(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) the equivalence of english and vietnamese translation of noun phrases in the book fire and fury by michael wolff

Strategies in translation would be regarded for the treatment of the linguistic situations where mismatches exemplified for the holes between the two languages in term of lexicon, gramma

LÃ THỊ PHƯƠNG LOAN

THE EQUIVALENCE OF ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE

TRANSLATION OF NOUN PHRASES IN THE BOOK

“FIRE AND FURY” BY MICHAEL WOLFF Tính Tương Đương Trong Bản Dịch Anh – Việt Đối Với Cụm Danh Từ Trong

Tác Phẩm “Bão Lửa Và Cuồng Nộ” của Michael Wolff

M.A THESIS (PROGRAM 1)

Field:English Linguistics Code:8220201.01

HANOI – 2020

LÃ THỊ PHƯƠNG LOAN

THE EQUIVALENCE OF ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE

TRANSLATION OF NOUN PHRASES IN THE BOOK

“FIRE AND FURY” BY MICHAEL WOLFF Tính Tương Đương Trong Bản Dịch Anh – Việt Đối Với Cụm Danh Từ Trong

Tác Phẩm “Bão Lửa Và Cuồng Nộ” của Michael Wolff

M.A THESIS (PROGRAM 1)

Field: English Linguistics Code:8220201.01

Supervisor: Assoc Professor Dr Le Hung Tien

any previous application for a degree This thesis is submitted after a carefully

checking progress in order to fulfill the requirements of the M.A degree

Hanoi, 2020

Lã Thị Phương Loan

was not completed without their support I would like to express my sincere gratitude and respect to:

 Assoc Professor Dr Le Hung Tien whose precious guidance, advice and supervision are the assets to the thesis;

 All the lectures of English Department of Hanoi University of Language and International Studies who have always been reliable teachers for the encouragement and enlightenment;

 My colleagues for their support of time and encouragement;

 Last but not least, the members in my family who have always given me great support and encouragement all the time

Finally, I thank for all the constructive criticism and suggestion from the readers for the better contribution of the thesis

Hanoi, January 2020

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collected in Chapter II of the book “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff was taken under the aspects of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context The study aims at testifying the importance of equivalence in the process of translation among languages and clarifying the mismatches between the two

languages according to the theory of Meaning-based Translation by Larson (1984)

The mismatches of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context between the two versions are the principal elements for the assessment of the equivalents of the collected noun phrases in the translation The contrastive analysis was implemented at the level of phrase and lexis to draw out the mismatches between the two language texts in term of lexicon, grammatical structures and situational and cultural context The method of descriptive qualitative and approach

as well as the inductive method was used for the implementation of the study 67 mismatches of lexicon in term of surface structure and one case of mismatch in deep structure (deep meaning) were found In the case of changes in deep meaning, the original information can be distorted Deep structure is therefore given higher priority over the surface structure in order to get the faithful and natural translation There are 16 cases of situational and cultural mismatch (four cases of cultural mismatch, eleven cases of situational mismatch) The translator showed the flexible attitude to make the justifiable adjustment, which is clearly illustrated with three cases stay intact, three cases translated in target culture and nine cases following the style of source culture 18 mismatches of grammatical structure were found, which shows the fact that the English text has the priority of noun phrases while Vietnamese favors verbal expression 6 cases of literal translation have been found during the investigation From the findings, useful experiences and principles of

translation have been drawn out: Mismatches in term of language features and situation communication are inevitable, the theory of equivalent translation is therefore very necessary in translation The knowledge of divergent language systems, cultural norms and mismatches of lexicon would help the translator, English teacher and their students deal with the gaps in term of language and cultures and gain their targets effectively

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vii

CHAPTER 1 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the Study 2

1.3 Scope of the Study 3

1.4 Methodology 3

1.5 Organization of the thesis 4

CHAPTER 2 5

Literature Review 5

2.1 Translation theory 5

2.1.1 Concept of translation 5

2.1.2 Notion of equivalence: 7

2.1.3 Translation equivalence 8

2.1 Larson’s Translation strategies 10

2.1.1 Concerning concepts 10

2.1.2 Larson’s translation strategies 13

2.2 Noun phrase 17

2.2.1 English Noun phrase 17

2.2.2 Noun phrase in Vietnamese 18

CHAPTER 3 21

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 21

3.1 Research question 21

3.2 Research approach 21

3.3 Research method 24

3.4 Data collection 25

3.5 Data analysis 25

3.5.1 Categorizing 25

3.5.2 Classifying 26

3.5.3 Analyzing 26

CHAPTER 4 30

DESCRIPTION AND EVALUATION OF EQUIVALENT TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH NOUN PHRASES 30

4.1 Data analysis 30

4.1.1 Mismatches of lexicon 31

4.1.2 Mismatches of grammatical structure 37

4.1.3 Mismatches of situational and cultural context 41

4.2 Cases of literal translation 44

4.3 Discussion 46

4.4 The findings and implication 48

4.4.1 Findings 48

4.4.2 Implication 50

CHAPTER 5 53

CONCLUSION 53

5.1 Results and significance of the study 53

5.2 The limitation of the study 55

REFERENCES 56 APPENDIX I

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Translation process by Larson (1984: 4) 13 Figure 2: Translation as a continuum by Larson (1984: 17) 14 Table 1: Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt by Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1998: 203) 19 Table 2: The summary of findings for mismatches are shown as the table below 48

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

Translation means conveying information from one language (source language)

to another language (target language) Nowadays, in the world of communication and international integration in various aspects of life, the need for information exchange and development or enhancement of relationships with different people and nations of various cultures at the international level is more and more indispensable, the role of translation is therefore inevitable Of all languages, English, as one of the officially and widely recognized international languages, has the largest number of target language or source language in term of translation In fact, English covers almost in-formal as well

as formal material of all fields as a language of target text or source text Unexceptionably, we have seen the need for Vietnamese language to be in the relation with English as the target language or source language in all kinds of material However, translators have dealt with many obstacles during their process of translation due to the differences in term of language features, communication situation and culture Those differences show the inevitable reality in translation, which forces the

theorists to set out the concepts of equivalence in translation that help translators to be

justifiably aware of the differences and have the reasonable methods for their task That

is the reason why the concept translation equivalence is one of the key words in my

thesis Due to the length of the thesis, it is impossible for the author to refer to all linguistic ranks and the collection of noun phrases in the chapter II of the book “Fire and Fury” was taken to get the data for the study “The equivalence of English and

Vietnamese Translation of Noun Phrases in the book Fire and Fury” Both English

noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases have pre-modifiers and post-modifiers; nevertheless, the formation of noun phrase in the two languages is different in term of structure and order of modifying-elements The post-modifiers are rather complex,

ranked from phrases to finite, non-finite and verbless clauses However, the author has

learnt from other theses that the difficulties in translation of noun phrases in term of structures (basing on structural differences of noun phrases in the two languages:

English and Vietnamese) have been investigated One more experience learnt from the article “The characters and functions of the nominalization in the science and

technology document” by Professor Hoang Van Van that it is not proper if the

elements such as situational context, culture, communication situation etc are not taken into consideration when translating noun phrases”, the author therefore decided to apply the translation strategies basing on the meaning-based method by Larson (1984) for the assessment of the equivalence of Noun phrases in the book “Fire and Fury” Strategies in translation would be regarded for the treatment of the linguistic situations where mismatches exemplified for the holes between the two languages in term of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context Those kinds of gaps need filling to gain the equivalence The basic theoretical concepts of meaning and

lexical choice in Larson (1984) Meaning –Based Translation, would be very helpful

for the analysis of the data The complex of modifiers in English noun phrase reflexes the fact that a large amount of information of the message can be contained in a noun phrase Translators therefore may cope with many obstacles to decode meaning and capture rightful information contained in English noun phrase during the process of translation This reality encourages me to take the rank of noun phrase into the investigation

1.2 Aims and objectives of the Study

1.2.1 Aims of the study:

- To compare the noun phrases in the original text of the book “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff and the Vietnamese version translated by Tran Trong Hai Minh and to identify mismatches between the two texts in term of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context

- To find out how the translator deal with those mismatches to achieve the equivalent translation

1.2.3 The objectives of the study:

- To clarify the mismatches between the two languages found in the translation of the noun phrases in the Chapter II of the book “Fire and

Fury” according to the theory of Meaning-based Translation by Larson

(1984)

- To investigate the equivalence between the source text and target text at the range of noun phrase

1.3 Scope of the Study

The thesis investigated the equivalence of the English and Vietnamese translation of the noun phrases collected in Chapter II of the book “Fire and Fury”

by Michael Wolff, published by Henry and Holt Company in New York in the year

2018 and its target text in Vietnamese “Bão lửa và cuồng nộ” translated by Tran

Trong Hai Minh (a journalist and reporter) and published by Vietnam Literature Association The mismatches of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context between the two versions are the principal elements for the assessment of the equivalence of the collected noun phrases in the translation The theory of translation strategies by Larson (1984) and theories of dynamic equivalence are the resorts for the assessment

1.4 Methodology

The contrastive analysis will be taken at the level of phrase and lexis to draw out the mismatches between the two language texts at the range of lexicon, grammatical structures and situational and cultural context 28 examples of noun phrase in the source language text and their target version are analyzed and interpreted The thesis concentrates on how the noun phrases are translated in Vietnamese equivalence

The method of descriptive qualitative and approach was resorted to make the description and interpretation of the language of translation of the noun phrases in the target text in order to find out the useful and practical implications for translators and students of the area

The inductive method is used for the implementation of the study From the typical examples of English noun phrases taken from the book “Fire and Fury”, I based on the language features as well as the differences in term of situational and cultural context between the two languages to conduct the assessment of translation equivalence between the two versions, then draw out some experiences and rules for the translators and English learners

1.5 Organization of the thesis

Chapter 1: Introduction

The rationale for the study, aims of the study, scope of the study, methodology used

to conduct the study and the organization of the thesis are introduced in this part Chapter 2: Literature review: (1) translation theories, Larson‟s translation strategies and (3) Notion of noun phrase and noun phrases in English and Vietnamese

Chapter 3: Methodology Chapter 4: Description and Evaluation of The Equivalence of English Noun

Phrases in The Translation: (1) data analysis and (2) implication and findings

Chapter 5: Conclusion

of translation by different authors in the field, depending on how they view language and translation According to Foster (1958), translation is defined as a mental activity in which meaning of a given language discourse is rendered from one language to another Through the process of translation, linguistic entities are transferred from one language into their equivalents to another language, which means that many related elements are deliberately considered in the translation, and translation therefore is not only a normally physical movement of linguistic entities but the mental one

Peter Newmark (1988: 7) identifies translation as “a craft consisting in the attempt replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the sane message and/or statement in another language” The word “craft” does not only mean the act of crafting but also refers to connotative meaning Peter Newmark‟s view on „translation‟ is showed clearly in his work “A Textbook of Translation” He refers to translation as a science, a skill which entails the knowledge The process of translation bears the creative, the intuitive, the inspired and a matter of taste

Translation, as defined by Catford (1995), is the replacement of textual material

in one language by equivalent textual material in another language Types and shifts are the main concepts in his contribution in the field of translation There are three criteria of types including: full translation, total translation, rank-bound - translation

and unbounded translation; while Shifts refer to the changes that take place during

to discuss the nature of translation therefore he does not refer to cultural, situational and historical factors which should also be taken into consideration along with the discipline as claimed by Snell-Hornby (1988)

Hatim and Munday (2004: 6) define translation as “the process of transferring a written text from source language (SL) to target language (TL)” In the two points

of view, the authors do not explicitly express that the object being transferred

is meaning or message, they only points to the text itself

Ghazala (1995) goes further with the translation which is partly more concrete

“translation is generally used to refer to all the process and methods used to convey the meaning of the source language into the target language” He focuses on both terms: meaning as an essential element in translation and method that helps to transfer meaning That is, understanding the meaning of the source text as well as the effective method is the vital and decisive element to gain the appropriate equivalence in the target text It is meaning that is translated related to lexicon, grammar, culture, situational communication and so on and methods are the resort to solve the differences regarding to the above elements

Besides, Nida and Taber (1982: 12) also refers to the reproduction of the meaning

of the source language text into that of the target language text by saying that translation comprises the transforming in the receptor language at the nearest natural equivalent level of the source language message in term of both meaning and style Larson (1984) highlights the result of the translation process, which regards to the conformity of the target text to the source text in relation to the semantic structure He poses that meaning of the source text must not be distorted when it is translated into the target text, which means that the original flavor shall be kept unchanged He raises the importance of keeping the meaning constant despite the changes in form when linguistic entities are turned into the form of the target language

In summary, only Catford (1995) and Hatim and Munday (2004) do not refer to

meaning or message as well as the related elements that need deliberately

considering, including language features, culture, situational contexts They only refer to the text itself which is only the container not the flavor of the source text The others all refer to the concept of equivalence in translation in different ways

Peter Newmark (1988) uses the words knowledge, art, science and skill to describe

the task of translation, which implies the gaps between the two texts need filling during the process of translation by translators According Foster (1958), translation process does not mean physically substituting words, he realized that linguistic entities must be mentally transferred into their equivalents to another language with

a deliberate consideration of related elements Ghazala (1995), Nida and Taber

(1982), and Larson (1984) all refers to the word meaning in their views of translation Ghazala (1995) uses the phrase appropriate equivalent to express his view of translation target while Nida and Taber (1982) say the nearest equivalent in

term of meaning and style is necessary in translation Larson (1984) raises the importance of keeping meaning instant despite the changes in form

2.1.2 Notion of equivalence:

The notion Equivalence plays the central role in translation The equivalence‟s

typical status in translation helps it to evolve many different points of view in translation In fact, we deal with two systems of languages: source language and target language Each language has its own set of language features, culture, communication situation of which some are shared and some are not shared In case

of literal translation, it is easy for us to be aware of the notion of equivalence, hence all the translator does is substitute words from one language for words in another language and clarify grammar features However, the translation itself is factually much more complicated Literal translation cannot help to convey the original flavor of the source language text due to the differences or even big holes in term of language, culture and communication situation between the two languages; subsequently concepts don‟t always exist equally in two different languages or cultures The translator then often decodes the deep structure of words or phrases in

a sentence by using his understanding of context and culture, then seek the correct

encoding in the target language This requires the translator to have a deep understanding of both cultures, not just the language In fact, one can speak both languages fluently, but if he/she does not understand the idiomatic meaning of words and culture behind them, the translation would be unfaithful to the original spirit A literal translation is unacceptable – it is very necessary for the translator to

capture the deep structure or meaning behind the words Equivalence is a powerful

tool in service of that goal, but it is only an effective resort when you have a deep, comprehensive understanding of the deep meaning of words or phrases As Peter Newmark (1988: 51) points out that meaning is basically known as a network of various relations which is very complicated and it shall be deliberately considered at

many levels in the process of translation

2.1.3 Translation equivalence

Translation equivalence is an important concept of translation theory It is considered one of the most important and core issues in translation theory since the second half of the twentieth century Gaining equivalents has become the problematic factor that the translator deal with As Catford indicates “the central problem of translation practice is that of finding target language equivalents A central task of translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence.” (Catford, 1965, P.21) In fact, the concept of equivalence

in translation theory is included in many works by prominent theorists

Nida (1964: 159) evolves two essential orientations in translating, including formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence Formal equivalence focuses on the message itself in term of both form and content while dynamic equivalence aimed at complete natural expression The formal equivalence comprises the view of point that the message in the receptor language text should as close as possible match the different elements in the source language text However, the dynamic equivalence does not involve the relation between the source message and the target message, a follower of dynamic equivalence tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant to the context of his own culture

