A VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NÔNG VĂN HẢI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép thế nhƣ phƣơng tiện liên kết ngữ pháp trong văntrần thuật tiếng Anh so sánh với bản dịch sang tiếng Việt) M.A. Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI, 2011 B VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NÔNG VĂN HẢI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép thế nhƣ phƣơng tiện liên kết ngữ pháp trong văn trần thuật tiếng Anh so sánh với bản dịch sang tiếng Việt) M.A. Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Dr. DƢƠNG THỊ NỤ HANOI, 2011 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS PAGES DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES VI PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 1. RATIONALE 1 2. AIMS OF THE STUDY 2 3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY 2 4. METHODS OF THE STUDY 3 5. DESIGN OF THE STUDY 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5 1.1 Discourse 5 1.1.1 The Concept of Discourse……………………… …………………… 5 1.1.2 Spoken and written discourse ……………… ……………………… 6 1.1.3 Narrative Discourse ………………………………………………… 8 1.1.4 Discourse Analysis ………………………….……………………… 9 1.2 Cohesion 10 1.2.1 The concept of cohesion ……………….…………………………… 10 1.2.2 Cohesion vs. Coherence …………………………………………… 11 v 1.2.3 Types of Cohesion …………… ………………………………… 12 1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion ………………………… ……………………. 14 1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion …………………………… …………………. 20 1.3 Overview of translation 21 1.3.1 The Concept of Translation ……… ………………………………. 21 1.3.2 Important factors of Translation ……………… ………………… 21 1.3.3 The basis of translation ……………………………………… ……. 22 1.3.4 Source Language and Target Language ……………… …………… 22 2.1 English Substitution Devices 23 2.2 Vietnamese Solutions to the English Substitution Devices 26 2.2.1 Cohesive Devices ……………………………………………… …. 28 2.2.1.1 Grammatical Cohesion Devices ……………………………………… 28 2.2.1.2 Lexical Cohesion Devices ………………………………………. 31 2.3 Translation Techniques 32 PART C: CONCLUSION 33 REFERENCE: 35 vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1. Type of cohesion Table 2. Grammatical and Lexical cohesion Table 3 Occurrences and frequency of cohesive items of substitution in Corpus A Table 4. Occurrence and frequency of Vietnamese solutions to the English substitution device Figure 1: Reference 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE Discourse Analysis, or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written and spoken language use or any significant semiotic event. From the beginning of its appearance, Discourse Analysis has taken up in a variety of social science disciplines. It is now a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language in use and therefore of great importance to language teaching. In the early days, language teaching has been concerned with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; however, it was not until Discourse Analysis turned up that our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gain successful communication was raised. Literature, which plays a very important role in our spiritual life, has been greatly developing as a consequence of the high living standards. As a matter of fact, there have been more and more people choosing to work in the literary field and their efforts have created so many famous works. It is open to questions as to which factors have to be taken into consideration to make a successful work. How important are those factors to the completion of a coherent and cohesive text? Added to this, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence are actually regarded as the crucial aspects of language usage. Cohesion is considered one of the most challenging aspects of translation, as any language has its own unique manners in which it employs cohesive devices in the creation of a cohesive text. Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships between persons and events; these patterns may not be ignored in a language if the readers understand what the translator wants to convey. The topic of cohesion has always appeared as the most useful constituent of discourse analysis that is applied to translation. English and Vietnamese have different grammars and vocabulary structures, and it is only natural that they pose great difficulties and challenges for a translator to deal with, especially in the field of literature. 2 Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have encouraged the author to conduct the study entitled “Substitution as a Grammatical Cohesive Device in English Narrative in Comparison with Its Translation into Vietnamese”. I hope that this study may help teachers and learners of foreign language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical cohesive devices. 2. AIMS OF THE STUDY Based on the detailed classification of cohesive devices in English of Halliday and Hasan (1976), this study provides a close analysis of a particular grammatically cohesive device employed in English and its equivalence in the Vietnamese translation. This paper aims to study from a quantitative and a qualitative point of view the possible shifts of cohesion in translation in literary texts and solutions adapted to the Vietnamese translation. Furthermore, this study compares the translation strategies that translators use in transferring substitution from an English literary text to its Vietnamese translation. This may pose great difficulties and problems because of the difference between the two languages. In order to achieve the aim of the study, some following research questions are raised. 1. What are the possible shifts of cohesion within the text of translation in the field of literature? 2. What are the main problems that may occur in translation through the use of substitution? 3. What are the possible solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation of a literary text? 3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for the author to refer to all of its characteristics. Thus, within this study, the author just 3 mentions some background knowledge about Discourse Analysis as well as coherence and cohesion. Halliday and Hasan (1976) make a detailed classification of the cohesive devices in English. These authors distinguish between grammatical and lexical cohesion. According to them, grammatical cohesion embraces four different devices: Reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. This study will only focus on analyzing how substitution is used as a device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative and its translated version into Vietnamese. 4. METHODS OF THE STUDY To carry out this study, two literary corpora were used. They were identified as Corpus A and Corpus B. The former was composed of the original texts written in English entitled “pride and prejudice” and it was made up of 121.728 words. The latter consisted of 141.370 words which was the Vietnamese translated version of those very same texts. The literary text was chosen for analysis because it is a famous literary work of Jane Austen. Added to this, I have read both the original and the Vietnamese translated version for several times and find this story very interesting to make an analysis. Both corpora have a digital format and are available on the internet. Detailed information about the translations was not available. In the study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted for analysis. And the analysis was conducted in the following steps - Firstly, make an identification in corpus A of the substitution devices employed in English based one the classification theory of Halliday and Hasan. The identification of such items was carried out with the help of a concordance programme named Antconc 3.2.3w. - Then, locate the equivalent linguistic expressions in Corpus B. - Finally, discuss and analyze the solutions adopted in the Vietnamese translation. 4 5. DESIGN OF THE STUDY This study is divided into three main parts. Part A is the introduction which includes rationale, aim, scope, method and design of the study. Then Part B is the development which consists of 2 chapters in which chapter one is about the theoretical background of the study and chapter two is the analysis of substitution as the device of grammatical cohesion in English narrative in comparison with its Vietnamese translated version. Part C is the conclusion which describes a summary of the present study with some interesting findings. 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Discourse 1.1.1 The Concept of Discourse. There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse. Halliday (1985) defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process”. According to Crystal (1992) discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative”. Cook (1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive”. In other words, as Brown and Yule state, discourse is language material, either spoken or written, in actual uses by speakers (and writers) of the language. Since its introduction to modern science the term “discourse” has taken various, sometimes very broad, meanings. In order to specify which of the numerous senses is analyzed in the following dissertation it has to be defined. Originally the word “discourse” comes from Latin “discursu”' which denoted “conversation, speech”. Thus understood, however, discourse refers to too wide an area of human life, therefore only discourse from the vantage point of linguistics, and especially applied linguistics, is explained here. There is no agreement among linguists as to the use of the term discourse in that some use it in reference to texts, while others claim it denotes speech which is for instance illustrated by the following definition: "Discourse: a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative" (Crystal 1992:25). On the other [...]... written language is dense while spoken language is sparse 2 Complexity of grammar: in spoken language grammar is not so important, but information For written language, it is important to maintain enough information, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization of sentences 3 Grammatical metaphor: Written language presents rather few different verbs, whereas spoken language uses... and their correlation with the circumstances in which they occur, which are not explainable at the grammatical level (Carter 1993:23) Discourse analysis is a branch of linguistics that studies language use in relation to social factors that influence our daily interactions It deals with the way people use language in its appropriate context E.e, in certain ways to have certain affects; In order to construct... questions as well as points out some majors findings of grammatical cohesion in the novel “Pride and Prejudice” 2.1 English Substitution Devices Halliday and Hasan (1976: 91) have listed the items that occur as substitution as follows: Nominal (one, ones, same), Verbal: (do), Clausal (so, not) It cannot be denied that substitution proves to be a useful device of grammatical cohesion which has been made use... original texts written in English and it was made up of 121.728 words It is a famous novel of Jane Austen with the title “Pride and Prejudice” Corpus B was the Vietnamese translated version of those very same texts and it consisted of 141.370 words Both corpora have a digital format and are available on the internet However, detailed information about the translation was not available There are a number... and lifestyle of people so as to translate in a manner that introduces the cultural world view 1.3.3 The basis of translation Translation is based on equivalence between the source text and the target text This means that equivalencies are considered as an important factor in the 22 process of translation i.e the target text must be equivalent in a compatible way to the original one There are two approaches... easy to practice It is a process of rendering a text from one language into an equivalent text in another language Here the text in the first language is the “source text” and its equivalence in the other language is the “target text” Basically, good translation is not just a question of converting a given text from the source language into the target language As it is not taking the general idea of the... number of factors that makes this novel a great success According to Halliday & Hasan (1976), cohesion is considered one of the key elements to make a very important contribution to a good writing Thus, how English literature makes use of substitution as a device of grammatical cohesion and the mechanisms employed in its translation into Vietnamese? The following analysis attempts to answer all these... Ellipsis and Conjunction Below, by analysing some typical 14 examples, the author attempts to go into detail with each type with a view to giving an overall background of grammatical cohesion Reference To begin with, in the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976:32), reference is a semantic relation and "since the relationship is on the semantic level, the reference item is in no way constrained to match the grammatical. .. (Source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976:304) Reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion, as the name implies, lexical Conjunction is on the borderline of grammatical and 13 the lexical; the set of conjunctive expressions involve lexical selection However, it is better to put it in the group of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical with a lexical component inside... approaches to translation “formal equivalence” which implies the literal translation, however; it also deals with idioms and grammatical structures that are used in the original text And “dynamic equivalence” that implies the meaning or the message that the writer wants to convey Here, the translator focuses on thought rather than translating the text word by word 1.3.4 Source Language and Target Language . NÔNG VĂN HẢI SUBSTITUTION AS A GRAMMATICAL COHESIVE DEVICE IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN COMPARISON WITH ITS TRANSLATION INTO VIETNAMESE (Phép thế nhƣ phƣơng tiện liên kết ngữ pháp trong văntrần. most challenging aspects of translation, as any language has its own unique manners in which it employs cohesive devices in the creation of a cohesive text. Each language has its own patterns. devices in English of Halliday and Hasan (1976), this study provides a close analysis of a particular grammatically cohesive device employed in English and its equivalence in the Vietnamese translation.