VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT **0** ĐÀO MAI LAN TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK (DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI VỀ VĂN HÓA: ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DỊCH THÀNH NGỮ VỀ ĐỒ ĂN THỨC UỐNG) M.A. MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 HANOI - 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT **0** ĐÀO MAI LAN TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK (DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI VỀ VĂN HÓA: ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DỊCH THÀNH NGỮ VỀ ĐỒ ĂN THỨC UỐNG) M.A. MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc. Prof., Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến HANOI - 2010 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale………………………………………………………………………………. 1 2. Aims of the study……………………………………………………………………… 1 3. Limitation of the stuy…………………………………………………………………. 1 4. Method of the study…………………………………………………………………… 2 5. Design of the study…………………………………………………………………… 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. LANGUAGE ANDCULTURE…………………………………………………… 3 1.1. Definition of language and culture…………………………………………………. 3 1.2. The relation between language and culture………………………………………… 4 2. TRANSLATION……………………………………………………………………. 6 2.1. Definition of translation…………………………………………………………… 6 2.2 Translation Process and Methods…………………………………………………… 7 3. IDIOMS AND TRANSLATION…………………………………………………… 10 3.1. Definition of idioms…………………………………………………………………. 10 3.2. The interpretation of idioms………………………………………………………… 11 3.3. Idioms versus proverbs………………………………………………………………. 13 3.4. Culture in idioms and its relation to the transfer in translation…………………… 15 CHAPTER TWO: CULTURAL TRANSFER THROUGH TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK 1. Idioms of food and drink…………………………………………………………… 18 1.1. Criteria for idioms of food and drink………………………………………………… 18 1.2. Syntactical feature of idioms of food and drink…………………………………… 19 1.3. Cultural features of idioms of food and drink……………………………………… 22 2. Cultural transfer through translation of idioms of food and drink…………. 23 2.1. Idiomatic equivalence……………………………………………………………… 24 2.2. Conceptual equivalence……………………………………………………………. 26 2.3. Lexical equivalence…………………………………………………………………. 28 2.4. Semantic and pragmatic equivalence………………………………………………. 30 3. Suggestions of some strategies in translating idioms of food and drink………… 31 CONCLUSION 1. Review of the study…………………………………………………………………… 35 2. Suggestions for further studies………………………………………………………. 36 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………… 37 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Since human’s society developed, there has been a trend of integration between people and nations. People living together in the world need to help each other to gain economic development, political stabilization and equality. That, the need of understanding between people and nations has increased. Translation constitutes an essential tool for better communication, better understanding each other. Of all the translation work, translating idioms seems to be the most challenging since it is a meaning-based translation which makes every effort to communicate the meaning of the source language ( SL) text in the natural forms of the target language (TL). To deal with translating idioms, one must have good cultural background of not only the SL but also of the TL. Therefore, mastering translation theory in general and strategies of translating idioms in particular is very important to learners and translators. Being interested in idioms for a long time, I choose idioms as my thesis topic. Due to the limited time and knowledge, I just focus on how culture transfers through the process of translating idioms of food and drink. When searching for equivalence in translation to see how cultural transfer occurs, some strategies of translating idioms of food and drink will be discussed to overcome the difficulties of idiom translation. 2. Aims of the study The study has the following aims:  considering how cultural transfer occurs through the process of translating idioms of food and drink;  suggesting some practical strategies in translating idioms of food and drink 3. Limitation of the study Due to the limited time and knowledge, I cannot cover all aspects of idiomatic expression of food and drink in this study. Thus, I just focus on the cultural transfer through the idiomatic translation and suggest some strategies of translating English – Vietnamese idioms of food and drink and vice versa. 2 4. Method of the study To achieve these aims, I have consulted many dictionaries and books of languages, idioms, proverbs, etc. in both English and Vietnamese in which whatever relating to idiomatic expressions of food and drink is taken into consideration. One hundred idioms of food and drink in Vietnamese and another hundred idioms of food and drink in English which are thought to be widely used are selected for the study. For English idioms, a number of reference books were consulted, but the main ones are Longman Dictionary of Idioms (1998), Collins Cobuild Idioms Dictionary (2002), Thành ngữ Tục ngữ Tiếng Anh (2008). These books were selected because they contain a large number of idioms of food and drink. Vietnamese ones were selected from Từ điển Thành ngữ Tục ngữ Việt-Anh (2006), Kể chuyện thành ngữ Tiếng Anh (2006). Then a comparative analysis is designed to point out how cultural transfer occurs through the translation. 