. It also outlines the aims and the methods of the study. Part B: Development The development comprises two chapters. Chapter 1, which is named “Theoretical background”, provides the theory of translation and the translation of cultural words. Chapter 2 entitled “Cultural words and their equivalences” discusses the most common types of equivalence in translation of Vietnamese cultural words. It also studies the translation of Vietnamese cultural words and translation methods employed in their translation by Huu Ngoc in his book “Wandering though Vietnamese culture”. Part C, which is the “Conclusion”, summaries the strategies and procedures and comments. Reference includes all the books, articles or website that has been referred to during the writing of this thesis. The appendixes list examples of different groups of equivalence in order of the alphabet. PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical background 1.1. Translation theory 1.1.1. Definition of translation Translation has been viewed differently through times and thus defined variously. Larson (1984: 3) stated “Translation is basically a change of form… In translation the form of the source language is replaced by the form of the receptor (target) language”. Newmark (1988:5) did not seem to totally agree with Larson - who considered translation a basic “change of form”, by emphasizing the “intended in the text” as said “ Translation is rendering a written text into another language in the way the author intended in the text.” Hatim & Mason (1990:3), on the other hand, focused more on the communicative purpose of translation by citing: “Translation is a communicative process which takes place within a social context”. It is then followed by other linguists, Bell (1991: 5), who thought “semantic and stylistic equivalences” are crucial for a translation to communicate successfully: “Translation is the expression in another language (or TL) of what has been expressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences” These definitions, in spite of slight differences in the expressions, share common features that they all emphasize the importance of finding the closest equivalence in meaning by the choice of appropriate target language’s lexical and grammatical structures, communication situation, and cultural and the requirement to find equivalents which have similar characteristics to the original. It is this notion of equivalence, which will be taken into consideration in the next part. 1.1.2. Translation equivalence As easily seen, equivalence can be considered a central concept in translation theory. Therefore, it is not by chance that many theorists define translation in terms of equivalence relation. Newmark (1988) defines: “The overriding purpose of any translation should be to achieve ‘equivalence effect’ i.e. to produce the same effect on the readership of translation as was obtained on the readership of the original”. He also sees equivalence effect as the desirable result rather than the aim of any translation except for two cases: (a) If the purpose of the SL text is to affect and the TL translation is to inform or vice versa; (b) If there is a pronounced cultural gap between the SL and the TL text. Pym(1992) has even pointed to its circularity: equivalence is supposed to define translation, in turn, defines equivalence. 1.1.2.1. The nature of equivalence in translation Equivalence has been considered the unique intertextual relation that only translations are expected to show: it is defined as the relationship between a source text and a target text that allows the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place. Nearly all traditional definitions of translation, whether formal or informal, appeal to some notion of this: translation means the replacement, or substitution, of an utterance in one language by a formally or semantically or pragmatically equivalent utterance in another language. Therefore, it is no surprise that equivalence is always taken for granted as a prescriptive criterion, as Koller (1995:196) says: “Translation can be understood as the result of a text-reprocessing activity, by means of which a source-language text is transposed into a target-language text. Between the resulting text in L2 (the target-language text) and the source text in L1 (the source- language text) there exists a relationship which can be designated as a translational, or equivalence relation.” Then the question to be asked is not whether the two texts are equivalent, but what type and degree of translation equivalence they reveal. Therefore, it is possible to say that equivalence is “Any relation characterizing translation under a specified set of circumstances.” And “Equivalence was a relationship between two texts in two languages, rather than between the languages themselves” (Dr. Tien’s lectures- 2007). 