Baker (1992) proposes a more detailed list of elements relating to the concept of equivalence She investigates the notion of equivalence at different levels, in relation to the translation process, including various aspects of the linguistic and the communicative approach She identifies the different aspects of equivalence: (1) Equivalence can happen at levels of word and above word She mentions words as a single unit which is assigned an equivalent in target language; and a single word can

be assigned in different meanings in different languages, which evolves the fact that the translator shall look at a number of factors when considering a single word such

as number, gender and tense (2) In term of textual equivalence, Baker aims at essential factors, including the target audience, the purpose of the translation and text type, would guide the translator‟s decision In her opinion, it is very necessary for the translator to create a cohesive and coherent text for the target audience in a specific context (3) With respect to grammatical equivalence, she regards to the diversity of grammatical categories across languages She argues that grammatical rules are different across languages, which may lead to obstacles in term of finding

a correspondence in target language More specifically, she claims that differences

in term of grammatical structure between the source language and the target language may cause significant changes in the way the information or message is carried across These changes may cause the unfaithfulness to the original spirit due

to addition or omission of information in the target text because of the lack of certain grammatical devices in the target language (4) Besides, Baker proposes the pragmatic equivalence The author pays much attention to the notion implicature in translation since it refers to the information which is not explicitly said in the source text, it lies under the surface linguistic structure It is therefore necessary for translators to discover the implied meanings in translation in order to get the source message across The translator has the duty to reproduce the author‟s intention in another language of different linguistic features and in another culture in such a way that enables the target readership to capture it clearly

Bell (1991: 6) refers to the term equivalent translation of different levels such as

semantics, grammar, lexis, context and so on He claims that texts in different languages can be fully or partly equivalent at different ranks of words, phrases and sentences The source language text sometimes has no meaning in the target text and the meaning in the target text gained partly or fully equivalent to the source language text because the two texts may share the communicative situation and purpose House (1997) argues that the original and translation should match one another

in function The author raises the importance of function in equivalence The translation is only considered to be adequate in quality if it matches the “textual” profile and function of the original She evolves two types of translation: overt translation and covert translation In an overt translation text, the translator makes

no attempt to hide the fact that it is a translation, in other words reader find it easy

to recognize that it is a translation However, a cover translation always makes the target readers feel that it is not a translation because some implicit information captured by intended reader of the source language text is made explicit in the target language text for the benefit of the target culture and intelligibility

Newmark‟s point of view on the equivalence translation is expressed in his two

books: Approaches to Translation (1981) and A Textbook of Translation (1988) He

does not refer to the terms formal and dynamic equivalence like Nida does, instead

he notes the term semantic and communicative translation respectively Semantic focuses on meaning, while communicative which refers to the needs of the

addressee focuses on effect The communicative translation therefore tries to satisfy the readers by producing the target language text with the deliberate consideration

of smoothness and readability Particularly, Newmark (1981) shows his strong belief that literal translation is the best approach in term of semantic and communicative translation, but the communicative translation would be more favored in case of conflict between the two forms of translation

2.1 Larson’s Translation strategies

2.1.1 Concerning concepts

Larson clarifies the concepts with respect to what he interprets in his translation strategies

(1) Form and meaning: Form is something that can be seen in sprint and heard

in speech like words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraph etc which are regarded

as surface structure of a language Form of one language, source language, is placed by the form of another, target language, in the process of translation Meaning, on the other hand, is referred to as deep structure which is information or content to be transferred from source language text to the target language text It is constituted by the elements of lexical and grammatical structure, communication situation and cultural context of the source language text The translator has to analyze the above elements to determine meaning

(2) Implicit meaning and explicit meaning: Various kinds of meaning constitute

the meaning of the text on a whole Some of those may not be overtly expressed in the forms of the source language text, which is called implicit meaning Clearly, explicit meanings are those overtly expressed in the source language text The translator therefore shall consider both explicit and implicit information to uncover the whole meaning of the source language text

(3) Referential meaning, organizational meaning and situational meaning:

Referential meaning is what the communication refers to It is the information or

content contained in the source language text which is organized into the semantic

structure Organizational meaning is formed on the base of the information referred

earlier in the same text It therefore helps to put the information together in order to create a coherent text The translator sometimes builds up meaning on the base of

the communication situation, by that way, the organizational meaning is formed It

is crucial to the understanding of any text The situational matters resulting in situational meaning may include where and when the communication take places, age, sex and social status of the addresser and addressee, cultural back grounds and

one correlation between form and meaning While the characteristic of “skewing” is

the reason for the constituting the secondary and the figurative meaning In each language, there is the diversity or the lack of one to one correlation between form and meaning which is the characteristic of “skewing” Larson (1984) points out that distinctive forms for representing the meaning are different across languages and

“skewing” helps to avoid the literal translation which may leads to the distortion of

meaning since the same meaning may be expressed in different forms in the other

language In fact, one language may be interested in forms of noun while the other

is interested in verbal usage The skewing between grammar and semantic structure therefore shall be considered in order to find the underlying meaning In any

circumstance, meaning always takes the priority over form

(5) Lexical equivalent: Normally, the two languages are spoken by people of

different cultures, the lexical of the two certain languages will therefore not match Accordingly, the term lexical equivalent, a term crucial to matters of faithfulness and naturalness, has become so popular in translation Larson (1984: 153) says there are three matters concerning to the choices of adequate lexical equivalents, including: concepts when knowledge is shared, concepts when knowledge is not shared and key terms of the text that need special treatment He further discusses the complexity of the term lexical equivalent by pointing out that even in the case of shared concepts “the way in which they are expressed in the two languages is often very different” Meaning components and the way in which they are combined are different across languages, especially mismatches in term of secondary senses and figurative senses of lexical items In fact, some senses of meaning may be figurative

in one language but non-figurative in another, positive in one language but negative

in another

(6) Communication situation: According to Larson (1984), the elements

concerning to communication situation comprises of the author, purpose in his writing, the audience, the relationship between the author and the audience, culture

of the source text, common knowledge shared by both readers of source language

and target readership, social context and other factors Of which the author‟s attitude toward his audience in an important part of communication as author always writes with his writer in mind Culture is also an indispensable element in the communication situation for the fact that language is part of culture and as stated by Larson (1984: 431) “translation from one language to another cannot be done adequately without knowledge of the two cultures as well as the two language structures”

