Misinterpretations in translating ambiguous sentences by can tho university english majors

45 397 0
Misinterpretations in translating ambiguous sentences by can tho university english majors

Đang tải... (xem toàn văn)

Tài liệu hạn chế xem trước, để xem đầy đủ mời bạn chọn Tải xuống

Thông tin tài liệu

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT …  … MISINTERPRETATIONS IN TRANSLATING AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES BY CAN THO UNIVERSITY ENGLISH MAJORS B.A.Thesis Supervisor: Lưu Hoàng Anh, M.A Student: Nguyễn Thị Cương Code: 7062896 B.Ed Class NN0652A1 Course: 32 Can Tho, April 2010 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS page iii ABSTRACT page iv LIST OF CHARTS, TABLES AND CHARTS page v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION page 1.1 Rationale page 1.2 Research aims page Research questions page 1.4 Research hypotheses page 1.5 Research organization page CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW page 2.1 Some definitions of translation page 2.2 Process of translation page 2.3 Translation method page 2.4 Definition of ambiguity page 2.5 Lexical ambiguity and its types page 2.5.1 Definition of lexical ambiguity page 2.5.2 Types of lexical ambiguity page 2.5.2.1 Polysemy page 2.5.2.2 Homonymy page 2.6 Structural ambiguity and its types page 2.6.1 Definition of structural ambiguity page 2.6.2 Types of structural ambiguity page 2.6.2.1 Attachment ambiguity page 2.6.2.2 Gap-finding and filling ambiguity page 2.6.2.3 Coordination ambiguity page 2.7 Ambiguity in translation page CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY page 3.1 Research design page 3.2 Research participants page 3.2.1 Student participants page 3.2.2 Teacher participants page 3.3 Research instruments page i 3.3.1 Translation test page 3.3.2 Interview page 10 3.4 Research procedure page 10 3.5 Data analysis page 11 CHAPTER FOUR: RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION page 12 4.1 Students’ problems with ambiguity page 12 4.2 Differences in the score between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity page 13 4.2.1 The test result in lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity page 13 4.2.2 An analysis of each item page 14 4.3 Recommendations page 23 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS page 25 5.1 Discussions page 25 5.2 Limitations page 26 5.3 Suggestions for Further research page 26 APPENDICES page 28 APPENDIX 1: Translation test page 28 APPENDIX 2: Answer keys for translation test page 30 APPENDIX 3: The scale to score the translation test page 32 APPENDIX 4: Interview questions page 33 APPENDIX 5: The table of test result page 34 APPENDIX 6: Scale: all variables page 36 REFERENCES page 38 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In writing the thesis, I acknowledged the help from a number of people; their influence remains in the new version Firstly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Luu Hoang Anh M.A., for her constructive comments and criticism in the most positive and encouraging fashion Secondly, I would like to express my great thanks to Huynh Trung Tin M.A and Vuong Le Thien Thanh M.A., for their valuable help, when I collected the data Many thanks go to Truong Nguye Quynh Nhu M.A and Le Thi Huyen M.A., for their valuable suggestions to make the research better Thirdly, I was extremely fortunate to get the comments from teachers of Can Tho University, especially those of the English Education Department, who helped me with innumerous ways during the research and choose the research topic Next, many thanks go to all CTU four-year English students (course 32) who took part in the translation test and contributed a great deal to the completion of this study I only hope that they will look upon the results of their influence with pleasure Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and friends for their support in different ways during the time I carried out this research All the best, Can Tho, April 2010 Nguyen Thi Cuong iii ABSTRACT Lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are complicated and appear not only in literature but also in our daily speech Therefore, they raise a lot of difficulties such as misinterpretation, mistranslation and confusion for learners, especially in translation The purposes of the study is to find out the problems that lead students to confusion and difficulties in translating ambiguous sentences and then analyze the problems to withdraw some suggested ways to help students perform well in their translation In order to carry out the survey, 70 seniors majoring in English Language Studies at Can Tho University were chosen as the subjects At the first stage, the research instrument was the translation test which included 20 sentences divided into parts: lexical ambiguity (ten items) and structural ambiguity (ten items) According to their results of translation test, their marks were classified into three classes: below average, average and above average During the process of analysis, the researcher recognized that most of the students did not translate lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity well Most of the students’ translation were divergent and reflected the sentence meanings differently toward the meanings of the source text The data collected proved that lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity were difficult to translators It also revealed that between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, the lexical ambiguity was more problematic to students At the second stage, interview was conducted to translation teachers and some students to withdraw some possible ways to help learners overcome their problems in translating ambiguous sentences iv LIST OF CHARTS, TABLES AND FIGURES Chart 1.1: The process of translation page Table 4.1: Descriptive statistics of the test performance page 12 Table 4.2: Descriptive statistics of the mean scores of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity page 13 Table 3.1: The distribution of types of lexical ambiguity and the scores page 32 Table 4.3: Students’ score page 35 Table 4.4: Case processing summary page 37 Table 4.5: Reliability statistics page 37 Table 4.6: Item statistics page 37 Table 4.7: Summary item statistics page 37 Table 4.8: Item-total statistics page 37 Table 4.9: Scale Statistics page 37 Figure 4.1: The mean scores of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity page 13 v CHAPTER INTRODUCTION This chapter begins with the rationale that the researcher chooses this field to study, and then the research aims, research questions and some research hypotheses It ends with the research organization to help the readers know how this research is organized 1.1 Rationale Translation is a complicated field During four years at university, many students have been fully equipped with the knowledge of Linguistic such as An Introduction to Language, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax, Phonology and Theory of Translation, so they are able to translate exactly and fluently thanks to their understanding of language meaning and language uses However, to Lam Quang Dong (http://ngonngu.net), a good translation at present, in the journal about “Về tính chuyên nghiệp nghề dịch thuật”, there are a few good translators who can the translation with high quality Besides, if we take part in a translation forum, we will really recognize that many students seldom succeed in translating even when it is a simple sentence Particularly, they have some problems in translation that stem from the fact that ambiguity in sentence raises confusion and many other difficulties for those who have learnt English as a foreign language Moreover, human language contains ambiguity at many levels of linguistic representation (Altmann, 1990; Small, Cottrell, & Tanenhause, 1998) Ambiguity arises in the sentence when more than one interpretation, so translators can not decide which meaning should be understood One of the most significant issues that every translator should take account of is lexical ambiguity (homonymy and polysemy) and structural ambiguity (attachment ambiguity, gap-finding and filling ambiguity and coordination ambiguity), because when a sentence contains ambiguity, it may have more than one meaning Furthermore, if a word or a sentence contains modifiers, the translators don’t know what the modifiers are attached to Also, different attachments in the sentence may have more than one meaning These are the problems that not only the translators but also the teacher as well as students including the researcher usually face in the translation, so in this study, the researcher would like to find out whether the last-year English major students have these problems in translation, and between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, which one is more problematic The researcher also hopes to present some solutions to help translator overcome them Therefore, the research titled “An Investigation of Ambiguity in Translation of English-Major Students” was conducted 1.2 Research aims The researcher is expected to get three aims First, it is very necessary to conduct the research to recognize whether the lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are problematic to English major students at Can Tho University or not Second, the researcher wants to find out which ambiguity is more problematic to students, lexical ambiguity or structural ambiguity Third, the researcher wants to withdraw some recommendations to help students translate the ambiguous sentences better 1.3 Research questions In the study, the researcher will try to answer the following questions: Are lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity problematic to English major students? Between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, which one is more problematic? What are some possible ways to help translators overcome their problems of ambiguity in translation? 1.4 Research hypotheses When conducting this research, the researcher formulated these hypotheses First, the students face problems in lexical and structural ambiguity when translating Second, between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, lexical ambiguity is more problematic to students Third, the respondents will give a lot of possible ways of overcoming ambiguity problems 1.5 Research organization The study consists of chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Research Methodology, Results, Discussions, Limitations and Suggestions for Further Practice Chapter one: Introduction generalizes the rationale, research aims, research questions, research hypotheses and research organization Chapter two: Literature Review provides the background to the research questions Chapter three: Research Methodology includes a description of design, participants, instruments and procedures of the research Chapter four: Results analyzes the results of the translation test Chapter five: Discussions, Limitations and Suggestions for Further Practice CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW Being a key to open the door to all development of the study, part one will start by giving some definitions of translation Next, it will introduce process of translation Some definitions and typical types of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity and ambiguity in translation will be presented in the next parts 2.1 Some definitions of translation Prochazkas (as cited in Lawrence Venuit, 2001, p 131) defines a good translation in terms of certain requirements which must be made of the translator, namely:(1) “He must understand the original words thematically and stylistically”, (2) “He must overcome the differences between the two linguistic structures” and (3) “He must reconstruct the stylistic structures of the original words in his translation” A next definition of translation is that “Translation is the replacement of a representation of a test in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language” (Bell, 1991) “Translation (from http:www.completetranslation.com) is the accurate rendering of a document into another language so that it is suitable for its intended purpose To be effective, a translation must be accurate and complete but also grammatically correct, stylistically appropriate and terminologically consistent.” 2.2 Process of translation “Translation consists of studying the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural context of the source language text, analyzing it in order to determine its meaning, and then reconstructing this same meaning using the lexicon and grammatical structure which are appropriate in the receptor language and its cultural context.” (Larson, l998, p 3) Chart 1: Process of translation (Larson, l998, p 4) As illustrated in this chart, translation is a process based on the theory that it is possible to abstract the meaning of a text from its forms and reproduce that meaning with the very different forms of a second language In this translation process, meaning is a very important factor deciding the fidelity of any translation 2.3 The translation methods (NewMark, 2001) Here are some typical translation methods normally used in translating Word-for-word translation: The source language word-order is preserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context Literal translation: The source language grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest target language equivalents but the lexical words are again translated singly, out of context Faithful translation: A faithful translation attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the target language grammatical structures It “transfers” cultural words and preserves the degree of grammatical and lexical “abnormality” in the translation Semantic translation: Semantic translation must take more account of the aesthetic value (that is, the beautiful and natural sound) of the source language text, compromising on “meaning” where appropriate so that no assonance, word-play or repetition jars in the finished version Free translation: Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called “intralingual translation”, often prolix and pretentious, and not translation at all Communicative translation: Communicative translation attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the readership Service translation: That is translation from one’s language habitual use into another language Information translation: This conveys all the information in a non-literary text, sometimes rearranged in a more logical form, sometimes partially summarized, and not a form of a paraphrase 2.4 Definitions of ambiguity Ambiguity is an expression whose meaning cannot be determined from its context In other words, phrase or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one Chapter CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH This chapter presents the discussion of the investigation, and limitations of the research From these limitations, further research will be recommended 5.1 Discussion Translation is a process or transferring messages from one language to another language Actually, translators often get into difficulties in understanding and transferring the meanings of one language to another One of the most difficulties is that most English words have multiple senses which are linguistically called polysemes and homonyms of lexical ambiguity and the other difficulties is that