5. Design of the study Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, the study is organized around two chapters. Chapter one attempts to look into the nature of culture, culture in relation with language and translation. Later, the chapter presents an overview of translation theories developed by well-known authors with certain basic theoretical items such as definition of translation, the process, and methods of translation. The chapter ends by taking idioms into consideration: the definition of idioms, the interpretation of idioms, idioms versus proverbs, culture in idioms and its relation to the transfer in translation. Chapter two deals with the translation of idioms of food and drink. Firstly, how cultural transfer occurs through idioms translation is studied by looking for stylistic equivalence, conceptual equivalence, lexical equivalence, semantic and pragmatic equivalence. After that, the chapter mentions some of the translation strategies for translating idioms of food and drink. 3 CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Language and culture 1.1. Definition of language and culture Language is a factor that distinguishes man from other animals. For existence, human being must work hard to produce goods, food, clothes, machines and other materials… Through out the duration of working, people need to exchange goods, the experience of producing and also the information of all fields of the life. That’s why language appeared. Language is a means of communication and it is the best way for human to express their thoughts and feelings. To have a better understanding of language, let’s study the definition of language stated in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995): “ Language is a system of sounds, words, patterns, etc… used by humans, nations, or group of people to communicate thoughts and feeling manner of expressing ideas.” According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “A language is a particular kind of system for encoding and decoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In cognitive science the term is also sometimes extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation and usage of systems of symbols—each symbol referring to linguistic concepts with semantic or logical or otherwise expressive meanings.” From these definitions we can see how important the language is in the process of communication. To serve my purpose, I suggest here another definition: Language is the means of expressing thoughts and feelings. Now, we move to the definition of culture. Culture can be seen as all human activities. Some people look at culture as the collective programme of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another. Someone concluded that “there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture”. In many ways it is correct: culture is everything. Because culture is so broad in its scope, 4 many definitions have been suggested. Let us examine some of these definitions so that we might understand them better. Anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) reviewed some five hundred definitions, phrasings and concepts and proposed the following definition: “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups… the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the other hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action” Another definition by Byram (1998) runs as follows: “A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believes in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members. Culture is not a natural phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people’s behaviour or emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. It is the form of things that people have in mind, their models of perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them” I believe that these definitions are broad enough to include most of the major territory of culture. However, for the goals of this paper, I think my conclusion is good enough that “Culture is the people’s ways of thinking, behaving, talking, valuing things and working” 1.2. The relation between language and culture Language and culture are said to be interwoven. Language is a part of culture and culture is a part of language. It is difficult to separate one from the other. If it were desirable to separate the two, the significance of either language or culture would be lost. That’s why two individuals taking part in the communication must have a shared knowledge of both culture and language. Misunderstanding may occur if we violate a grammatical rule of language. But it is more serious if we violate a social usage. 