1.1.2.2. Types of equivalence in translation Translation theorists tend to classify equivalence in accordance with different criteria and approach. Some out standings are quantitative, meaning based, form-based and function based. a. Quantitative approach: Munday (2001) seems to stick to numeracy and suggests: • One-to-one equivalence: A single expression in TL is equivalent to a single expression in SL. • One-to-many equivalence: More than one TL expressions are equivalent to a single SL expression. • Many- to-one equivalence: there is more than one expression in the source language but there is a single expression in target language which is equivalence to them. • One-to-part-of-one equivalence: A TL expression covers part of a concept designated by a single SL expression. • Nil equivalence: no TL expression is equivalent to a single SL expression -> loaned/borrowed equivalents should be used. b. Meaning-based equivalence Koller (1979) considers five types of equivalence: • Denotative equivalence: the SL and the TL words refer to the same thing in the real world. • Connotative equivalence: this type of equivalence provides additional values besides denotative value and is achieved by the translator’s choice of synonymous words or expressions. • Text-normative equivalence: The SL and the TL words are used in the same or similar context in their respective languages. • Pragmatic equivalence: With readership orientation, the SL and TL words have the same effect on their respective readers. • Formal equivalence: This type of equivalence produces an analogy of form in the translation by their exploiting formal possibilities of TL, or creating new forms in TL. c. Form-based equivalence: [...]... (khaki) (p288) Back translation: Quả thị: Quả của cây thị, thường có ở các nước có khí hậu ấm áp, thịt mọng, màu vàng nhạt, là loại quả tỏa mùi hương có cỡ bằng quả cam Tên khoa học là diospyros decandra lour, thuộc họ ebancea có tên Việt Nam thường gọi là hồng After translating the word with the Latin-original equivalence, together with some description, the Vietnamese word is then used as a common English... particular gods, e.g: god of land- my translation) Phủ: Đền thờ nhỏ, để thờ các Mẫu có trong truyền thuyết của người Việt) (wikipedia.com)(A small temple devoted to the worship of Mother Goddesses in Vietnamese legends) Scrutinizing those definitions, one can easily see the dissimilarity between those three types of worshipping places of Vietnamese people belongs to who the place is devoted to Đền is for national... Bắc) và chuối giạ (ở Miền Nam) có ít calo nhưng có mùi thơm và dễ tiêu (nghĩa đen của từ chuối tiêu có nghĩa là chuối dễ tiêu) chuối tây: The group of chuối tây (literally Western bananas) in the North and chuối sứ in the South The fruits are plump, short and starchy (p271) Back translation: Nhóm chuối tây (nghĩa đen là chuối phương Tây) ở miền Bắc và chuối sứ ở miền Nam Quả của loại chuối này thường mập,... dung (a type of hibiscus) symbolize a fast waning beauty.” (p293) Back translation: Đứng đầu danh sách này là hoa phong lan- loài hoa của người quân tử và vẻ đẹp nữ tính… Hoa quỳnh (một loại hortensia) có màu trắng tinh khiết, chỉ nở về đêm cho các thi sĩ… Hoa Phù Dung (một loại hibiscusi) là biểu tượng của vẻ đẹp chóng tàn phai The other way round is that he translated the literal meaning of the words... dịp để “diệt côn trùng” trong cơ thể người bằng cách ăn và uống, ngay vào lúc sáng sớm, bất cứ thứ gì ngon hoặc chua: rượu nếp, hoa quả còn xanh (đào, mận, xòai, khế…) và các thức khác như dưa hấu, nước dừa… The shape and appearance of things also proves its use when being rendered in translation: Source Language Target Language Back Translation Nhà sàn house on stilts Nhà trên các trụ Bánh dẻo moon... liên quan đến truyền thuyết hoặc sự tích, cuộc sống của thần hoặc người có công đức lớn với dân tộc được tôn thờ (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt, 623) (A religious building in legendary places of human beings or gods/goddesses who have great merit to common people and is worshipped –my translation) Miếu: Đền thờ nhỏ, để thờ thần thánh (như miếu thờ thổ địa) (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt,;p 435) (A small temple worshipped... ordinances royal Giấy dùng để viết các lệnh của nhà vua With the culture word relating to festivals, customs or ceremony, the author describe in detail how the process is preceded as the translation: Hái lộc: people pick a twig from a tree growing on the pagoda’s grounds which they believe will bring them prosperity Back translation: Hái lộc: mọi người bẻ một nhánh từ cây trồng trong sân chùa với niền tin... Cá kho: fish cooked 13 One-to-one 43 with sauce Miếng trầu: a betel 14.6 Many-to-one 19 Total 295 chew 6.4 Đền, miếu, phủ: temple 2.2.1 Nil equivalence: Looking into the translation of “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”, one can easily see on the chart above that nil-equivalence makes up the largest part, consisting 66% Clearly, This is not a surprise to any translator who have ever stepped into... men and women ”(P224) may misunderstand the western readers that Vietnamese peasants also play bridge, poker and whist in traditional Vietnamese festival In my opinion, I would like to suggest that the word “tam cúc” or any other similarly traditional kind should be translated as Vietnamese traditional card game” (chơi bài truyền thống của người Việt Nam) This could help make a clear distinction between... exact meaning that the writer would wish to transfer On the contrary, holly and positive Vietnamese dragon could be imagined as a horrible negative Western dragon To clear this possible misunderstanding, some note at the end of the page in term of what and how Vietnamese people consider and appreciate their dragon is strongly recommended 2.2.2.2 Many-to-one equivalence The next group of equivalence is . OF VIETNAMESE CULTURAL WORDS IN THE BOOK “WANDERING THROUGH VIETNAMESE CULTURE” BY HUU NGOC (TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG CÁCH DỊCH CÁC TỪ CÓ YẾU TỔ VĂN HÓA TRONG. TRONG CÁCH DỊCH CÁC TỪ CÓ YẾU TỔ VĂN HÓA TRONG CUỐN SÁCH “WANDERING THROUGH VIETNAMESE CULTURE” CỦA HỮU NGỌC) Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Course: