A study on code switching techniques used in translating english terms and vietnamese equivalents in electronics

This habit of using CS even occurs in the oral translation tasks because applying directly knowledge of English and of electronics in Vietnamese versions in a short time requires student

1 Rationale

Nowadays codeswitching has become a common phenomenon occurring in periodicals, advertisements, or reports on TVs and daily newspapers in multimedia, etc For students of technology, this phenomenon has popularly applied for their conversations when they discuss

a topic relevant to functions, features or the operation of an electronic device Codeswitching refers to the alternate use of two or more than two languages in the same utterance or a conversation, (Gumper, 1982) The exchange of information with CS terms has become favourite, because it is a two- way process of thinking directly used in the utterances to express the contents quickly, and accurately Moreover, almost all-electronic terms codeswitched into Vietnamese utterances are English terms These characteristics have a remarkable effect on the students’ attitude towards learning English for electronics with language skills, even in the oral translation skill Observations from my collected data in teaching materials and in lessons of English for electronics have shown that CS is explored

by students in various aspects because of three main reasons as follows Firstly, the tendency

of using CS terms in the daily utterances in multimedia encourages them to insert English terms into Vietnamese Secondly, most of the second-year students of electronics at the level

of pre- inter of English want to express their knowledge of English for electronics and professional knowledge by using directly CS terms in their utterances to explain a definition

or functions of an electronic device Thirdly, most of them are bilingual students and know how to practise computing instructions in English everywhere and every time they meet Accordingly, inserting CS terms in Vietnamese utterances becomes a habit and does not make them misunderstand the content of electronic terms in a particular context From these reasons, students of electronics apply CS to develop their language learning activities through language skills i.e speaking and presentation This habit of using CS even occurs in the oral translation tasks because applying directly knowledge of English and of electronics in Vietnamese versions in a short time requires students to have an in-time reaction in thought when producing equivalents adequately Donal (2004) shows that CS in translations takes place at a syntactic or semantic level with the use of inserting points to represent electronic concepts familiar to the participant For many, translation is an art, which is only done by

exceptionally skilled people who are professionals at it However, in this thesis, my investigation is only seen translation as the fifth language skill in language learning activities and practiced by untrained people who are bilingual students of electronics Thus, CS is studied to understand why electronic students, who are competent in two languages, alternate languages in particular translation tasks Most of the early researches on translations of English terms for electronics only focus on analyzing forms of equivalents and ways of conveying semantic meanings into the target language or even looking at them as borrowed words These studies do not describe how students apply CS to extent their communicative competence for achieving conversations goals during translation This thesis will concentrate

on this phenomenon “CS in the oral translation” However, it must be stressed that this thesis neither is an analysis of electronic terms applying CS techniques for professional translators nor guides for ESP teachers how to teach CS techniques in translation It is only a reference for teachers who wish to use translation as a language learning activity for the language learning practice and improvement The major concern of this thesis is to give the answer to the question: “Why do CS techniques become useful strategies used in oral translating tasks of electronic terms in the electronic textbook “Basic English for electronics and telecommunication”? As a result, some suggestions are also given to show the availability, implications of using CS techniques in the oral translation of electronic terms For all of these, it is hoped that this study contributes some efforts to ESP teaching when applying CS techniques in the oral translation to help students develop their fifth language skill much more effectively

2 Aims of the study

Within the framework of a minor thesis, this study is aimed at:

• Presenting fundamental factors affecting the inserting process of CS terms in oral translation of electronic terminology

• Finding out the translation strategies adequate to CS techniques applied for inserting CS terms in the oral translation tasks

• Spotting problems while applying CS techniques for electronic terms, thus giving some suggestions for such problematic translations that can gain benefit for ESP teaching and learning process