5 It is apparent that language is a means to describe culture it belongs to and parallelly, culture’s development enriches language. For example, before the bicycle was introduced to Vietnam, there was no word to express it. But when the Vietnamese got acquainted with it, they borrowed the word “bicycle” and either borrowed or invented words to describe the bicycle parts. Therefore, the vocabulary of language was enriched along parallel line with the development of culture. Language usages follow culturally determined patterns. The patterns not only influence the order in which people use words to form phrases, they also influence thinking patterns. The use of language to describe time, for instance, differs from culture to culture. Western societies perceive time as something that can be kept, saved, lost or waste. Therefore, time system is exactly divided and being on time is extremely important. In the Vietnamese language, the time system is more complicated and the verb system is such that only context can indicate time. This different perception directly affects the translation from Vietnamese language into Western languages and vice versa. We can see that language is distinctly a form of human cultural behaviour. Language helps us understand not only one another but culture as well. If one uses a language well, one must know the culture that uses the language. This is because the ability to react with speakers of another language depends not only on language skills but also on comprehension of cultural habits. For example, in Vietnamese culture, it is considered polite behaviour to ask someone at first meeting about his or her age and marital status. But this way of talking is not acceptable in other culture like English, Australian and American culture. In learning language, we can see that language is a key element of any culture. Language is a part of social life. As a result, every expression such as greeting, addressing…are affected by culture. This aspect should be paid attention to when we do translation. Byram (1998) said that: “It is readily assumed that exposure to language will lead to some kinds of cultural learning… Thus as learners learn about language they learn about culture and as they learn to use a new language they learn to communicate with other individuals from a new culture” That also means that cultural difference leads to the differences in the way and the perception of communication which is the expression of language. For example, in the 6 Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai languages, the greeting “where are you going?” is appropriate instead of “Hello” “Good day”. However, it may be inappropriate in other cultures like Western culture; it may be regarded as a curious question. So, if Vietnamese people think in Vietnamese way and express themselves in their own cultural way while communicating with native speakers of Western cultures they may annoy them. Therefore, it is obvious that if we don’t pay attention to cultural differences while translating and interpreting, the inevitable result of the translation is something of misunderstanding. 2. Translation 2.1. Definition of translation Though the role and history of translation can be easily agreed upon, it is almost impossible to find an undisputed definition of translation. From different directions, there can be various definitions. Translation, by dictionary definition, consists of changing from one form to another, to turn into one 'own or another' language (The Merriam - Webster Dictionary, 1974). Some authors have given the following different definitions of translation: “Translation, as a process of conveying messages across linguistic and cultural barriers, is an eminently communicative activity, one whose use could well be considered in a wider range of teaching situations than may currently be the case” (Tudor, 1987) “Translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.” ( Newmark, 1988) As implied in the definitions above, translation is basically a change of form (which is usually referred to as the actual words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs etc, which are spoken or written). In translation the form of the source language (the language of the text that is to be translated) is replaced by the form of the target language (the language of the translated text). The purpose of translation is to transfer the meaning of the source language (SL) into the target language (TL). This is done by going from the form of the first language to the form of a second language by way of semantic structure. It is meaning which is being 7 transferred and must remain unchanged. Only the form changes. Moreover, translation not only involves understanding the general meaning of the communication, but calls upon the ability to understand the culture of the communication. Despite the great variety of definitions, we can still have an overall view of what translation is by combining the most essential aspects of those definitions. The below quoted definition from “Training Translators and Conference Interpreters” by Weber (1968) is not quite satisfactory but appears as one of the most widely agreed: “Translation is the transposition of a text written in a source language (SL) into a target language (TL). The translated version must be absolutely accurate in meaning, contain all nuances of the original, and must be written in clear, elegant language that can be easily understood by the reader. Needless to say, punctuation spelling and grammar must be flawless”. It must be noted that this definition is mainly for the sake of translation theory, since in practice, there are few translation versions that can be “absolutely accurate in meaning” and “ contain all nuances of the original”. People are different in all aspects so the message perceived by the reader is frequently not identical to the message meant by the writer. There are numerous elements that cause this distortion of the message and cross- culture is one of the major ones. And minimizing this distortion in meaning is the aim of all academic activity, translation can be defined as a process which is rendering a written text into another language and a product which is an artistic and scientific result of the translating activity. 