A survey of improving translation skill of english majored juniors at tay do university by translating movie titles from english into vietnamese

RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON A SURVEY OF IMPROVING TRANSLATION SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED JUNIORS AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY BY TRANSLATING MOVIE TITLES FROM ENGLISH INTO... 2.3.3.1 Principles of Engl

RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON

A SURVEY OF IMPROVING TRANSLATION SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED JUNIORS AT TAY DO

UNIVERSITY BY TRANSLATING MOVIE

TITLES FROM ENGLISH INTO

people First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude toward my supervisor,

Ms Dang Thi Hanh, lecturer of Faculty of linguistics and literature of Tay Do University (TDU) This proposal could not have been completed without her enthusiastic, thoughtfulness and informative guide Actually, she instructed, commented and provided me useful references and materials so that I could complete

my research proposal In addition, she spent her valuable time guiding and encouraging

me during the time I was conducting the research

Secondly, I would like to show my special thanks to all lecturers in the Faculty of linguistics and literature of TDU for their teaching and helping me widen knowledge of English over the past four years They have given me the foundation of this research

I also would like to extend my special thanks to the Faculty of linguistics and literature

of TDU for giving me the opportunity and permission to carry out the proposal research

Last but not least, I would like to give my heartfelt gratitude to my family for the love and support They always encouraged and motivated me during my studying process

2.3.3.1 Principles of English movie title translation 14 2.3.3.2 Techniques of English movie title translation 16 2.4 Some difficulties and suggested sollutions in translation of movie titles from

2.4.1 Some difficulties in translation of movie titles from English into Vietnamese 18 2.4.2 Suggested sollutions in translation of movie titles from English into

2.5 The effects of translating movie titles on translation skill 19

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH AIMS-RESEARCH QUESTION-HYPOTHESIS 22

APPENDIX B XV

movie titles are translated into Vietnamese, some are well done while some are poorly done This survey research presents the process of the study about “A survey of improving translation skill of English majored juniors at Tay Do University by translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese” This study, which focused on English majored juniors at Tay Do University, was conducted in hope to find out the ways improving translation skill by translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese Data used for analysis in this study mainly collected through observation, survey through questionnaire and interview during the time of experimenting of proposed method The results of the research will point out the benefits from translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese toward translation skill and the freshmen can apply translating movie titles to improve their translation skill.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents rationale, significance of study and organization of the study

1.1 Rationale

There are many languages in the world Among them, English is the foremost of all It

is understood and spoken almost everywhere in the world English has become the key instrument of globalization No one denies the importance of English language in the present time as global language In some contries, it is considered as the mother tongue and in other countries as language in their school English is used in many subjects and scientific research at universities and institutes

There is no doubt that English is a language of communication among the people with different cultures It is also the language of computers that help to communicate with people around the world through Internet technology Besides, people use it in various fields of life such as economy, commerce, medicine, aviation and email In addition, it

is the language which is used in the tourism and travel In Vietnam, English is taught widely as a forgein language in order to help students meet their own purposes Certainly, English is one of necessary requirements for those who want to get a good job or continue higher education These reasons move the people to learn English

English has been an international language of not only socio-economic, culture, polictic issue but also of entertainment aspect including movie industry Movies are reflection of society “Movie is so important that it has become the first arts of the human world,” pointed out by French artist and novelist Mona (Baker, 2004, p.40) Movie is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and

powerful method for educating or indoctrinating to citizens Some movies have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogues

When learning English, students often concentrate on many skills Among these skills, translation is an important skill which needs to be developed However, there are difficulties in English-Vietnamese translation because of different in structure and culture Of course, between a foreign language and native language, there are some problems in translation in general and in translating English movie titles in particular

As Ignacy Krasicki said that “Translation is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore it is not the labor and portion of common minds; it should be practiced by those who are themselves capable of being actors, when they see greater use in translating the works of others than in their own works, and hold higher than their own glory the service that they render their country” To study translating subject well, students should try to study and practice regularly However, English majored juniors at Tay Do University still face difficulties because of three reasons Firstly, lack

of words collocation is a big problem for them They do not have enough vocabulary as well as words collocation to express or translate their thoughts Secondly, the mistakes about parts of speech are a reason affecting the student’s translation However, a good translator should limit the grammar error Finally, background knowledge is also a big obstacle because it is difficult to convey their ideas if they do not have information related to what they want to mention As a result, it is hard to have a perfect text when students usually make mistakes in translating

To solve these difficulties, there are many methods to help students improve their translation skill Nevertheless, translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese is one of the effective ways to develop their translation skill Furthermore, translating

movie titles written by native people also provides opportunities for students to learn practical language such as words collocation, parts of speech and background knowledge From these reasons above, the reasearcher decided to carry out a study about “A suvey of improving translation skill of English majored juniors at Tay Do University by translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese”

The research is done to help the juniors majoring in English at Tay Do University appreciate the positive effects of translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese

on translation skill Hence, the researcher hopes that the juniors can apply translating movie titles in order to improve their translation ability in learning English

1.2 The significance of study

Translation is extremely large in study However, due to the limit of time and knowledge, it could not be covered all matters about translation As mentioned above,

in this study, only translation of movie titles from English into Vietnamese are presented and analyzed The research is conducted to help the juniors majoring in English recognize the benefits of translating movie titles Through the research results, they can realize that translating movie titles has some positive effects in translation skill and they can apply this way to improve their translation skill in learning English

1.3 The organization of study

The research consist of five chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature review

Chapter 3: Research aims- Research question- Hypothesis

Chapter 4: Research methodology

Chapter 5: Expected outcome

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents the definition of translation, its importance, types of translation and what factors affect the process of practicing it It also includes the definition of movie titles, characteristic of English movie titles, princible and techniques of English movie titles translation In addition, it also has some difficulties in translation movie titles and suggested solution and the effect of translating movie titles in English on translation skill

2.1 Translation

2.1.1 The definition of translation

Translation is an operation performed on language It is an across the board skill which helps to improve student’s language proficiently in the process of translation, a text in another Thus, it is the important means of communication between people in different language Since then, it can attract the attention of many linguistics researchers and translation theorists, so what is translation? There are many definitions around this While Toury (1978:p200) stated “Translation is a kind of activity, which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions” Translation is the action of explanation of the meaning of a text, and a subsequent production of an equivalent text called a translation, that communicates the same message in another language The translated text is called the source text, and the language which is to be translated into

is called the target language The final product is sometimes called the target text Similary, “Translation consists of producing in the target language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, firstly with respect to meaning and secondly with respect to style.” (E A Nida (1959) Besides, according to the

Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1974), translation consists of changing from one state or from to another, to turn into one’s own or another’s language Savory (1968) says that translation is made possible by an equivelent of thought that lies behind its different verbal expressions As Eugene Nida (1959) argues that “Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language (the source text) and the production, in another language of an equivelent text (the target text) that communicates the same message” Actually, translating is difficult because it requires not only parts of speech but also the rule of translating such as words collocation and background knowledge Thus, Peter NewMark mentions that “Translation is rendering the meaning of text into another language in the way that the author intended the text”

To summarize, translation is the basically change of form In translation the form of the source language is replaced by the form of the target language by using grammar structure, vocabulary and background knowledge

2.1.2 The importance of translation

Ross (2000) mentions that “Translation holds a special importance at an intermediate and advanced level: in the advanced or final stage of language teaching, translation from Language 1 (L1) to Language 2 (L2) ad from L2 to L1 is recognized as the fifth skill and the most important social skill since it promotes communication and understanding between strangers” Therefore, people cannot deny the importance of English in the world, translation is important because many books, manuals, letters, email, products and information are written in English If people have a good translation skill, they can connect together all over the world Moreover, they can avoid misunderstanding in commucation

For students learning English, translating is a necessary tool to support for learning English of students because it makes the distance between the source language and the target language closer According to David Katan (2002:16) “…the translator is a bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in two different language communities” Another equally important reason in that translator is one of the best jobs in modern social life So translating skill is also necessary for students learning English as a second language

2.1.3 Types of translation

For learners of English, there are different approaches to translation For a number of definitions of translation given above, we can see that understanding towards translation varies from one to another As the results of such diversity, translation can

be classified into different viewpoints The followings are the commonly used translation types:

Word-for-Word translation

This is the type of translation that learners of English are likely to take up in the process of mastering their translation skill In word-for-word translation, the source language word order is preserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context In word-for-word translation, the result often makes little sense, especially when idioms are involved The translators can use word-for-word translation both to understand the machanism of the source language and to construct a rough process for a difficult text

For example: “Red eye” is translated into “Mắt đỏ”

Literal translation

Literal translation is a broader of translation, each source language word has a corresponding target language word, but their primary meanings may differ Literal translation follows very closely the grammatical and lexical forms of the source text language Literal translation is considered as the basic translation step, both in communicative and semantic translation

For example: “Brave heart” is translated into “Trái tim dũng cảm”

