ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the many people who have supported me in this assignment. First of all, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Nguyen Thi Kim Phuong, M.A, lecturer of the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Tay Nguyen University for her sincerity, enthusiastic guidance, and encouragement on every stage of this research. Secondly, I want to give my sincere thanks to all teachers of the English Department at Tay Nguyen University for their constructive opinions. Finally, I would like to thank the students of English Bachelor class K12 for their help in my survey of this paper. ABSTRACT 1 Nowadays, because of the globalization and international cooperation, language difference is an unavoidable problem. Translation, therefore, is more and more popular and necessary in the process of conveying information. This subject is now taught in many universities in Vietnam and Tay Nguyen University is one of those. In Tay Nguyen University, the students must practice to translate from English to Vietnamese and vice versa. With the English majored students in Vietnam in general and the students in Tay Nguyen University in particular, English-Vietnamese translation is considered to be most difficult mode. This study aims to discover the difficulties that the third year English majored students at Tay Nguyen University face in their process of learning English-Vietnamese translation and then giving some solutions to help them to improve the quality of their translation. The method used in the study is using the questionnaire and content analysis. The questionnaires were delivered to 40 third year English majored students. The result of the study showed that most of the third English majors had difficulty in translation from English into Vietnamese. It was hard for them to avoid regrettable misunderstanding from a foreign language into their mother tongue. These finding were the base for some solutions to improve the students’ translation quality. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The perception about learning translation Table 2: The students’ difficulties in grammar and lexical meaning Table 3: The students’ difficulties in culture Table 4: The students’ difficulties in synonym Table 5: The students’ difficulties in connotation of meaning Table 6: The students’ difficulties in method of thinking Table 7: The ways to improve students’ translating 4 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this chapter, the background of the study, the objectives, the significance, the scope of the study and the outline of the study will be presented. 1.1. Statement of the problem As globalization has increased, so no one can deny the importance of language in the process of conveying information and the importance of translation. Nowadays, more and more contracts, emails, news, etc. are in English, so it is necessary to master translation to translate documents more exactly in order to avoid regrettable misunderstanding. However, to master translation is not easy, so not almost all learners can avoid mistakes. Practically, the English learners at Tay Nguyen University have some difficulties in learning English-Vietnamese translation, such as in cultural differences, in language differences, in modes of thinking. Thus, this study would like to find out the difficulties that the third year English majors at Tay Nguyen University meet in learning English-Vietnamese translation and then giving some solutions to help them to improve the quality of their translation. 1.2. Objectives of the study This study aims: • To find out what difficulties that the third year English majors meet in learning translation. • To help the third year English majors overcome the difficulties in their translation by some suggested solutions. 1.3. Significance of the study This study relies on the difficulties that the third year English majors face when learning translation at Tay Nguyen University to point out some solutions which are helpful for students. Hopefully, this study also help teachers to recognize that difficulties and have more suitable teaching to help their students learn translation better. 5 1.4. Outline of the study The study is divided into four chapters: Chapter I - Introduction, includes 4 sections: statement of the problem, objectives of the study, significance of the study, outline of the study. Chapter II - Literature review, consists of 3 sections: the definitions of translation, the functions of translation, the difficulties in English- Vietnamese translation. Chapter III - Contents and research methods, includes 4 sections: subjects of the study, scope of the study, contents of the study, research methods. Chapter IV - Findings and discussion, presents the results of the study; in this chapter, the researcher introduces the results collected by questionnaire and analyzes them. Chapter V - Conclusions and recommendations, presents some recommendations and conclusions of the study. 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter presents the basic concepts of translation, the functions of translation and the rest of the chapter completely zoom in difficulties of students in learning English-Vietnamese translation that have been identified by some researchers. 2.1. The definitions of translation The term translation can be understood in many ways. In broader term, translation is an operation performed on languages, a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another. (Catford, 1965). And The National Translation Bureau TM gave the definition of translation as: “ the process of converting words from one language to another.” A more detailed picture of translation can be seen clearly with the definition given by Edmond Cary (1985): “Translation is a process which attempts to establish equivalents between two texts expressed in two different languages. These equivalents are, by definition, always dependent on the nature of the two texts, on their objectives, on the relationship between the two cultures involved and their moral, intellectual and emotional conditions.” The other sees translation as an act of transferring messages from a source language into a target language, be it oral or written, for the sake of establishing equivalence to get the appropriate meaning (Yowell & Lataiwish, 2000). Hatim and Munday (2004) define translation from two different perspectives. First as a process, translation is an act of taking a text from one language and transforming it into another. In this sense, Hatim and Munday focus on the part of the translator. Second as a product, translation focuses on the results achieved by translator, the concrete product of translation. 7 2.2. The functions of translation The translating functions, as depicted by D.Cordero (1984) are as follow: “The need for translation is especially acute in our modern world. Not only do nations depend on it to bridge what would otherwise be an impossible communication gap, but it also affords access to a wealth of scientific and technical information, as well as to the ideas that help shape our society. Supersonic jets and communication have “shrunk” our world. Yet, ancient language barrier are still in force and make translation more necessary now than ever before. In fact, our age has been called the age of translation.” 2.3. The difficulties in English-Vietnamese translation The difficulties in translation have been drawing the attention of many researchers. Vu Ngoc Can (2007) says that “based on the origin, causes, we divide difficulties into 3 categories: the difficulty comes from differences of language, culture and modes of thinking". 2.3.1. The difficulties from difference of language The study “Common mistakes in learning translation subject by the second year English majors at Dong Thap University” (Duong Thi Thu Hang and Nguyen Thi Cam Xuyen, 2010) found the followings: “The translation, beside rich vocabulary, we should have a thorough understanding of linguistic problems of both languages, understanding the similarities and differences between the two languages not only in grammar but also in term lexical meaning. If anything is missed, there is generally no opportunity to become a successful translator. Grammatical constructions vary between the source language and the receptor language. The order of the words in the sentence may be completely reserved. The following English simple sentence is given with a literal Vietnamese translation: new house – ngôi nhà mới. Lexical meaning is also the most seen difficulty and the most direct impact to the process of translation. Each language has its own idiomatic way of expressing meaning lexical items. Languages abound in idioms, secondary meanings, metaphors and other figurative meanings. All languages have idioms – the string of words whose meaning is different than the meaning conveyed by the individual words.” 2.3.2. The difficulties from difference of culture 8 Culture in this discussion should be seen in a broad sense, as in anthropological studies. Culture is not only understood as the advanced intellectual development of mankind as reflected in the arts, but it refers to all socially conditioned aspects of human life (cf. Snell-Hornby, 1988: Hymes, 1964). In practical wordings, Goodenough (1964) puts: “As I see it, a society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term. By definition, we should note that culture is not material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior, or emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their models of perceiving and dealing with their circumstances. To one who knows their culture, these things and events are also signs signifying the cultural forms or models of which they are material representation." Moreover, Nguyen Van Tuan (2006) found the followings: “Culture could be understood as the total set of beliefs, attitude, customs, behavior, social habits, etc. of the member of a particular society. In the broad sense, it includes mode of production, production activities, community organization, spiritual life, knowledge of nature and society, emotions, and moral conceptions. Language is regarded as both a component of a culture and network through which other elements of culture operate. Language therefore uses almost all other cultural elements so as to perfect its universal and self-sufficient nature. It could be said that we will not translate from this to that language perfectly unless we know its relation to its culture.” 2.3.3. The difficulties from difference of mode of thinking The study “The difficulties and some solutions to English Vietnamese translation” (Nguyen Van Sinh, 2011) found the followings: “Some translators depend largely on the meaning in dictionary picking out the synonyms without paying much to the context. In fact, the pairs of synonyms share at least one sense in common but do not share all their senses. To some extent, they can hardly substitute for each other. The misuse of synonyms makes the meaning of one of the following sentences unacceptable. “You have my deep/ profound sympathy” (acceptable) “The river is deep” (acceptable) “The river is very profound.” (unacceptable). 9 Another example shows that some translators do not realize the connotation meaning, which leads to the distorting of the meaning of the sentence. Take “famous” (nổi tiếng) as an example. While “famous” means “well-known/ celebrated”, and therefore contains some features of positive meaning, “notorious” means “well-known” especially for unfavorable reason and negative meaning.” 10 [...]... learning translation So, it requires some effective and possible ways to help them overcome the problems in order to make their English – Vietnamese translation smoother and get more success 4.3 How the students improve their translating To know the ways that students do to improve their translation, question 8 was designed to find it The responses to question 8 show how the students solve problems about translation. .. in the subject they learn will be a motive which helps them try to learn it well However, there are 5% of the students who have not found their interest in learning translation From the response of question 2, the researcher can know the students’ feeling of learning translation subject When the students were asked about how they feel about learning translation, most of them (75%) answered that translation. .. translation, some recommendations were stated to help them 17 overcome the problems in order to make their English–Vietnamese translation subject easier and get more success Vu Ngoc Can (2006) has suggested three solutions to improve students’ translation skill: “Firstly, translator may be applied the similarities and differences - one of the purposes of the works a couple to bilingual or multi-language translation. .. positive attitude toward translation subject With those positive attitudes, the researcher hopes that they can learn translation as well as they can and get much success 4.2 The students’ difficulties in translating English – Vietnamese To find out the students’ difficulties in translation, five questions in the survey are intended to ask the students In question 3, the students were asked about the difficulties... the results were analyzed and discussed carefully The researcher analyzed some factors that affected the students’ translation process The results of the study showed that most of the English majored students liked learning translation subject but they found that it was hard for them to learn They still met with many difficulties in grammar, lexical meaning Besides, the students often met some mistake... vocabulary in the Vietnamese language B Finding suitable grammar 6 15 structures in the target language to transfer the ideas effectively C Both A and B 31 77.5 Table 2: The students’ difficulties in grammar and lexical meaning 13 Then, in question 4, the students were asked about the difficulties that they met in learning translation The number of students who have problem in finding the ways to treat the cultural... aims to investigate some difficulties that Tay Nguyen University’s English majors meet in their process of learning English – Vietnamese translation Through the study, the researcher wishes to give some suggestions to develop the translation quality of third year English majors at Tay Nguyen University In the study, the questionnaire was used as the data collection instrument From the data collected, the. .. although translation is a difficult subject for them to master, they still feel interested in learning it and thus they will try their best to learn and practice translation as much as they can There are only 2.5% of the students thought that translation subject is not only easy but also interesting The amount may be included students who are much interested in translation subject and so that they feel translation. .. find out the ways students improve their translation CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSTION 11 This chapter presents the results of the study and discussion of the results All the eight questions are analyzed and the responses of each question will be discussed 4.1 The importance of translation subject To find out the awareness of students about the importance of translation subject, two questions were designed... Table 1: The perception about learning translation Percentage (%) 17.5 75 5 2.5 The answers to the question 1 reveal that the number of the students who like translation subject is obviously more than those who do not like it It is encouraging to see that most of them like learning translation subject (95%) The results in the table also mean that the students interest in learning translation Their interest . hard for them to avoid regrettable misunderstanding from a foreign language into their mother tongue. These finding were the base for some solutions to improve the students’ translation quality. . English-Vietnamese translation and then giving some solutions to help them to improve the quality of their translation. The method used in the study is using the questionnaire and content analysis. The questionnaires. overcome the problems in order to make their English – Vietnamese translation smoother and get more success. 4.3. How the students improve their translating To know the ways that students do to improve