2.1.2 Larson’s translation strategies

According to Mildred Larson, Translator bases on the source language text to discover the meaning and then represses the meaning in the receptor language During the process of translation, he/she can use tools like dictionaries, lexicons, grammars, cultural descriptions etc of both source language and target language She holds the opinion that the translator has the duty to keep meaning constant in the target language text Basically, the form of the source language may change as it

is turned into the target language text however the distortion of meaning is not permitted in the translation The translator therefore often considers the different kinds of meaning (primary meaning, secondary meaning and figurative meaning) which convey the explicit and implicit information of the text, as well as communication situation which comprises historical setting, cultural setting,

author‟s intention when translating the document

Figure 1: Translation process by Larson (1984: 4)

As argued by Larson, translation concerns not only linguistic features but also other elements of communication situation, hence referential and structural meaning, situational meaning is regarded as a crucial factor that helps the translator interpret the author‟s culture or the cultural information given in the text According

to Larson (1984: 15), there are two main types of translation, mainly form-based and meaning-based translation Form-based translation attempts to follow the form

of Source Language and is known as literal translation, while meaning-based translation makes every effort to communicate the meaning of the SL text in the natural forms of the receptor language Such translation is called idiomatic translation which means that translation shall not sound like a translation It shall gain both targets: natural as much as possible in the target language text and not to

Figure 2: Translation as a continuum by Larson (1984: 17)

Larson (1984: 16) says that idiomatic translations use the natural forms of the receptor language both in the grammatical constructions and in the choices of lexical items A successful translation would be an idiomatic translation which seems to be written originally in the receptor language However, a translation is often a mixture of literal and idiomatic forms of language Translation then falls on

a continuum from very literal, to literal, to modified literal, to near idiomatic, to idiomatic, and may fall, even more on the unduly free as displayed above Within

my thesis, I grouped the cases into two groups: literal translation and idiomatic translation This division is based on Larson‟s framework of translation strategies and the collected data

Mismatch of grammatical structure:

Larson (1984: 58) also notes that the translator shall consider the skewing between grammar and the semantic categories in order to find the underlying meaning He must be aware of this skewing in the source language as the same form may be used as two different parts of speech Since language system has its own way to arrange concepts into different parts of speech, there is little guarantee that a noun in one language is often best translated by a noun in another language One language may have the preferential use of noun while the other may be expressed in the same meaning by forms of verbal noun Being aware of the natural differences between languages would be very useful for the translator to gain both faithfulness and intelligibility in his/her translation because skewing between semantic classes and part of speech occurs often

Mismatch of lexicon:

Larson (1984: 154) points out the fact that the languages may share some concepts but may not share the others Even in cases where concepts are shared, the way in which they are expressed in the two languages is not always the same, it is often very different Meaning components are combined, divided and grouped differently in different languages She also states “there is usually complete mismatch between secondary senses and figurative senses of lexical items between languages” How to attain the best lexical equivalent for the translation is an uneasy question for translators According to Larson (1984), the translator must be aware of the fact that a single word in source language text may be translated by one word or

by more than one word in the target language text and vice versa several words in the source language text may be sometimes translated by one word in the target language text A complete match between the two languages happen when there is the same primary sense used in both texts Besides, the translator shall accept different ways in the two languages in expressing the same concepts since lexical structures of the two languages are different Sometimes, the translator unpacks the meaning components of a word in source language and then use phrase and clause

in target language to express the meaning in the translation The equivalent lexical items will almost never have the same secondary senses from one language to language; figure senses therefore always need adjustments in translation Sometimes a nonfigurative equivalent will be needed in the receptor language

Mismatch of situational and cultural context:

For Larson, choices of lexical items shall be taken into consideration from the point of view of situational context Communication situation is very important for rightful interpretation of information contained in the source language text The meaning is partly determined by who author was, purpose in his writing, who the text was written for, the relationship between author and his audience, the culture of the source text, how much common information shared by both source language audience and target language audience, and other factors of the communication situation (social context, age, sex, social status, culture‟s ideals etc.) Lexical choices will depend on various factors of the situation where communication is presented, the translator shall therefore be aware of the meaning of words conditioned

by situational context (Larson 1984: P131) In fact, situational context helps the translator to define the appropriate events, things or behaviors referred in the message The translator shall base on the spirit of the whole text to unpack bundles of meanings and interpret the noun phrases with the most adequate lexical choices in the receptor language Concepts of three kinds of meaning: referential meaning, organizational meaning and situational meaning referred as above in the theoretical part would exemplify for the useful ways to deal with the mismatches of cultural and situational context and gain the equivalent translation which is faithfully and naturally nearest to the receptor language The meanings must be understood and translated in the light of situational context and lexical items shall be looked at from the point of view of the situational context (Larson 1984: P 421) The chapter talked about the worry or partly surprised feeling of Trump‟s inner circle when they were trying to support him in his new position as President of United State The book‟s genre clearly belongs to political prose and the differences in term of political system, geography, and the culture of the

two countries produces the mismatches, of which including nil-equivalences (not

translated) and idiomatic equivalent in the interest of target readership

2.2 Noun phrase

2.2.1 English Noun phrase

Noun phrases as well as other phrases are essential parts in constituents of any language Without noun phrase, no agents, no patients, no recipient occurs The occurrence of noun phrase in language is inevitable Thus, a single word is often insufficient in expressing our thought in communication

Traditionally, noun phrases are phrases whose head word is a noun which acts like a noun as a whole There are often a group of words in a noun phrase

Noun phrase, as defined by Quick, R and other Grammarians (1972: 127), is the element in the sentence which typically functions as subject, object and complement

The structure of a noun phrase is rather complex, there are words standing around the head noun to function as modifiers A noun phrase thus comprises of three potential parts: The head noun part, the central part of a noun phrase, is an indispensable part which is essentially required for the occurrence of a noun phrase The other two parts are optional, of which, the one precedes the head noun is called the pre-modification and the one follows the head noun is known as the post-modification

Example:

(1) A beautiful girl is standing near the door

(2) The beautiful standing near the door is my sister

(3) The girl in the corner is my classmate

When describing a noun phrase like those cited above, it is essential that we have to distinguish three parts which help to construct a noun phrase

(a): Pre-modification: The part comprises five elements: identifier (the book, my pen…), numeral/quantifier (some orange juice, three tables…), adjective ( a red hat,

a handsome boy…), noun modifier (schoolboys), proper noun (Harvard University,

New York Times…), past participle (a retired general, elected president …), present participle (falling star, the frightening robber…)

(b): The head: Head of a noun is often a noun itself, around which are components helps to support the head in term of meaning and contribute to the information of a noun phrase as a whole, also in a concord with the rest of the sentence

(c): Post-modification: All the items including: relative clause, non-finite clause, prepositional phrase, adjective can be located behind a head noun for the role of post-modification

Example:

(1) The pupil, who I met yesterday, is my friend’s son

(2): The teacher teaching us English this semester is my aunt

(3) He takes a move to leave (Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff) (4) The book on the table is mine

(5) Jerry would pay a call on the president elect (Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff)

From the examples above, it is possible to indicate that the post modifiers can be both restrictive and non-restrictive In case of restrictive post-modification, the head noun can be identified only through post-modification, and in case of non-restrictive post-modification, a head can be viewed as a part of speech that has been identified independently

There are sometimes cases where the head is omitted and the communication context would help the readers or listeners to capture the meaning of the phrase

Example: A small of well – wisher (Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff)

2.2.2 Noun phrase in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, when a noun is used as some kinds of function in a sentence, it is usually added to some other elements in order to form a phrase known as noun phrase with a noun as the role of central part or a head

The head lies in the middle of a phrase while modification is widely spread into both sides around the head The items preceding the head is called pre-modification and the items following the head is known as post-modification

Table 1: Vietnamese Grammar by Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1998: 203)

trong rổ a) Pre-modification:

Cases where there is pre-modification only:

- Ba bát → Three bows

- Bốn bàn → Four tables

Cases where there is post- modification only:

- Bạn gái này! → This girl

- Táo đỏ → a red apple

Cases where there is pre-modification and post-modification only, the head is skipped:

- Ba tái, hai chín, một gầu! → Hanoi Pho – three bowls of rare beef, two

bowls of cooked beef, one bowl of beef brisket

The head noun – bowl is skipped in Vietnamese in a certain

communication context when the listener and the speaker share the knowledge and communication is effective without the head noun

Một cuốn sách rất hay – a very interesting book Một quãng đường dài – a long distance

Một quãng đường khá dài – a rather long distance

- A clause can function as post-modification

- A demonstrative word functions as post-modification

Sáng nay - this morning Con tàu ấy - the ship

- Adjectives and adjective phrases used as post-modification

Con voi to

An elephant big → a big elephant

- Verbs used as post-modification

Cô ca sĩ hát sáng nay

The singer who sang this morning

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Language features are often different across languages Besides, languages are influenced or dominated by different cultures, different world realities and peculiar ways to express information in communication, translators therefore find it difficult to gain the exact equivalence between words of one language and the words of another A complete match between languages seldom happens in translation Usually, one word in the source language text is translated by several words in the receptor language or vice versa words in the source language text are translated by a single word In order to testify the above view, the researcher chose the book “Fire and Fury”, collected 550 noun phrases in the Chapter 2 of the book From the collected data, I based on the relevant theories of translation, especially

Larson‟s translation strategies (1984) Meaning –Based Translation to categorize

and analyze three kinds of mismatches and cases of literal translation Finally, the researcher considered the findings, made conclusions, and drew out some experiences and principles for the translator and students of the field in particular, for teachers of English and English learners in general The research method used to conduct the research, object of the research, data sources, data collecting method, data analysis technique will be discussed in this chapter

the target text to find out the useful and practical implications for translators and students of the area in particular; English teaching and learning in general After taking the typical examples of each kind of mismatch, the researcher made effort to describe the surface structure and deep structure of the noun phrases in the source target text and its version The techniques used for the description of the source text and target text are lexical items and situational and cultural context, which helps to find out the senses of meaning in the original text and make the assessment of the translation

The assessment of the mismatches between the source language text and target language text was based on the referred elements (language features, culture, communication situation) with the theoretical support of the relevant theories The inductive method is used for the implementation of the study From the typical examples of English noun phrases taken from the book “Fire and Fury”, the author based on the language features (figurative language, grammatical structure, collocation, implicit meaning, explicit meaning, referential, organizational meaning)

as well as the differences in term of situational and cultural context (culture, political system, world reality) between the two languages to conduct the assessment of equivalent translation between the two versions in the light of theories of translation equivalence and Larson‟s translation strategies, then draw out some experiences and rules for the translators and English learners

Typical examples:

ST: background of a mortal war of wills – with the media TT: Bối cảnh một cuộc chiến tranh sống mái giữa các ý chí – với truyền thông ST: the bare – bones transition team

TT: Nhóm chuyển giao hết sức đơn giản

It is not difficult to see the obvious mismatches in term of surface meaning in the two versions From theories of translation equivalence and Larson‟s translation strategies, the author made the assessment of the translation and discovered how the the translator deal with the inevitable differences between the two languages to gain

the equivalence in term of deep meaning Consequently, expericences are drawn

out The phrase mortal war means a war which is very dangerous to life People

who take part in a mortal war are ready to face with their death The edge between

death and life in such a war is very fragile The words sống and mái in Vietnamese

refers to the sex sense of male and female However, in this situational dimension,

the phrase sống mái can convey the similar meaning with the word mortal in the

source text, which is the best equivalent satisfy both the faithfulness and the interest

in Vietnamese culture in this case In fact, some words carry figurative or metaphorical meaning and they acquire symbolic meaning Those cases require the translator to make necessary adjustments in order to successfully transfer the original flavor of the source text with the expression suitable with linguistic features

of the target readership to capture the content easily and comfortably

Cases of literal translation manifest the importance of notion of equivalence in translation as well as the higher priority of deep meaning than surface meaning in Larson‟s translation strategies

Typical examples:

ST: Washington insiders, or would be insiders, would have to come to him TT: Những kẻ trong cuộc ở Washington hay những kẻ sắp thành trong cuộc,

sẽ phải tới triều kiến ông

The phrase in the receptor language seems not to be natural and cause the target language text is not smooth and easy in a whole The phrase shall be

translated “những kẻ sắp nhập cuộc”

ST: the president –elect‟s lack of immediate focus on a White House structure

that could serve and protect him

TT: Việc tân tổng thống thiếu sự tập trung ngay lập tức vào cấu trúc Nhà

Trắng để phụng sự và bảo vệ mình Structure of a house refers to its design and materials necessary to build it Form and parts of a house like floor, rooms, hall, stairs and so on are things related to the

structure of a house The phrase White House Structure therefore forces readers to

think of the design of the famous building However, the textual meaning of the

word structure in this case does not r;fer to this kind of sense but the personnel

mechanism of a new Trump Government Accordingly, there is a big difference in deep meaning between the source language text and the target language text though the surface lexicon structure (surface meaning) in the two version are similar The target language text shall be “Việc tân tổng thống thiếu sự tập trung ngay lập tức vào cơ cấu tổ chức Nhà Trắng để phụng sự và bảo vệ mình”

Translators must be aware of the obvious existence of inevitable mismatches and related concepts, which would partly support them to obtain the successful translation that guarantees the criteria of faithfulness, readability and naturalness

3.3 Research method

In order to investigate the mismatches in term of language features, situational and cultural context between the two languages, the text book “Fire and Fury” was chosen, the text is a kind of political prose Within the master thesis, the theories of translation equivalence and Larson‟s translation strategies basing on the meaning-based method by Larson (1984) are the theoretical basis for the author to make the translation assessment of the text in term of noun phrases Due to the length of the text and the frame of my thesis, chapter II is chosen to collect data for

my research I took the observation of the whole chapter and read carefully with more concrete observation and made the collection of 550 noun phrases in the chapter II of the book “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff as well as their target versions in Vietnamese translated by Tran Trong Hai Minh Strategies in translation would be regarded for the treatment of the linguistic situations where mismatches exemplified for the holes between the two languages in term of language features, communication situation and cultural context Those kinds of hole need filling to gain the translation equivalence The basic theoretical concepts of meaning and lexical

choice in Larson (1984) Meaning –Based Translation, as referred above would be

very helpful for the analysis of the data

3.4 Data collection

Data selection criteria: The source text is a text of political prose written by

Michael Wolff – a famous writer and a regular communist who has received numerous awards for his work The author chose the chapter II which talked about the worry or partly surprised feeling of Trump‟s inner circle when they were trying to support him in his new position as President of United State The translator (Tran Trong Hai Minh) is a journalist and a famous translator with many works (Trậm Điều, Sợi dây thừng nghiệt ngã…) Noun phrases and their target versions which manifest clear mismatches between the two languages in term of lexicon, grammatical structure

and cultural and situational context are the choices of the needed data

In order to gain the needed data, the researcher based on the traditional grammar and the concept of noun phrase for the identification of noun phrases in the source text, read the original text thoroughly and collected 550 noun phrases Of which, 267 cases include post-modifiers, 285 cases have pre-modifiers only The methods used in collecting data were compiling, reading, and writing techniques After that the researcher read the collected noun phrases and their versions in target language text carefully and seriously in order to get the needed data Of 550 noun phrases, 105 cases meet the requirements and scope of the study; nevertheless, the author took only 28 cases into the contrastive analysis due to the length of the thesis Next, the chosen data were categorized into different kinds of mismatch (mismatch of lexicon, mismatch of grammatical structure, mismatch of culture and situational context) The representative data were then analyzed in details to find out the ways that the translator deal with the mismatches to get the idiomatic translation that meet the requirement of faithfulness, readability and naturalness to the target language