Faithful translation

A faithful translation requires a faithful precision in meaning and grammar structure of the original However, we can also transmit the source language text into the target language one more flexibly basing on its contextual meaning

Semantic translation

Newmark (1892) states that: “Semantic translating where the translator attempts, within the base syntactic and semantic constraints of the target language, to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the author” Therefore, the semantic translation is more flexible than faithful, admits the creative exception and allows the translator’s intuitive concession with the orginal

Free translation

Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called “intralingual translation”, not translation at all The disadvantage of this type is that translating is too casual to understand the original because of its freedom

translator still has to respect and work on the form of the source language text as the only material basic for his work” (Peter Newmark, 1982: p39)

Adaptation

Dung Vu (2004) pointed out: “Adaptation has a property of lending the ideas of the original to create a new text by a new language more than to be faithful to the original The creation in adaptation is completely objective in content as well as form” So, adaptation is the freest form of translation

For example: “Perfect storm” film is translated into “Cơn bão kinh hoàng”

2.2 Factor affecting translating skill

In learning English as a foreign language, it is not easy to be good learner in translation skill For the juniors majoring in English at Tay Do University, they have already faced some difficulties In this research, the researcher would like to analyze three common reasons that most of students meet in their translation skill

2.2.1 Word collocation

A collocation is pair of group of words that are often used together, these combinations sound natural to native speakers, but students of English have to make a special effort

to learn them because they are often difficult to guess Some combinations just sound

“wrong” to native speakers of English (Michael McCarthy & Felicuty O’Dell, English collocations in use)

Learning collocations is an important part of learning the vocabulary of a language Some collocations are fixed or very strong For example, take a photo, where no word other than “take” collocates with “photo” to give the same meaing Some collocations are more open, where several different words maybe used to give a similar meaning as

“keep to the rules” or “stick to the rules” is still fine

Sometimes, a pair of word may not be absolutely wrong and people will understand what is meant, but it may not be natural, normal collocation If someone says “I did a mistake” the native speakers will understand but a fluent speaker of English would probaly say “I made a mistake”

Learning collocations is good idea First, they can give us the most natural way to say something: smoking is stricktly forbidden is more natural than smoking is strongly forbidden Next, collocations provide alternative ways of expressing something, which may be more colorful more precise Finally, they help us to improve our style in writing or translation as well: instead of saying “poverty cause crime”, we can say” poverty breeds crime”; instead of saying a big meal, we can say a substantial meal Maybe we do not need to use these in informal conversations but in writing and translation they can make our text more variety and make it better

2.2.2 Part of speech

In English, part of speech is considered as a basic and important factor which is defined as “a class of words sharing important syntactic oe semactic feature; a group of words in a language that may occur in similar positions or fulfill similar to functions in

a sentence” (Collins English Dictionary, 2012)

There are eight basic parst of speech in the English language: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjaction The part of speech indicates how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within the sentence An individual word can function as more than one part of speech when used

in different circumstances (Butter College, 2016)

It is important to remember that discriminating part of speech in English mainly based

on functions of the words in sentences It is very hard for the laerners when encoutering multiple function words in sentences, which could have more than two functions, it could be a noun, a verb, an adjective or pronoun, etc For example: I have two hands (“hands” ia a noun) He hands me the paper (“hands” is a verb)

In general, guessing the functions of the words based on the circumstances is on of the difficulties of learners of English freshmen that they usually face The grammar errors related to part of speech occur when the translators do not remember all of the suffixes which change class of the words, the grammatical structures as well as connot discriminate among parts of speech of the words or they do not fully comprehend the meaning of the sentences that needs to be translated

As can be seen from above, some translators, especially the learners of English junior foucused on the structure of the source language (English) so much that they fail to convey all the implicit meaning of the target language (Vietnamese) In fact, it is not necessary to keep the form at all The most important thing is that the translations must

be done on the basic of targer language grammr that is familiar to the readers Thus,

principle state that the translators should not denpend on the structures of the source language but they should break them to convey the meaning as much as posible in an approciate structure in the target language Moreover, when the translators are experts

at using part of speech, which absolutely can be train through practicing translation that will highly support to their translation process especially English-Vietnamese translation

2.2.3 Background knowledge

In addition, students meet difficulty to show their opinions because lacking of general knowledge Background knowlwdge is essential to have a good translation In translation skill, background knowledge consists of many espects in practical life such

as culture, society, custom and so on As Proveb (1990:18) affirms that “background knowledge includes knowledge of target culture, knowedge of current affairs, arts, politics and literature” With poor background knowledge, students cannot build good ideas to attract readers They do not know how to express what they want to say because they lack information about the new topics Moreover, student rarely read some materials to enrich the knowledge about various topics in real world When they face unfamiliar topics, they are confused to show their thoughts because of lacking necessary information As Pourhosein and Reza: “Context and situation involve such things as knowledge of the text hand” (2011:979) Thus, they often make readers bored because of not having enough background knowledge in their translation For these reasons, background knowledge is an importance role and aslo make a difficult for students in translating from English into Vietnamese “Learning is effective when it is possesed with meaning full material related to knowledge that learners already posses” (Ausubel, 1969:9)

2.3 Language of movie title

2.3.1 The definition of movie title

A common name for film in the United States is movie, while Europe the term cinema

is prefered Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema and the movies Movie title is the name of a movie

2.3.2 Characteristics of English movie titles

English is a very concise language The average English word is often shorter than its Vietnamese equivelent On the other hand, it usually needs many Vietnamese words to express the meaning of one English word In addition, most words in English have several meanings conveying different meanings and using the same word in a different context Characterized by some features of English language, similar characteristics can be seen in English movie titles The best translated version is the one that can remain those features at the maximum level

2.3.2.1 Brief and concise

English movie titles are usually concise and straight to the point Many of them just contain one to three words including lexical words The main components are nouns, uncountable nouns (as in The Piano, The Lion King, The Idiot…) English movie titles have simple structure with a subject and a predicate (as in I am Sam, Ten things I hate about you, )

Despite their briefness, they are expensive and suggestive words conveying a lot of information, conveying the movie plot and theme

2.3.2.2 Descriptive

Peter Newmark divides titles into two categories: descriptive and allusive Desciptive titles “describe the topic of the text” directly while allusive titles “have some kinds of referential or figurative relationship to the topic” (Zheng Feng, 2005) A descriptive title is capable to provide the audience with a general idea of a story

More descriptive movie titles than allusive ones are found as English language is straight to the point On the contrary, Vietnamese movie titles are often allusive, which

is characterized by characteristics of Vietnamese ( as in Thời xa vắng, cánh đồng hoang…) Due to the linguistic difference between English and Vietnamese, it is not a facile task to remain this feature in the translated version Sometimes translators have

to make choice to translate the orginal title regardless of its descriptiveness or to create

a new but descriptive one

2.3.3 Principles and techniques of English movie title translation

2.3.3.1 Principles of English movie title translation

Faithfulness to the context

Faithfulness to the context may be the first principle in title translation The context is also called “the invisible in translation” by Abdolmehdi Riazi In screen translation, the context embraces movie details It is conventionally believed that familiariry with the source and target languages, as well as the subject matter to be translated is enough for

a good translation In fact, the role of context in screen translation now seems critical Taking the context into consideration is a promising tool more impressive Vietnamese titles Let analyze an example, “Red eye” The title is word for word translated as “Mắt đỏ” in Vietnamese At first, this title may cause confusion for audience, for with the Vietnamese title “Mắt đỏ”, it is not easy to catch the movie plot However, by looking

at the English title and watch film, we can explain how it links to the content In fact,

“red eye” is a term referring to an overnight flight operated by an airline roughly during the period from 1:00 to 4:00 AM The term “red-eye” derives from the fatigue symptom of having red eyes during the night flight (definition of Wikipedia) The story takes place on such a flight and the title “Mắt đỏ” is translated faithfully to the context With the cited example, obviously translators have to respect to orginal title or at least respect the movie story The excellent title is faithful to both like the case of “Red eye”

Consideration of movie genre

In addition to the context, the genre needs to be taken into account while translating title The translated title is produced in a way that can convey the movie genre If the genre is comedy, it should be a humorous, funny, cute to provoke interest, laughter and curiosity If it is a romance, the title should be gentle and romantic Similarly, the name

of a horror film needs to sound scary, threatening or haunting

Example: The Vietnamese name of an animated movie “Chicken-run” as “Phi đội gà bay” is an intriguing one, making a good match with the genre of animated comedy as well as the content

Cutural awareness

According to Even-Zohar, translation is acculturation and negotiation between two cultures and translation is now culturally oriented Due to cultural differences between Vietnamese and English, English movie title bears extinctive features of its own and lack of cultural awareness and knowledge will lead to mistranslation

Example: The significance of cultural awareness can be also seen through the translation of “Murder at 1600” Many will be confused of the number 1600 if they do not know that 1600 is a part of the address of the White House In addition, this movie