3 Scope of the study

Within the limited time and references, the study mainly focuses on analyzing how CS techniques are applied for inserting English terms in the oral translating tasks in the course book “Basic English for Electronics and Telecommunications”, compiled by teachers of ESP, VNUH, which have been used as a main course book of COTECH, VNUH Its major subjects are bilingual students of English at the level of pre-intermediate at the electronic department at COTECH, who are learning English as a compulsory subject and using the translation skill as

a language learning activity Narrowly, my investigation focuses on what CS techniques are applied to codeswitch single terms of electronics in the form of CS nouns and CS verbs when inserted into Vietnamese versions

4 Methods of the study

The strategic methods used in this descriptive study are the quantitative and qualitative ones

By virtue of quantitative research, a number of single terms of electronics in the form of nouns and verbs from the textbook Basic English for Electronics and Telecommunications” and its materials are collected to observe and analyze Again, a questionnaire is carried out to find out the teacher’s opinions on roles of CS terms in developing the fifth skill in oral translation process To study the effectiveness of these CS techniques, the following steps are implemented:

• Collecting single terms of electronics in the CS forms in the textbook and its supplementary materials

• Classifying collected English terms inserted in the oral translation according to CS techniques

• Analyzing specific terms of electronics in the form of English nouns and verbs to find out the convenience of applying CS techniques in oral translating tasks

5 The research question

To achieve the aims within the scope the research question below is addressed: “Why do CS techniques become useful strategies used in the oral translation of electronic terms in the electronic textbook Basic English for electronics and telecommunication?”

6 Design of the study

This thesis is divided into three parts, references and appendices

The first part “introduction” gives the rationale, the scope and aims of the study, and the design of the study

The second part “development” consists of three chapters Chapter I “theoretical background” provides an overview on theories of translations, codeswitching and other relevant definitions, strategies, as well as roles of CS techniques in inserting electronic terms

in Vietnamese versions Chapter II “Classifications of electronic terminologies according to

CS parser” discusses linguistic features of CS together with translation techniques when shifting English substitutions in Vietnamese utterances At the same time, my collected data and statistic figures of electronic terms is particularly analyzed to show effectiveness of linguistic patterns of CS while inserting single terms in the CS form into Vietnamese utterances Problems of selecting terms in the oral translation while applying CS techniques are also recommended with practical situations to find out some appropriate solutions to teaching and learning oral translation practice The third part “conclusion” is to bring about a more insightful look into doing tasks of translation patterns with the choice of CS techniques

in conveying electronic terminologies in particular situations

In this section, the first part is issues relating to translation theories i.e concepts of translations, equivalents, translation techniques, and technical translation; whereas the second one with general ideas on concepts of codeswitching, codemixing, borrowing etc will be presented

I.1 Theory of translation

I.1.1 Definitions of translation

Translation is a process of thought and afterthought (Duff, 1989:15) Tudor (cited in Duff, 1989: 5) says that translation, as the 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 According

to him, all of us have mother tongue that shapes our way of thinking and of applying semantic meanings of terms into practice Accordingly, the translating skill helps us apply linguistic features to create influences of one language on the other Also, his view expresses specific remarks on general principles needed to have a good selection It means that an acceptable translation must attain three main principles called meaning, form and register to make it natural and loyal to the SL

According to Hoang Van Van (2006:9), “Translation has been the subject of interest not only

to linguists, professional and amateur translators, and language teachers, but also to electronic engineers and mathematicians” In the long history of translation, concepts of translation have been mentioned by a great numbers of scholars around the world with different perspectives

“Translation consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message of the source language, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (Nida & Taber 1974: 12, cited in Hoang Van Van 2006: 10) As well, Catford (1965:20, cited in Hoang Van Van 2006:10) defines “translation as the replacement of textual material in one language (source language- SL) by the equivalent textual material in another language (target language- TL)” Herein, general idea involved translation equivalent can be clarified It is regarded as a precondition for the faithful and a proper reproduction of the SL text Also, Catford (1965:20) shows the “textual material” and “equivalent” as a closed

attachment requiring translators to have knowledge combining with observations to produce

an equivalent term selectively

Bell (1991: XIII) proposes that translation is the transformation of a text originally in one language into an equivalent text in a different language retaining, as far as possible, the content of the message, formal features and roles of the original text Herein, a combination of principles retaining original meanings affirms that translation is a process as well as a product

In general, translation renders meanings of a text into another language in a way the author expresses in the text (Newmark 1989:5) In other words, it is a process of problem solving of lexical and sentential structures levels which requires participants to have a combination of cognitive activities with adequate vocabulary (Donald 2004 http: CS: 38) Taking concepts of translation into consideration, this part only collects different definitions from scholars to show an interactive relation between SL and TL Thus, translation is not only understood as a linguistic phenomenon or a process of transcoding between SL and TL, but also a relationship

of equivalence between the two languages (SL & TL) while taking into account various constraints This complicated process requires researchers and translators to have a rather comprehensive knowledge of both linguistic competence and relevant sciences

I.1.2 Translation equivalence

The concept of equivalence involves both linguistic and text-linguistic approaches that are much concerned with using methods of translation and techniques while conveying terms When translators solve matters relevant to relationships between SL and TL texts in terms of professional terminology, this means equivalence to be clarified (Newmark 1989) Moreover, when a target term is expected to be a faithful reproduction of the source text, the equivalence

is defined as identity (of meaning and of form), and created in a sense of equal value or correspondence (Christina 1998:3) Still, types of equivalents are also presented with different aspects from scholars For instance, Nida’s formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence (Nida 1964); or Koller’s denotative, connotative, text normative, pragmatic and formal-aesthetic equivalence (Koller 1979:215 cited in Chesterman 1989: 100), or Newmark’s equivalence response and equivalence effect (Newmark 1995) Arguably, translation needs to

be set apart from other kinds of derived texts as reflection in the opposition of translation and adaptation (Koller 1979, cited in Chesterman 1989: 87), semantic translation and communicative translation (Newmark 1989), or overt and covert translation (House

1977:194) Even in contrast, Baker’s notions of non- equivalence: at word level, above word level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence and pragmatic equivalence (Baker 1992) Therefore, the researcher as well as untrained translators should consider this concept intensively before choosing a solution to a particular term in practice

I.1.3 Translation techniques

According to Newmark (1988), translation techniques are applied for all types of texts in the translation process The major issue of translation involved in this theme is that the translator has to decide what techniques used to convert terms adequately In theory, fifty techniques mentioned in Newmark’s book (1988) in which the shift of scale, translation shift, paraphrase, phonological translation, unfamiliar abbreviation, unfamiliar acronyms, transcription, equivalent frequency of usage, proper names in communicative translation, etc are most popularly used However, depending on specific purposes of my thesis, the following techniques are directly applied when inserting CS terms in the oral translation

I.1.3.1 Transcription

Newmark (1988:155) indicates transcription as a technique concerning loanwords, transferred words and adopted ones This technique is used to translate proper nouns, addresses, names of private firms, national public and private institutions etc Accordingly, the process of transferring a SL word into a TL one in the oral translation tasks will use morphemes (stem, prefix, and suffix) with English phonemes to call out names of electronic products Things normally transferred are electronic concepts or devices related to titles of yet translated literally works, products, names of particular objects, even functions of one tools or institutions and so on Most of the CS terms analyzed in this part are in the form of English phonemes with verbs and nouns occurring in the oral translation tasks in such situations to dominate the functions of electronic devices However, it must be stressed that names of electronic companies and its brand names of electronic devices do not belong to the field of

CS studies

Newmark (1988:157) guides an unfamiliar abbreviation as a technique to help a translator examine abbreviated terms in a particular context before consulting meanings from a professional dictionary As well, a translator can approach acronyms in two ways i.e by searching abbreviations in dictionaries or by considering them in a particular context This

refers to conventionally recognized terms or a combination of Vietnamese single terms and English phonemes in the form of CS acronyms and eponyms For instance,

+! , RAM so on

I.1.4 Technical translation

Technical translation is related to specific knowledge of a field with specific terms In terms of English for IT, technical translation involves the language of science and technology with its own characteristic vocabulary Newmark (1995:151) defines “technical translation as one part

of specialized translation, and primarily distinguished from other forms of translation by terminology, although terminology usually only makes up about 5-10% of a text” Whereas, Sofer (1999) gives another view on technical terms in comparison with a literal translation as a remarkable division in translation field called literary and technical translation In addition, one way of defining technical translation is by asking the question: does the subject being translated require a specialized vocabulary, or a language of non- specialized? If the text being translated includes specialized terms in a given field, then the translation is technical” Furthermore, Newmark suggests some useful steps for translation as well as gives ten categories handled by different types such as old words with non-sense; derived words; acronyms; collocations; abbreviations; eponyms; phrasal words; transferred words etc In English for electronics, this process particularly involves translation of electronic objects for many reasons i.e an object is newly imported and not yet has a name A descriptive term is being used as a familiar alternative to avoid repetition; or to make a contrast with another one etc In technical styles, terms for electronics have fallen into four aspects of technical languages as scientific; workshop level; everyday usage level; and publicity and sales (Newmark 1995:152) Accordingly, English terms for electronics are analyzed in the oral translation tasks in English classes in are analyzed This is an overview on concepts of translation used to analyze techniques for translating electronic terminologies in Vietnamese utterances

I.2 Theory of code switching

I.2.1 Definitions of CS

It is the fact that English becomes a “salad bowl” of all languages in general and in Vietnamese utterances in particular It can often be heard and seen everywhere: on TV reports,

-on a radio, in films, in periodical journals, or in advertisements etc This language c-ontact at some point allows English to be mixed in both spoken and written form in the TL Accordingly, it becomes a students’ favor when combining two languages of different grammar systems in a same speech This phenomenon is codeswitching, a by-product of bilingualism Thus, what is so called CS? Is it a mixing of language free of grammatical structures and syntax? According to Nguyen Van Khang (1999:224), CS is the usage of two or more than two variants of linguistics in a conversation Besides that, a numbers of CS definitions from different scholars also show various aspects of this CS phenomenon At the grammatical level, CS is analyzed with its constituents and inserted at unconscious points in a sentence without having effect on grammatical structures as well as natural fluency in the utterance Poplack (1980: 583) considers CS as the alternate use of two language codes in a fully grammatical way, within a single discourse, the same sentence or constituent; whereas Woolford (1983) views code-switched sentences as resulting from a mixture of phrase structure rules extracted from the two languages Also, Chana (1984) describes codeswitching

as the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems In terms of linguistic competence, applying CS phenomenon in an utterance shows the degree of developing students’ linguistic competence

in their learning two languages that users use CS to attain two things i.e filling lexical gaps and creating other multiple communicative targets (Gysels 1992) Accordingly, Luisa Duran (cited in Valdes- Fallis 1997) defines CS as the use of two languages simultaneously or interchangeably As well, Gumperz (1982) describes codeswitching as discourse exchanges, which form a single unitary interaction while Sridhar (1980) assumes that there is a basic language in a bilingual discourse and proposes the terminology of guest and host languages to describe code-switched utterances In fact, CS usually occurs unconsciously in the utterances and bilingual students are unaware of what is happening to their new mixed speech This explains why CS is a discursive issue in the linguistic forum Also, major types of CS including inter-sentential, intra -sentential (Poplack 1980) decide ways to insert items in target utterances If intra-sentential refers to codeswitching between constituents within a sentence, then inter- sentential CS is switching between sentences Below are illustrations for these two main CS types in Vietnamese