2.2. Translation Process and Methods Translation is the process to transfer written or spoken source language (SL) texts to equivalent written or spoken target language (TL) texts. The basic purpose of translation is to reproduce various types of texts, comprising literary, religious, scientific, philosophical texts etc. in another language and thus making them available to wider readers, to a greater number of target audiences and to bring the world closer. However, translation is not an easy job. If language is just a classification for a set of general or universal concepts, it will be of course very easy to translate from a source language to a target language. But translation covers not only word for word translation but [...]... form for times of food scarcity, and others use blood in stews such as civet Drink is defined by the dictionary as any liquid suitable for drinking It may be water, tea, coffee, alcoholic drink, coca, fruit juice, etc… From these definitions of food and drink, I consider all idioms related to any kind of food and drink in their forms as idioms of food and drink The idioms of food and drink may relate... is presented in idioms of both languages It is the cultural factor that decides how you will translate the idioms in the most appropriate way In the next part, while looking at the equivalence between the two languages, we will se how cultural transfer occurs through translation of idioms of food and drink 2 Cultural transfer through translation of idioms of food and drink Nowadays, in the global trend,... In these examples, “like” and as are used in English and như in Vietnamese to compare food to something There is only one difference in the structure of the idioms of food and drink between the two languages that English idioms exist in prepositional phrases whereas Vietnamese ones don’t have this structure 22 1.3 Cultural features of idioms of food and drink Vietnamese idioms in particular and. .. kind of food or drink as “ butter and cheese”, “good egg”, “bad egg”, “fish in troubled water”… or food and drink in general as food in food for thought”, cỗ (party) in “ma ăn cỗ”, lương (food) in “cao lương mĩ vị”… 1.2 Syntactical feature of idioms of food and drink It can be seen that idioms in both languages are lexically fixed Different types of idioms of food and drink are found in both English and. .. another The translation of idioms takes us a stage further in considering the question of meaning and translation, for idioms are culture bound Bassnett (2002) stated that: Translation involves far more than replacement of lexical and grammatical items between languages and, as can be seen in the translation of idioms and metaphors, the process may involve discarding the basic linguistic elements of. .. translating idioms 18 CHAPTER TWO: CULTURAL TRANSFER THROUGH TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK 1 Idioms of food and drink 1.1 Criteria for idioms of food and drink From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, food is any substance, usually composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal, including humans, for nutrition or pleasure Items considered food may... connotation as they represent the unique culture of the language, and therefore are closely related to culture They are the heritage of history and product of cultural evolvement Consequently, we know much about culture through studying idioms and in turn get better understanding of idioms by learning the cultural background behind them There are great differences between English and Vietnamese idioms as the. .. to food or drink, there is not much task to deal with these words because the translation of idioms doesn’t mean a word for word translation I find in the selection of idioms of food and drink of both languages only a few ones translated with the name of the food and drink: - Fish in troubled water - nước đục thả câu, đục nước béo cò - pinch of salt - thêm mắm thêm muối - teach your grandmother to suck... for another That substitution is made not on the basis of the linguistic elements in the phrase, nor on the basis of a corresponding or similar image contained in the phrase but on the function of the idiom The SL phrase is replaced by a TL phrase that serves the same purpose in the TL culture, and the process here involves the substitution of SL sign for TL sign 2.2 Conceptual equivalence As mentioned... equivalence At the lexicon level, many other studies show that cultural words are those that belong to a “particular language” and express “peculiar manifestations” of a culture Words related to food and drink are cultural and there will be a translation problem unless there is cultural overlap between the SL and the TL However, although the idioms of food and drink contain in themselves words related to food . feature of idioms of food and drink ………………………………… 19 1.3. Cultural features of idioms of food and drink …………………………………… 22 2. Cultural transfer through translation of idioms of food and drink ……… OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT **0** ĐÀO MAI LAN TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK (DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI. OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT **0** ĐÀO MAI LAN TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK (DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI