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The translation of health insuracne terms of non-equivalence group
DECLARATIONThis thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or tertiary institution, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, neither does it contain material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text.SignatureVũ Thị Thanh Yến1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSOn the completion of this thesis, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến who gave me benefit of his wisdom and his expert knowledge in translation as well as his constant encouragement from the beginning stage of working out the research proposal to the final stage of writing up the thesis. Without his critical comments and valuable suggestions, this study could not have been completed.I owe a special debt of gratitude to Mrs. Rosemary Nguyen who helped shape the idea for my thesis, giving me her practical guidance, assisting me with data collection and sharing with me her long and varied experience in the translation of health insurance terms in the US health plans.I take this opportunity to express my sincere thank to all lecturers in Postgraduate Department at College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures during my M.A course.Finally, I would also like to thank my parents who have been a constant source of encouragement, support, love and care during the course of my writing.2 ABSTRACTThe need for the translation of US health plans into Vietnamese is a matter-of-fact since there are already a number of American insurer carriers operating in Vietnam, and many more are expected to enter such a potential market of more than 80 million people. However, it is not an easy task at all due to sharp differences in the sub-culture of health insurance between the US and Vietnam. This thesis titled “A study on the equivalence between English and Vietnamese translation of insurance terms in US health insurance”, therefore, is an attempt to find out the differences and similarities between English HI terms and their Vietnamese equivalents, and to draw out the strategies/procedures/methods that are appropriate to the translation of HI terms in the US health plans into Vietnamese. Hopefully, the research may make a contribution to the translation of HI terms and will be of some help to insurance circle, especially translators with little experience of doing the translation in the field.To this end, the paper identifies the equivalence relationships and classifies terms according to their structural patterns. More importantly, the research paper focuses on working out strategies/procedures/methods that can be best applied to the translation of terms of equivalence and non-equivalence groups. Suggestions for translation strategies/procedures/methods are also made so that translators may have an idea of what strategies/procedures/methods can be used to deal with certain groups of terms.3 ABBREVIATIONS1. BH: Bảo hiểm2. BHYT: Bảo hiểm y tế3. BHSK: Bảo hiểm sức khoẻ4. HI: Health insurance5. SL: Source language6. TL: Target language4 TABLE OF CONTENTSPART A: INTRODUCTION 11. Rationale 12. Scope of the study 23. Aims of the study 24. Methods of the study 25. Design of the study 3PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4I. 1.Terminology 4I.1.1. Definition 4I.1.2. General features of terminology 4I.1.3. Term creation 6I.2. English single words and compounds in comparison with the Vietnamese ones 7I.3. Translation theory 7I.3.1. Definition of translation 7I.3.2. Translation equivalence 8I.3.3. Translation methods, strategies and procedures 10I.3.4. Technical translation 11I.4. Translation of terminology 11I.5. Chapter conclusion 13CHAPTER II: THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE TERMS OF EQUIVALENCE GROUP 14II.1. An overview of equivalence relationships in the translation of health insurance terms 14II.2. Classification of health insurance terms in the US health insurance plans according to their structural patterns 17 II.2.1. Single terms 17II.2.2. Compound terms 195 II.3. The common strategies and procedures used in the translation of health insurance terms of non-equivalence group 19II.3.1. The translation of single terms – Old words with new senses 23II.3.2. The translation of compound terms by rank shift or transposition 24 II.3.3. The translation strategy which involves the deletion of “OF” 26II.4. Concluding remark 26CHAPTER III: THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE TERMS OF NON-EQUIVALENCE GROUP 28III.1. The source of non-equivalence problem in the translation of health insurance terms in the US health plans 28III.2. The strategies, procedures and methods used in dealing with non-equivalence problem in the translation of health insurance terms in the US health plans 29III.2.1. The translation of terms by transference procedure (the use of loan words) 30III.2.2. The translation of terms by paraphrase 32III.2.3. The translation of terms with communicative method 34III.2.4. Literal translation 37III.3. Concluding remarks 38PART C: CONCLUSION 391. The terms of equivalence group 39 2. The terms of non-equivalence group 393. Suggestion for the methods, procedures and strategies 404. Suggestion for further studies 42REFERENCESAPPENDICES6 PART A: INTRODUCTION1. RationaleSince Viet Nam has successfully gained its accession to WTO, and the Bush administration has granted Vietnam with Permanent Normal Trading Status (PNTR), a wide range of actors, including US enterprises, is expected to be here. It is also envisaged that US HI providers will do business in our country, hence a demand for the translation work in the field will be inevitable. The problem lies in the fact that sharp differences in the US HI and the Vietnamese one result in several diffrent HI plans between the two countries. Undoubtedly, this will pose a great obstacle to translators due to their insufficient knowledge about the two different sub-cultures of health insurance. They may have to squeeze their brain to convey the true essence of each kind of health plans from English in Vietnamese. In the USA, quite a few Vietnamese-American are full time employees in American companies and factories, hence eligible to HI coverage offered by their employers. Annually, the companies and factories have the so-called enrollment for their employees to enroll for health benefits or to choose the health plan that best benefits them. To guarantee that their employees do not end up in wrong decisions, which goes in counter with their benefits due to the failure to understand HI plans written in English, they have them translated by Vietnamese and native American translators. In Vietnam, though translators do not have to translate such HI plans for clients, they still have to translate a number of presumably popular HI terms, including many in the US HI plans for at least insurance-majored students or for training courses held by some insurance carriers. Having studied and compared the original and the translated versions by different translators, I have come up with an idea of making an investigation into how HI terms in the US HI plans are currently dealt with. Hopefully, the study, titled “A study on the equivalence between English and Vietnamese translation of insurance terms in US HI plans”, may be of some use to those who have been and will do translation in the field.2. Scope of the study7 Within limited time, resources, conditions, and the length of the thesis, the researcher focuses only on HI terms collected from HI plans. Disability income insurance which is also a sub-type of the US HI is excluded from the study. Such is the boundary set for my thesis so as to achieve a thorough investigation. Specifically, the study takes into consideration such major aspects as follows:• classification of equivalence relationships• structural patterns of HI terms in English• their translations3. Aims of the study• To work out the similarities and differences between English terms and their Vietnamese equivalents• To draw out the strategies/procedures/methods that may apply to the translation of HI terms, especially to the translation of non-equivalence terms in the US HI plans into Vietnamese 4. Methods of the study4.1. Research questionsa. What are the similarities and differences between English terms and their Vietnamese equivalents?b. What are strategies/procedures/methods that are appropriate to the translation of HI terms in the US insurance plans? 4.2. Research methodsOn the completion of the thesis, the researcher went through the following steps: Building up a theoretical background by reviewing translation and terminology Collecting and grouping English insurance terms in the US insurance plans and their Vietnamese equivalents for description, analysis and induction Drawing out strategies, procedures and methods in the translation of HI terms The main method is contrastive analysis.4.3. Data collection8 The English HIterms studied are taken from the US insurance health plans and their equivalents are picked out from the translations by native American and Vietnamese-American translators living in the US and those in charge of translation work in Bảo Việt, Pjico, Prudential, and Aoncare which are big insurer carriers in Vietnam.5. Design of the studyThe study consists of three main parts, references and appendices as follows: Part A: IntroductionThe rationale for the study, scope, aims, methods and design of the study are orderly presented in this part. Part B: DevelopmentThere are three chapters in this part:Chapter I: Theoretical background The theory of translation and terminology will be dealt with in this chapter.Chapter II: The translation of HI terms of equivalence groupThis chapter features an investigation into the equivalence between English and Vietnamese translation of HI terms in the US health plans. Accordingly, how HI terms in the US health plans are currently translated and what strategies/procedures/methods are employed are the focus of the research. Chapter III: The translation of HI terms of non-equivalence groupThis chapter examines how non-equivalence problem in the translation of HI terms in the US health plans is solved by available translation strategies, procedures and methods. Part C: ConclusionThe conclusion summaries the strategies, procedures and methods of translation as well as makes relevant suggestions.The appendixes give more examples of different groups of HI terms.9 PART B: DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDI. 1.TerminologyI.1.1. DefinitionTerminology has been defined variously by many different linguists, either native or Vietnamese. Chau, D.H (1981) claims “Terms are specialists words used within a specific field, a profession or any technological field”. To identify technical term, he states “Scientific and technical terminology consists of lexical units used to denote phenomenal objects, activities …in industrial technologies and natural or social sciences”. Sharing some common features in content with the one by Chau, though put differently, the definition proposed by Giap, N.T (1998) seems to be more informative: “Terminology, understood as a special linguistic unit of language, consists of word and fixed phrase that provides precise definition and objectives that belong to particular scientific area.”Such definitions can serve as a foundation on which we can base our distinction between terms and words. In fact, Baker (1998:261) puts that “Terms differ from words in that they are endowed with a special forms of reference, namely that they refer to discrete conceptual entities, properties, activities or relations which constitute the knowledge space of a particular subject field”. Accordingly, further important differences between terms and words are as follows:1. Terms have special reference within a particular discipline whereas words function in general reference over a variety of subject fields.2. Terms keep their lives and meanings only for as long as they serve the system of knowledge they gave rise to them. In other words, terms together with words and proper names constitute the general class of lexical items. Names refer individually to objects and people; words refer arbitrary boundary between terms and words is not a clear-cut, i.e. many terms become ordinary words when they are used in specialized field. I.1.2. General features of terminologySince terminology is not allowed to carry the speaker’ attitude, figurative sense, compliment or criticism, it should possess the following qualities: accurateness, 10 [...]... and that is the very reason why there are many health plans in the US we have never heard about In a nutshell, the differences in the level of the development of HI between the US and Vietnam, and the diversity of health plans in the former are the source of nonequivalence problem in the translation of HI terms in the US health plans The following section will focus on the analysis of how the problem... tế’ in the form of a free group of words as defined by Nguyen Nhu Y (1996:64) Such a group is comtemporarily made to meet the need of the reality to be described or to meet the subjective demand of the speaker or the writer (See more examples in Appendix 1) II.3.2 The translation of compound terms by rank shift or transposition The translation of the following groups of terms involves a change in the. .. group in English in general and of HI terms in the form of the nominal group in particular We have also made an attempt in classifying and dividing them into ‘single term’ and ‘compound term’ groups Single terms are further grouped into sub-insurance terms and high insurance terms There are subgroups of terms under the head ‘compound terms The next part will focus on what translation strategies and procedures... terminology The translation theory, especially a variety of relevant translation strategies and procedures have been reviewed so that it can shed light on how HI terms in the US HI plans are currently translated CHAPTER II THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE TERMS 20 OF EQUIVALENCE GROUP II.1 An overview of equivalence relationships in the translation of HI terms From the collected data we can group equivalence... with HI terms of equivalence group It may be concluded that amateur 33 and professional translators in any field all turn to these translation strategies and procedures in their job, either consciously or unconsciously since they have already gained their rightful place in translation CHAPTER III THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURACNE TERMS OF NONEQUIVALENCE GROUP Examples of nil equivalence: Non-equivalence. .. HI terms that account for significant proportion of the total collected terms II.2.2 Compound terms These are terms which are composed of two words or more; these words, which are of different part of speech, combine and create terms that have the form of nominal group (Halliday’s term) 25 II.2.2.1 The nominal group It would be insufficient not to study the experiential structure of the nominal group, ... possible) on the readership of translation as was obtained on the readership of the original” According to him, equivalence effect is regarded 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 15 In the. .. level of background knowledge do the translation of HI terms in the US health plans into Vietnamese, and so naturally they were expected to turn to different translation strategies or procedures when dealing with the same terms Interestingly, though some of them admitted having no concept of translation theories, they all have employed commonly used translation strategies (deletion of preposition OF) ... II.3 3 The translation strategy which involves the deletion of OF Group 3: Terms consisting of Thing + Qualifier (noun + of +noun/noun phrase) 32 Within this study, we have collected 13 nominal groups in the form of ‘Thing + Qualifier (of phrase)’ If, when rendering these terms into Vietnamese, we translate the preposition of as ‘của’, the version in Vietnamese will not sound naturally as the way... procedures have been used currently to translate HI terms that do not belong to non-equivalence group, and then draw out the ones that may be best applicable II.3 The common strategies and procedures used in the translation of HIterms of equivalence group II.3.1 The translation of single terms – Old words with new senses 29 The number of HI single -terms in English, both low-insurance and high-insurance . INSURANCE TERMS OF NON-EQUIVALENCE GROUP 28III.1. The source of non-equivalence problem in the translation of health insurance terms in the US health. III: The translation of HI terms of non-equivalence groupThis chapter examines how non-equivalence problem in the translation of HI terms in the US health