.!/$+ !/ !/ +

In a multilingual environment, CS and borrowing are results of interacting between two or more than two kinds of languages Scotton (2002:234) describes borrowing as an adoption of a linguistic feature previously used in another In other words, borrowing has another name called loanword This term is defined as a word that is transferred from a donor language to a recipient language In general, borrowed words often show some or complete phonological integrations with the recipient language while using CS forms to retain their embedded language phonology (Scotton, 2002: 42) The adapted phonology is a feature that operates borrowing from codeswitching For instance, cultural- specific names such as “CD, video, radio, phones, TV” are borrowed into Vietnamese with phonological adaptation Therefore, they are borrowed words, not codeswitching when used As in Vietnamese, the same names are translated into Vietnamese as “12+3 415 673 ) 18 9 41: 3 $+ 1 9 41 ;! /< = 3

><9! +! 4)9 / 7?! @ ' 3 @'A Even though they are in Vietnamese written forms since they are semantically translated into Vietnamese, they remain borrowed words In other words, they become common names occurring in daily conversation and they are understood by monolingual people That is the reason why they are borrowed words Another different between CS and borrowing is that not all speakers who use borrowed forms are fluent in the donor language whereas CS occurs most often when the speakers are fluent in both languages (Scotton, 2002:42) In other words, borrowed forms are usually used in donor language by monolingual people whereas CS forms are applied by bilingual ones (Nguyen Van Khang 1999:232) Moreover, if borrowing is a “stable phenomenon and repetitively used in a

recipient language”, then CS will be only a “linguistic application” Nguyen Van Khang (1999:229) In addition, the pronunciation of a borrowed word should adapt to the Vietnamese pronunciation It should be spelt according to Vietnamese spelling (e.g video - vi-18 9B If a foreign word fulfill these requirements, it can be called a borrowed word Examples as follows illustrate this distinction between CS and borrowing A student of IT announced that “C":7+ /<:7 @<D!< %E! !8! F<G!" /+ F< 7H! " I /<:!< " I !<J3A

So terms “:;( +! " ( are CS terms inserted in Vietnamese utterance whereas the following terms in the below example i.e AM, FM and radio are loanwords because of their popular usage by monolingual peoples “AM v FM : <+ = /5! K L!"

><M % ?! 1NOF P Q!" R ' ;/ !+ 3

I.2.3 Code- switching techniques in translation as a research topic

In general, this study describes CS techniques applied for electronic terms in the CS forms as inserting points in Vietnamese utterances to convey objective meanings of electronics

Herein, Vietnamese - English CS focus on spoken data in the oral translation tasks of electronics in the textbook BE Observations from my teaching materials and experience have shown that bilingual students of electronics at the pre-intermediate level make acquaintance to

CS techniques in the oral translation tasks naturally because of the three reasons as follows Firstly, their amount of English terms for electronics is still limited When they meet new terms, they hesitate to convey into Vietnamese It does not mean that they do not know equivalent meanings of SL terms in the TL ones They want to confirm meaning of equivalent term in Vietnamese by producing a CS term in the oral translation practice as a way to check its equivalent from their teacher and classmates for their latter use

Secondly, a dominant feature in the oral translation task is that this task is usually practised in

a short time of a language learning activity in an English class and requires students immediately to show their understanding on matter of electronics with a remarkable amount of new terms they have updated in the previous part of the lesson Actually, at the level of pre- intermediate, it is difficult for students to remember all meanings of new concepts of electronic at once to convey in the oral translation tasks In addition, CS can help them be accessible and acceptable by other classmates

Last but not least, CS techniques applied in English classes for electronics at COTECH are inter-sentential, intra-sentential, and intra- word CS becomes a common phenomenon in the

utterances of students of electronics However, within the limited time and references, this part focuses on analyzing one type of CS techniques called intra- sentential applied in the oral translation Particularly, it is studied to show ways applied to insert English terms into Vietnamese version and to find out reasons why they become effectively and popularly use in the oral translation tasks Based on features of “equivalents constraints”, the next part will show CS as a translation technique applied in situations to indicate an interactive relationship between two languages For all of these reasons, a study on CS technique is selected to effectiveness of CS in conveying electronic terms in daily utterances

I.2.4 Motivations for applying codeswitching techniques in translation

There are numbers of possible reasons applying CS techniques in the oral translating tasks from English to Vietnamese in English for electronics Crystal (1987) lists three main reasons i.e filling lexical gaps, showing students’ attitudes towards language groups and gaining time benefit Accordingly, applying CS in the oral translation of electronic terms is based on these reasons In terms of filling lexical gaps, at first, when a translator may not express meanings of terms in Vietnamese, he/she switches in English to compensate the deficiency As a result, the translator triggers a CS term by inserting English phonemes into Vietnamese However, applying this type of CS tends to make hearers tired and the participants are ambiguous in receiving equivalent meanings and become distracted However, in a positive side, this is a way to help untrained translators fill a lack of confidence during practicing oral translating tasks in front of a group of classmates as well as indirectly show receptive meanings and structures of CS terms Besides, expressing solidarity with other partners to attract other students’ attend the text Finally, CS behavior helps them gain time benefit, particularly in functions of specific computing programs or electronic circuits By using CS, it takes them less time to encode and decode from SL to TL and vise versa without learning necessity directly influence on their learning strategies

II.1 An introduction to the textbook

The book “Basic English for Electronics and telecommunication” (BE) consisting of three episodes were compiled by teachers of ESP, CFL, VNU, Hanoi It reflects general ideas on English for electronics and telecommunication through authentic materials and topic- based exercises during the last three terms at intermediate level of COTECH electronic students both English language in general and job- oriented The first episode focuses on general parts intensively used for the second- year students including fourteen units with topics on fundamental of electricity, electronics and electronic components and telecommunication The second deals with electronic devices and systems like TVs, computers, and radar systems etc, and provides students with fundamental concepts of the latest technology i.e nanotechnology The last is a comprehensive one guiding students with a lot of available and authentic materials related to electronics and telecommunications and steps to help students to develop their critical and analytical ways of thinking and using knowledge of English in their learning process in other technical occupational situations in their real life

Intuitively, each unit begins with one particular topic closely attached to a thematic title Major headings and topic boundary continue to be numbered following systematic exercises Also, each part of the unit in every episode is followed by a case study that highlights characteristics of electronic equipments with respective terminologies and review of electronic concepts as well as exercises pertinent to a specific unit In other words, pedagogical activities

in each unit including learning key terms, topic-oriented comprehension questions, questions for reviewing, for understanding of electronic terms and concepts This three- episode textbook offers a comprehensive package of materials guiding teachers and students as untrained translators to have an overview on electronics and telecommunication in general and to find out necessary steps to strengthen knowledge of both English and electronic terminologies during reciprocal learning and teaching process For all reasons above, this book

is my selected material used to investigate how frequently CS techniques are applied to

convey electronic meanings of terms in the oral translation as the fifth skill in language learning practice in two groups 50V2 and 50V1 at VNU, COTECH Hanoi

II.2 Classification of electronic terminology according to CS structures

According to the collected data in the textbook as well as its supplementary, 532 electronic terms including 131 verbs and 401 nouns are selected to analyze in which, 151 terms are in the

CS forms with 111 CS nouns and 40 CS verbs found in the data These figures are background data used to classify CS parsers in intra-sentential form Below are mechanism used to handle

“monitor”, the normal meaning is a leader of one group who supervises or controls one action

or something related to an ability of organizing a group action Meanwhile, in converting electronic terms, its specific meaning is the main output device used to display the output from

a computer on a screen, “ :! <S!<” In Vietnamese, code switching within a sentence tends to occur more often at points where syntaxes of the two languages align Therefore, noun substitutions combining with a single Vietnamese word such as “F6 F< ?F3 creates a noun in the form of CS 4F6 ! / $ !:7 $ F< ?F ! / $ !:73A @< type of CS usually occurs in the utterances of bilingual students of electronics as a normal phenomenon in the conversation Bellows are some more examples of electronic nouns applied CS techniques in conveying meanings of terms and inserted into Vietnamese

Key:[ki:] Driver: [‘ drai-v ] Plate:[pleit] Browser:[ br uz ] Terminal:[‘t :minl]

Actually, users of these electronic terms in the form of CS nouns have used special meanings according to technical field Let’s look at the usage of technical terms in the form of CS nouns through the example as follows

Excerpt from BE E2-U2 (2007)

to read the contents of the master boot record ”

From the example above, it is easy to recognize CS nouns in the oral translation process in the Vietnamese version This English single noun “link” in the CS form combining with a single Vietnamese word “1NI!"” are inserted into Vietnamese utterances without interruption in Vietnamese At the level of CS structures, the inserting point of this term occurring becomes intra-word codeswitched item because of the random position in an utterance At the level of equivalent constraints, its position is not affected by grammatical elements and the natural fluency in the Vietnamese utterance It is not surprising that this CS noun is inserted into Vietnamese language without violating grammatical structures of either language Therefore, its meanings expressed according to English concepts are attained to show the convenience for applying CS techniques in the oral translating process

* Verb substitution

In theory, verb simply in English is a word, which occurs as a part of the predicate of a sentence, and carries markers of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person number and mood or even mentions an action or state of one man or thing (Oxford dictionary: 2002)

In terms of CS items, a Vietnamese verb can be replaced by an English root plus with a Vietnamese operator and its morphological variants For instance, the sentence

Excerpt from BE (2004:25)

“ When an external voltage is applied, the n-p junction acts as a rectifier, permitting current to flow in one direction ”

In the above example, one Vietnamese verb “1NOF "6! ): 3 F+! be replaced by CS term

“1NOF +>> 73 ! T< F< the head verb “apply” replaces a Vietnamese word “"6! ): 3 +! /+U

! +! + / !+ %F+/ " $7 /< English root verb “applied” Herein, the English verb

“applied” in Vietnamese utterance is converted into the basis and the inflection “ed” can be replaced by another single word in Vietnamese “1NOF3A

Excerpt from BE, U13 (2004)

46!< 6!" : &/ =!" !V!" NO!" FL /<H 1N9 %R F6F !" 78! /PAAAAW< !" X! 1NOFapply6 ? &/ NO!" F6F F/$ ! /$8! &/ >< ?! Q /Y FZF [ F\+ ]F ^ AAAAAAA3

number of electrons on one plate will be attracted to the positive side of the battery ”

Through the examples above, CS verbs such as “release, attract, or apply” are inserted into the Vietnamese translation as a common term to express the action of one electronic process and its inflection “ed” in English are replaced by Vietnamese ones to make the utterance like Vietnamese version easier to comprehend This contact of language with mixing phenomenon makes it possible for students to create what is the most appropriate for them to master the communicative act Also, this inserting process with CS verbs will create awareness of the structure and lexis of the two languages Thus, students of electronics can distinguish two things during language switching strategy namely social factors and language ones

II.2.2 In terms of CS constraints

According to Scotton (2002:154), constraints on CS have been a subject of discussion with grammatical properties of code mixed varieties since 1970s In her observation, two main types of constraints i.e free morpheme constraints, equivalents are mainly analyzed; However, due to the limited time and adequate features of analyzing terms in documents, in this part of the thesis, my study only focuses on the latter “equivalent constraints” used to code switch electronic terminologies during practicing translation Theoretically, with equivalent constraint, CS can occur at points in discourse when juxtaposition of L1 and L2 elements does not violate syntactic rules of either language (Scotton 2002:155) In practising CS terms in electronics, this happens similarly without violating either English or Vietnamese Let’s look

at CS terms in the following example

Excerpt from Oxford for Electronics (2000: 204)

II.3 Translation of electronic terms according CS techniques

II.3.1 Translation of electronic terms by unfamiliar abbreviations

Findings from the textbook and its supplementary materials provides documentary proofs to distinguish loan words with CS terms in electronic terms when practising CS terms with abbreviations in translating process More specifically, this part concerns how to distinguish loan words occurring to name concepts and CS terms used to call electronic items in particular situations In classification, this matter will fall into two categories:

Category 1 Electronic acronyms

Acronyms appear at a high frequency in the textbook English for BE and widely used in TL

in daily utterances of electronic field They are about designated electronic products, devices, operating process, configuration, and international institutions and so on, (cited by Vu Bich Thuy 2005: 37) Bilingual students approach English acronyms to explain names of electronic products by inserting English phonemes with beginning letters of abbreviations into Vietnamese These abbreviations become loanwords only when they are frequently used by monolingual users For instance, abbreviations i.e MP3, CD, FM or AM at first are codeswitched terms with the form of English phonemes respectively [em- pi:, si:-di:, ef-em or ei- em] Intuitively, these terms have letters similar to those in the Vietnamese alphabet The difference is that with the same letters, phonemes used to call out electronic terms are

imported from English At the beginning, these terms are regarded as CS terms in Vietnamese utterances, then they become common and use in everyday conversation, especially practised

by monolingual people, they become loanwords Thus, the distinction between loan word and

CS term is that though their appearances seem to be in the same letters, their pronunciations decide a term whether a loan word or CS one If they are used and understood by people from all walks of life, they become loanwords If they are only used by bilingual persons, they will

be CS terms (Scotton cited in Nguyen Van Khang 1999:229) Therefore, terms such as “CD, MP3, AM, FM obviously becomes loanwords because the frequency of these terms occurring

in public conversation related to telecommunications and used by monolingual people Another example with acronyms “LCD” /el-si-di/ in English phonemes also uses with English phonemes instead of Vietnamese to show ways of mixing English into Vietnamese Besides that, this abbreviation “LCD” with English phonemes is more frequently used than its full form “liquid crystal display” like in the following example

Excerpt from BE (2004:79)

4AAA_H /= &/ %=! F5! FL <+ `!< Ua!< ><[! FZFAAAA3

“ to create an LCD, you take two pieces of polarized glass ”

Obviously, English term “LCD” can be called with two systems of phonemes, English and Vietnamese In Vietnamese phonetic system, it can be pronounced as I 8 18 % / in the English classes, bilingual students usually apply English phonemes as [el- si:-di:] to read it In

a broad sense, 68,4% (63/92) students in a survey part indicates that they feel much more confident when inserting English phonemes in Vietnamese versions though they are following oral translation tasks Furthermore, their English pronunciation does not have negative affect

on oral translation because they are bilingual students and mostly practise English Again, English terms in the form of English phonetic acronyms occur in Vietnamese utterances according to styles of the matrix language not of the embedded one Herein, matrix language

is Vietnamese whereas embedded language is English Therefore, acronyms i.e CAD, VLED, CMOS, ADC, or DAC, that are codemixed with English phonemes become CS terms not loanwords

English terms Vietnamese equivalents English terms Vietnamese

equivalents

Interestingly, in a class of English, these abbreviations can be used as CS items because bilingual students frequently apply English phonetic systems to pronounce acronyms more frequently than applying Vietnamese phonetic ones Moreover, students of electronics tend to use both forms of English and Vietnamese phonetic system to call the abbreviations Let’s look at again with acronyms above by studying the following example

as well as equivalent meanings but prefer using English phonemes to express themselves In such situations, it is likely that applying CS acronyms in conveying electronic terminologies into Vietnamese utterances seems to be more convenient for electronic students in both Vietnamese utterances and oral translational tasks It is not only a way to help students express their language competence, but also a good choice for them to consolidate and memorize English terms while implementing the translating skill Herein, the conveyance of literal meanings of electronic terms depends on the way to approach acronyms by considering context and probability Students as translators have to observe various situations with different concepts in the original text to produce an equivalent term with English phonemes to show other bilingual students in the same class their ability of absorbing contents of equivalents while inserting terms into Vietnamese This becomes one of the most common habits often occurring in electronic classes and applied by bilingual students in COTECH Moreover, these acronyms often imply their hidden meanings since each letter stands for a meaningful word For instance, CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube (K!" / + F+/K/); EMF stands