some sentences containing attachment ambiguity, or gap-finding and filling, or coordination ambiguity which make the translators confused and mistaken to decide the exact meaning of the sentence The first result in chapter supported the first hypotheses of the researcher The mean score of the total test (M=4.76), the minimum score (min=1.5) and the maximum score (Max=7.8) indicate that lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are problematic to last year English-major students Some typical problems that students often face in translating related to these types of ambiguity were mentioned in the previous chapter However, the common mistake that can be found frequently in the data analysis is mistranslating Mistranslating may originate from the fact that most students translated the words that they first learnt, did not analyze the sentence structures carefully before translating, and ignored the translation methods that the translators should apply Moreover, they failed to express the message that the writer wants to send to the readers such as item 10, item 14, and item 18, because they were not good at their mother tongue, which causes difficulties in translation Besides, they mistranslated because of being subjective not because of the difficulty of the sentence Although the sentence is very simple and contains the words or grammar points that they use many times in daily speech such as item 1, item 4, item 11, item 5, item 14, and item 16, they know one meaning among many possible meanings Furthermore, the research has pointed out that it is not easy to give an exact translation because the word and the grammar structure of the sentence convey several meanings As a 25 consequence, translators will normally be confused and mistranslate The data collected also indicate that the easy, simple and familiar words not mean being easy to understand as well as to translate and the syntactic structures of a sentence can have more than one meaning if we analyze it carefully such as item 1, item 5, and item 11 Therefore, the sentence meaning cannot be based on the literal meaning of individual words and the meaning of surface structure Furthermore, in the study, it is possible that between lexical ambiguity and structural one, most of the students have more problems in understanding and translating the meanings of lexically ambiguous sentences The mean score of lexical ambiguity (M= 2.31) was lower than that of the structural ambiguity (M=2.54) This result fits the second hypothesis of the researcher A lot of the students’ translations are inaccurate or divergent into another incorrect direction when they translate these lexically ambiguous sentences In addition, many students were confused to decide the accurate meaning of a word, because the word normally conveys several meanings Some of them translated the two meaning of lexically ambiguous sentences nearly similar This result also proves that lexical ambiguity creates the difficulty in considering the meaning of the language (Pustejousky & Boguvaev, 1996 and Kempson, 1997) In some lexically ambiguous sentences, most of the students failed to express all possible meanings When they met the sentences that contain the ambiguous words, they were confused to translate them from English to Vietnamese Some of them did not translate difficult sentences such as item 7, item 9, and item 19, while most of the students translated all structurally ambiguous ones and gave at least one correct meaning for them Probably, in structurally ambiguous sentences, students translated better because they could analyze the grammar structures carefully before translating to get the correct meaning In short, this test results revealed that between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, lexical ambiguity seems to be more problematic to students The data collected reveal that dealing with types of ambiguity is not easy A word is often understood differently depending on the context in which it appears The meaning of a phrase bases on the context and real situation to give exactly what the writers wants to convey Therefore, in order to translate lexical ambiguity more exactly, we have to distinguish the primary senses, secondary senses of words Furthermore, we have to base on the context which helps us choose one of the most appropriate sense of ambiguous sentence Besides, we should analyze the structures of 26 the sentence carefully to know the functions of words as well as phrases more accurately in order to have a good translation Moreover, students should learn the prepositions going with nouns, adjectives or verbs by heart so as not to be confused to decide “what goes with what?” when dealing with the structurally ambiguous sentences All in all, we have to spend time to look up the meanings of words carefully although these words are so familiar to us In addition, when we work on the sentence with the familiar grammars, we should analyze them carefully and base on the context to choose the appropriate meaning If we are careful, we can translate ambiguous sentences better 5.2 Limitations Although this study is prepared rather carefully, it remains inevitable restrictions First, the research is conducted in a short time, so the researcher cannot discover all aspect of ambiguity fully Second, it is carried out in a small number of students, 70 seniors majoring in English Language Studies and two translation teachers, therefore, its results are not so patent in other that it can persuade audiences Last, this is the first time the researcher has done a study, thus the researcher is not experienced enough to analyze all problems that students may face Besides, the researcher only interviewed two translation teachers and ten students, so some recommendations were suggested 5.3 Suggestions for Further Research The result of the research finds out some problems raised in translating some typical kinds of ambiguity: lexical and structural Although the researcher found out some problems and some causes that lead students to misinterpretation, mistranslation and confusion when translating, the problems in translation ambiguity still exist In addition, the participants selected to the translation tests and interviewees in the research were limited In the light of the remarks made above, the research in this field in the future should involve more participants (more than 120) who major in English Language Studies or English Education to make the results of the further research more patent The researcher should find out the problems that the participants may face when translating Furthermore, to get many reliable recommendations, the researcher will interview many translation teachers To sum up, on the basis of what this study has reached, the researcher would like to suggest a topic for the further research: “The Problems of Vietnamese Translators in Translation Ambiguity and some Suggested Ways” 27 APPENDICES APPENDIX TRANSLATION TEST The following sentences may be lexically or structurally ambiguous Please provide translations showing that you comprehend all the possible meanings He likes short women, cars, and card games ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… Those are the boys that the police debate about fighting ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… I saw her run to the bank ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… I would like to try the red dress by the window ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… A: What can you eat if you are held in the refectory? B: “I can have peas and beans or carrots with the set meal.” ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… The captain corrected the list ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… A: What are you being asked to in the morning? B: “Put the box on the table by the window in the kitchen.” ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… Flies like bananas ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 10 Dr Jacket gives the talk on moon ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 28 11 The present is a good time to present the present ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 12 They passed the port at midnight ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 13 The burglar threatened the student with the knife ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 14 Tom is the boy whom the girl wanted to die for ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 15 She is reserved ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 16 Mary is the student whom the teacher wanted to talk to the principal ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 17 Mary is wearing a light coat ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 18 Ross said that Nadia had taken the cleaning out yesterday ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 19 The proprietor of the fish shop was the sole owner ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………… 20 The man and the woman on the bus waved to each other ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… Thanks for your cooperation! 29 APPENDIX ANSWER KEYS FOR RANSLATION TEST He likes short women, cars, and card games (Franz, 1996) a Anh thích người phụ nữ lùn, xe trò chơi đánh b Anh thích người phụ nữ lùn, xe thấp, đánh thời gian ngắn Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence (Nguyen, 1999) a Hôn nhân từ; câu b Hôn nhân từ, án Those are the boys that the police debate about fighting (Hirst, 1992) a Đây cậu trai mà cảnh sát tranh luận với bọn trẻ đánh b Đây cậu trai mà cảnh sát bàn tán với việc “chiến đấu” chúng I saw her run to the bank (Jame, Brendan, & Michael, 2007) a Tôi thấy cô chạy đến ngân hàng b Tôi thấy cô chạy đến bờ sông I would like to try the red dress by the window (Fromkin, 1996) a Tôi thích thử áo đầm màu đỏ cạnh cửa sổ b Tôi muốn đứng gần cửa sổ thử đầm đỏ A: What can you eat if you are held in the refectory? B: “I can have peas and beans or carrots with the set meal.” (Franz, 1996) a Bạn muốn ăn bạn nhà ăn? Tôi ăn đậu Hà Lan đậu xanh cà rốt với bữa ăn b Tôi ăn đậu Hà Lan đậu xanh với bữa ăn cà rốt với bữa ăn The captain corrected the list (Jame, Brendan, & Michael, 2007) a Đội trưởng sửa lại danh sách b Đội trưởng sửa lại trạng thái nghiêng thuyền A: What are you being asked to in the morning? B: “Put the box on the table by the window in the kitchen.” (Hirst, 1992) a Sáng bạn bị bắt làm vậy? Đặt hộp nằm bàn cạnh sổ vào nhà bếp b Đặt hộp lên bàn cạnh cửa sổ nhà bếp Flies like bananas (Pinker, 1994) a Những ruồi thích ăn chuối 30 b Bay giống chuối 10 Dr Jacket gives the talk on moon (Pinker, 1994) a Tiến sĩ Jacket có nói chuyện mặt trăng b Tiến sĩ Jacket có nói chuyện mặt trăng 11 The present is a good time to present the present (Dang, 1978) a Hiện thời gian tốt để tặng quà b Hiện thời gian tốt để giới thiệu thời 12 They passed the port at midnight (Jame, Brendan, & Michael, 2007) a Họ rời cảng lúc nửa đêm b Họ chuyển rượu vang đỏ lúc nửa đêm 13 The burglar threatened the student with the knife (Hirst, 1992) a Tên trộm đe dọa sinh viên dao b Tên trộm đe dọa sinh viên người mà có dao tay 14 Tom is the boy whom the girl wanted to die for (Hirst, 1992) a Tom cậu trai mà cô gái muốn cậu ta hi sinh cho cô b Tom cậu trai mà cô gái muốn hi sinh cho cậu ta 15 She is reserved (Hirst, 1992) a Cô có nơi có chỗ b Cô kín đáo 16 Mary is the student whom the teacher wanted to talk to the principal a Mary sinh viên mà giáo viên muốn cô nói chuyện với thầy hiệu trưởng b Mary sinh viên mà giáo viên muốn nói với hiệu trưởng 17 Mary is wearing a light coat (Hirst, 1992) (Kooij,1971) a Mary mặc áo khoát nhẹ b Mary mặc áo khoát màu sáng 18 Ross said that Nadia had taken the cleaning out yesterday (Hirst, 1992) a Ross nói Nadia làm công việc lao chùi vào tối qua b Tối qua, Ross nói Nadia lao chùi 19 The proprietor of the fish shop was the sole owner (Le, 2003) a Ông chủ cửa hàng bán cá người chủ bán cá bơn b Ông chủ cửa hàng bán cá người độc thân 20 The man and the woman on the bus waved to each other (Spector, 1997) a Người đàn ông vẫy tay chào người phụ nữ xe buýt b Trên xe buýt, người đàn ông người phụ nữ vẫy tay chào 31 APPENDIX THE DISTRIBUTION OF TYPES OF LEXICAL AND STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY The translation test included 20 ambiguous sentences in total (10 sentences for lexical ambiguity and 10 sentences for structural ambiguity for students to translate from English into Vietnamese) and was divided into five clusters Here are the names of five clusters: polysemy, homonymy, attachment ambiguity, gap-finding and filling ambiguity and coordination ambiguity The total mark of the test is 10 marks The mark for the correct translation of each item is 0.5 and zero for the wrong translation The first cluster is polysemy only consisting of one item with 0.5 point In an item, students may translate two possible meanings, so each correct translation will get 0.25 point The second cluster is homonymy There are items with 4.5 point in total The third cluster is attachment ambiguity It is composed of items and the total mark of this cluster was 2.5 The fourth cluster has items for gap-finding ambiguity with 1.5 points The last one is items of coordination ambiguity The total mark for this cluster is In short, the mark of the whole test is the total mark of these five clusters Types of Polysemy Homonymy Attachment Gap-finding Coordination ambiguity ambiguity ambiguity 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 5, 8, 13, 18, 3, 14, 16 1, 12, 15, 17, 19 20 4.5 2.5 1.5 ambiguity Items Marks Total 10 0.5 10 marks Table 3.1: The distribution of types of lexical ambiguity and structure ambiguity and the scores 32 APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS To withdraw some possible ways to help students translate ambiguous sentences better, the researcher designed two sets of interview questions for translation teachers and students Here are some interview questions for students: How many subjects related to translation have you studied? ………………………………………………………………………………………… In your opinion, are lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity difficult to translate? ………………………………………………………………………………………… What are your problems when you translate ambiguous sentences? … Between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, which one is more problematic to translate? A Lexical ambiguity B Structural ambiguity What are some possible ways to translate the ambiguous sentences well? ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Here are some interview questions for translation teachers: How many years have you taught English translation subject? … In your opinion, is translation easy or difficult? … In your students' translations, they translate the sentences containing ambiguity well? … If not, which ambiguity they usually have difficulties when translating? Lexical ambiguity or structural ambiguity? … What are some possible ways to translate the ambiguous sentences well? ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 33 APPENDIX THE TABLE OF THE TEST RESULT Number 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Lexical ambiguity 0.75 0.75 1 1.5 1.25 0.5 2.25 1.5 2.75 2.5 2.5 3.25 3.5 2.5 2.5 2.25 2.75 2.75 2.25 1.75 1.5 1.25 3 2.25 4.00 2.75 2.75 Structural ambiguity 0.75 0.75 0.75 1.75 1.75 1.25 2.5 2.25 3.5 3.75 3.25 2.75 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 1.25 2.5 3.75 1.5 2.5 2.