3.5 Data analysis

3.5.1 Categorizing

Data categorizing was taken following the collecting data step Careful reading and comprehensive reading helped the researcher to get the raw data which were then categorized into relevant categories according to aims of the study In this

step, relevant mismatches were identified, including: mismatches of language features, mismatches of cultural and communication situation The researcher based

on the relevant concepts and Larson‟s translation strategies and other relevant theories to conduct the process of data categorization, which helped to find out the ways that the translator deal with the differences between the two languages to get the equivalents in the translation

3.5.2 Classifying

The next step was data classification Classification required a good and deep understanding on the theories and concepts employed The mismatches in term of language features, communication situation and cultural context between the source language text and the target language text were elaborated as data were classified

into categories that employ the theory and concepts of Meaning-Based Translation

by Larson (1984) Mismatches of language features happen at the range of lexicon (relevant concepts including: implicit and explicit meaning, organizational meaning and referential meaning, figurative meaning) and grammatical structure (breach of language system and collocation clash) Mismatches of cultural and communication situation happens due to different worlds of reality, different political systems, different views of culture This kind of mismatch was classified into three levels: First, the source culture and the target culture do not own the same reality, the translation was conducted in the light of original culture Second, the source culture and the target culture own the same reality, the translation was conducted in the light of target culture in order to guarantee faithfulness and naturalness Third, the translation was unchanged (in case of untranslatable situation or nil equivalence) Besides, the cases of literal translation were also identified in order to give more support for the exemplification of the idiomatic translation

3.5.3 Analyzing

Basing on the categories classified as well as deep and comprehensive understanding of relevant theories and concepts, mismatches of different kinds as referred were identified one by one according to the categorization The occurrences

of each kind of mismatch were statistically presented in tables The researcher tried

to make the information about the translation of the noun phrases clearer, and clarified the problem The data were interpreted in the correlation with the relevant theories and concepts Finally, the contrastive analysis was implemented at the level

of phrase and lexis to draw out the mismatches between the two language texts at the range of lexicon, grammatical structures and situational and cultural context Many examples of noun phrase in the source language text and their target version were analyzed and interpreted The thesis concentrates on how the noun phrases are expressed in Vietnamese equivalent Implicit and explicit information, skipped words, figurative meaning, breach of language system and changes in term of surface structures are the key words indicating the ways that the translator used to deal with the mismatches between the two languages and gain the equivalent translation The cases of literal translation were also referred and analyzed in the

analyzing phase, which strengthens the view point that idiomatic translation is better than literal translation and the translation equivalence is always the

translator‟s target to pursue

In order to avoid bias in collecting, categorizing data and analyzing data, which helps to get the reliable findings, the researcher has strictly followed the aims and objectives of the study as well as related theories and concepts (translation equivalence, meaning-based translation strategies, communication and cultural situation, referential meaning, figurative meaning, grammatical structure, surface structure, deep structure and so on) Especially, a good and deep understanding on the inevitable differences between the two languages in term of lexical item (figurative meaning, implicit and explicit meaning), communication and cultural situation (culture, situational context and world realities) and grammatical structure must be required for a thorough analysis

Typical examples showing the principles in collecting, categorizing data and analyzing data

- Mismatches of lexicon:

+ Difference of figurative sense of meaning:

ST: A chief of staff with history in Washington and federal government TT: Một chánh văn phòng có kinh nghiệm về Washington và chính quyền liên bang

In term of concordance, a word will probably be translated in many ways as the senses in which it is used Larson (1984: 147) Different ways give different senses The secondary meaning or the figurative meaning of the same lexicon item

in two languages is different or each language has its peculiar way to figure lexicon

meaning The term history can be figured as experience while we rarely see the cases where the term lịch sử in Vietnamese is figured as kinh nghiệm

+ Implicit information in the source language is made explicit in the target language:

ST: A small of well – wisher

TT: nhóm nhỏ đến chúc mừng

The translator based on the situational context and pragmatic equivalence to add more words and made the information explicit in the target language

- Mismatches of grammatical structure

ST: A working-class kid originally from New Jersey and then Wisconsin, at

thirty two he made first and last run for elective office

TT: Sinh ra trong gia đình lao động gốc ở New Jersey rồi sau đó chuyển tới

Wisconsin, ở tuổi ba mươi hai, ông chạy đua lần đầu và cũng là lần cuối trong một

cuộc bầu cử

- Mismatches of cultural and situational context:

+ Difference in term of culture:

ST: his view of a man who, for more than a generation, had been at best a

clown prince among the rich and famous

TT: Quan điểm của mình về một người mà, trong suốt hơn một thế hệ, nhiều

nhất cũng chỉ là gã hề trong triều đình của giới giàu có

The phrase “triều đình” shows the mismatch of culture The phrase has no equivalent in the source text The translator added the words to create the natural translation which is close to target culture This creative translation does not cause any damage to the faithfulness of the text but an effective equivalent is established

+ Difference in term of situational context

ST: The speaker of the House TT: Chủ tịch Hạ viện

The House is a political term referring to one of the Legislative Entities in the

political system of America which is very different from that in Vietnam It cannot

be literally translated into target language “nhà” The problem sometimes comes from the fact that source language text contains information which is not part of the knowledge and experience of the target receptors