Applying house's translation quality assessment model to assess the Vietnamese translation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX

Applying house's translation quality assessment model to assess the Vietnamese translation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX and its Vietnamese translation

Applying house's translation quality

assessment model to assess the Vietnamese translation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures

of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX and its Vietnamese translation by Xuân Oanh

Áp dụng mô hình đánh giá chất lượng bản dịch của House vào việc đánh giá bản dịch tiếng Viê ̣t “Những cuô ̣c phiêu lưu của Huckleberry Finn” chương XX di ̣ch giả Xuân Oanh

Hoàng Thị Diễm Hằng

University of Languages and International studies M.A Thesis English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15 Supervisor : Asso Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến

Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract It is common for people to approach a foreign literature work via its

translation; therefore, whether the readers can enjoy a translation text that successfully conveys the author’s intention is a question concerning many researchers In this study, with a view to assess the quality of the translation of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, the researcher utilizes the schema of Translation Quality Assessment proposed by House The application of House’s Translation Quality Assessment shows that though the translation text achieves some success and in most cases, conveys the author’s message, it still reveals a number of mismatches in comparison with the source text Among which inability to render America- African vernacular language is a great loss of the target text In addition, the ideational component of the translation text is also affected by overtly erroneous mistakes On the basis of such findings, some implications for literary translation are drawn

Keywords Dịch thuật; Tiếng Anh; Biên dịch

Content

1 Rationale

People all over the world are now getting closer and closer thanks to many factors, among which literature is an important one Not only can readers entertain but they can also approach the cultures of a far away country while staying at their home However, it is a matter of fact that not everyone is competent enough to read the original text Therefore, the readers normally choose to read translation texts The increasing number of translations available calls for the need of assessing the quality of such works so that the readers can enjoy reliable ones

Given the situation, the evaluation of a translation has become the concern of Translation Quality Assessment approaches and quite many attempts have been made

to find the answer to the question of how to effectively assess the quality of a translated work Along with those attempts are a numbers of related frameworks advocated by some translation researchers; among which The Translation Quality Assessment Model by the German scholar Juliane House is one of few approaches considered promising

This assessment model by House is based on Hallidayan Systemic-Functional Theory, but it also draws eclectically on Prague School ideas, speech act theory, pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus-based distinctions between the spoken and written language House’s Model enables us to analyze and compare an original text and its translation on three different levels: Language/ Text, Register (Field, Mode and Tenor) and Genre This study aims to apply House’s Model on Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX and its Vietnamese translation by Xuân Oanh (2009)

It can be said that this research is a new exciting experience for the researcher in that she is not a graduate majoring in translation Therefore, this research first and foremost is to fullfill the researcher’s interest in translation and in House’s Model in particular In addition, being able to assess a translation will provide the researcher confidence and knowledge to practice translation, particularly literature translation

Besides the above reasons, through library reasearch, it is realized that House’s Model has been widely applied to assess legal document translation Therefore, this study seeks to explore new aspects on utilizing House’s framework to evaluate a literal translation work

2 Purpose of the study

In this research, an attempt will be made to apply the Housian TQA Model to identify two kinds of errors in the translated work: overtly erroenous errors and covertly errornous errors The frequency of their occurences will be the foundation to assess the quality of the target text and to challenge House’s idea that to literary work,

it has to be an overt kind of translation

3 Reserch questions

 How good is the translation according to House’s model?

 What are the remaining problems of the translation?

 Whether the translation is an overt or covert kind of translation?

 What might be some implications for the translation of English literature into Vietnamese?

4 Research method

This study utilizes qualitative design First, the original text will be read thoroughly and comprehensively then the source text will be compared to its translation under the framework of House’s TQA model Although, there are quite many models available for translation quality assessment, House’s model is applied in that this model provides a comprehensive set of parameters enable the researcher to assess the translation text on dimension of both functional and pragmatic equivalence

In addition, as stated by House, the model can be applied for a wide range of text The procedure is briefly introduced by Munday (2001, p.92) as below:

 A profile is introduced of the ST register

 To this is added a description of the ST genre realized by the register

 Together, this allows a “statement of function” to be made for the ST, including the ideational and interpersonal component of that function (in other words, what information is being conveyed and what the

relationship is between sender and receiver)

 The same descriptive process is then carried out for the TT

 The TT profile is compared to the ST profile and a statement of

“mismatches” or errors is produced, categorized according to genre and

to the situational dimensions of register and genre

 A “statement of quality” is then made of the translation

 Finally, the translation can be categorized into one of two types: overt translation or covert translation

As it is impossible for the researcher to analyze the whole text due to limit of time and knowledge and also to be suitable with the applied framework, only one chapter will be selected randomly to guarantee the objectiveness of the procedure (chapter XX) However, examples from other chapters will be taken to prove the generality of the obtained findings in possible cases

5 Significance of the study

It is very important to be able to evaluate a translation in that translation has become an indispensable part in human civilization In Vietnam, English is a popular foreign language and is a tool of communication as well as a key to human knowledge The demand for knowledge has fostered the development of translation and it seems that many non-professionals and semi-professional translators undertake the task of translating Hopefully, this study will be a source of reference for other researcher concerning the same issue and important features of the framework will be ackowledged to have successful translation works

References

Bridgman, R (1966) The colloquial style in America, Oxford University

PressBridgeman, R (1987) Traveling in Mark Twain, University of California Press

Bush, P (1998) "Literary Translation." In: M Baker, ed Routledge Encyclopedia of

Translation Studies, London: Routledge, 127-130

Lance Hewson (2011)An Approach to Translation Criticism: Emma and Madame

Bovary in Translation John Benjamins Publishing Company

Landers, Clifford E (2001) Literary Translation: A practical Guide, New Jersey

University Press: Multilingual Maters

Larson, Mildred L (1984) Meaning-Based Translation: A Guide to Cross-Language

Equivalence Lanham and New York: University Press of America, Inc

Hewson, L (2011) An Approach to Translation Criticism John Benjamin Publishing

Company

House J (1997), Translation Quality Assessmen: a model revisitedt, Gunter Narr

Verlag Tubingen

Twain, M (1997) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, McDougal Littell A

Houghton Mifflin Company

Newmark, P (1988) A Textbook of Translation New York and London Prentice- Hall