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.25 3.75 2.75 Total mark 1.5 1.5 1.75 2.5 3.25 2.5 3.0 4.75 5.0 6.5 5.75 5.5 6.5 5.25 6.75 5.75 3.75 6.25 5.25 6.75 4.25 4.75 4.25 3.25 5.5 6.5 7.25 5.25 7.75 5.5 6.75 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 1.25 2.25 2.5 3.25 1.5 1.5 2.25 1.25 1.5 1.75 1.5 1.75 1.5 2.75 2.25 0.75 1.75 2.75 2.75 1.75 2.25 2.75 3.25 1.25 2.75 3.75 3.75 2.75 3.25 3.25 3.75 2.25 2.75 1.25 2 0.75 2.5 1 2.25 1.75 0.75 2.75 3.5 0.75 1.5 3 2.75 3.5 3.75 2.5 3.5 2.25 3.5 3 3.25 3.25 2.25 2.75 3.25 3.5 3.75 5.25 3.5 2.25 4.25 3.75 2.5 2.75 3.75 3.5 1.75 4.25 6.25 3.25 1.5 3.25 5.75 5.75 4.5 6.5 5.25 6.5 5.75 5.5 3.5 6.5 5.75 6.75 5.75 6.5 5.5 5.75 Table 4: Students’ scores 35 APPENDIX Scale: ALL VARIABLES RELIABILITY /VARIABLES=item1 item2 item3 item4 item5 item6 item7 item8 item9 item10 item 11 item12 item13 item14 item15 item16 item17 item18 item19 item20 /SCALE ('ALL VARIABLES') ALL /MODEL=ALPHA Cases N % Valid 70 95.9 Excludeda 4.1 Total 73 100.0 a Listwise deletion based on all variables in the procedure Table 4.4: Case processing summary Cronbach's Alpha 832 Cronbach's Alpha Based on Standardized Items 824 N of Items 20 Table 4.5: Reliability statistics item item item item item5 item item item item item 10 item 11 item 12 item 13 item 14 item 15 item 16 item 17 item 18 Mean 3000 1750 1571 3500 2893 1571 2107 2857 2500 2143 2071 2071 3750 1929 1536 2286 3429 2036 Standard Deviation 17341 15551 14849 14988 19335 14849 09164 13650 13460 20539 17010 12749 15783 14226 14303 15779 15447 16091 N 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 36 item19 item 20 1036 3571 13114 16796 70 70 Table 4.6: Item statistics Mean Minimum Maximum Range Item Means 238 104 375 Maximum / Minimum 271 3.621 Variance N of Items 006 20 Table 4.7: Summary item statistics item item item item item5 item item item item item 10 item 11 item 12 item 13 item 14 item 15 item 16 item 17 item 18 item19 item 20 Scale Mean if Scale Item Variance if Corrected ItemDeleted Item Deleted Total Correlation 4.4607 1.923 667 4.5857 2.043 465 4.6036 2.195 131 4.4107 2.015 558 4.4714 1.874 685 4.6036 2.264 -.025 4.5500 2.168 364 4.4750 2.102 389 4.5107 2.129 323 4.5464 1.932 526 4.5536 2.000 511 4.5536 2.183 200 4.3857 1.967 638 4.5679 2.205 117 4.6071 2.179 178 4.5321 2.058 423 4.4179 1.985 610 4.5571 2.067 391 4.6571 2.123 350 4.4036 2.004 509 Squared Multiple Correlation Cronbach's Alpha if Item Deleted 811 822 837 818 808 844 828 826 828 818 819 833 813 837 835 824 815 826 827 820 Table 4.8: Item-total statistics Mean 4.7607 Variance 2.274 Standard Deviation 1.50809 N of Items 20 Table 4.9: Scale statistics 37 REFERENCES Altmann, G.T.M, (ed), (1990) Cognitive Models of Speech Processing Cambridge MA: MIT Press Bell, R.T (1991) Translation and translating Theory & Practice London: Longman Dang, C.L (1978) Những câu nhóm từ mơ hồ nhiều nghĩa tiếng Việt tiếng Anh Tạp chí Ngôn ngữ, 3.1978 Ford, M., Bresnan, J.W & Kaplan, R.M (1982) A Competence –Based Theory of Syntactic Closure In J.W Bresnan (ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press Franz, A (1996) Automatic Ambiguity Resolution in Natural Language Spinger Verlag Berlin Heidelberg Fromkin V et al (1996) An Introduction to Language Sydney Harcourt Brace Hirst, G (1992) Semantic Interpretation and the Resolution of Ambiguity Cambridge University Press Huynh, T.T & Nguyen, N.T (2000) Theory of Translation Cantho: Cantho University Press Jame, R.H., Brendan, H., & Michael, B.S (2007) Semantics: a Coursebook Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 129, 130, 131 Kempson, R.M (1997) Semantics theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Kooij, J.G (1971) Ambiguity in Natural Language North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, London Lam, Q.D (2007) Về tính chuyên nghiệp nghề dịch thuật Retrieved on November 14, 2007, from http://ngonngu.net Larson, M.L (1998) Meaning-based translation: A guide to cross-language equivalence Lanham, MD: University Press of America and Summer Institute of Linguistics Lawrence, V (2000) The Translation Studies Reader USA & Canada: New York Le, V.S (2003) Cẩm Nang Ngữ Âm, Từ Vựng, Cú Pháp Tiếng Anh NXB Văn Hóa Thông Tin Mc Carthy, M.et Al (1997) Vocabulary in Use ( Upper Intermediate) Cambridge University Press Newmark, P (1988) A Textbook of Translation Pearson Education Limited Nguyen, V.P (1999) Tiếng Anh Lý Thú Nxb Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh 38 Okumura, A & Kazunori, M (1994) Symmetric pattern matching analysis for English coordinate structure Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, Stuttgart, Germany, 41, 46 Pinker, S (1994) The Language Instinct William Morrow and Company, Inc, New York Pustejousky, J & Boguracv, B (1996) Lexical Semantics New York: Clarendox Press Oxford Small, S., Cottrell, G & Tanenhause, M (eds.), (1988) Lexical Ambiguity Resolution San Matco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Spector, C.C (1997) Saying One Thing, Meaning Another: Activities for Clarifying Ambiguous Language Thinking Publications, Eau Claire, Wisconsin 39

Ngày đăng: 09/08/2016, 20:14

Từ khóa liên quan

Tài liệu cùng người dùng

Tài liệu liên quan