Misinterpretations in translating ambiguous sentences by can tho university english majors

At the first stage, the research instrument was the translation test which included 20 sentences divided into 2 parts: lexical ambiguity ten items and structural ambiguity ten items.. Du

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

…  …

MISINTERPRETATIONS IN TRANSLATING AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES BY CAN THO

UNIVERSITY ENGLISH MAJORS

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS page iii ABSTRACT page iv LIST OF CHARTS, TABLES AND CHARTS page v

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION page 1

1.1 Rationale page 1 1.2 Research aims page 2

1 3 Research questions page 2 1.4 Research hypotheses page 2 1.5 Research organization page 2

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW page 3

2.1 Some definitions of translation page 3 2.2 Process of translation page 3 2.3 Translation method page 4 2.4 Definition of ambiguity page 4 2.5 Lexical ambiguity and its types page 5

2.5.1 Definition of lexical ambiguity page 5 2.5.2 Types of lexical ambiguity page 5 2.5.2.1 Polysemy page 5 2.5.2.2 Homonymy page 5 2.6 Structural ambiguity and its types page 6

2.6.1 Definition of structural ambiguity page 6 2.6.2 Types of structural ambiguity page 6 2.6.2.1 Attachment ambiguity page 6 2.6.2.2 Gap-finding and filling ambiguity page 7 2.6.2.3 Coordination ambiguity page 7 2.7 Ambiguity in translation page 7

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY page 9

3.1 Research design page 9 3.2 Research participants page 9

3.2.1 Student participants page 9 3.2.2 Teacher participants page 9

3.3.1 Translation test page 9 3.3.2 Interview page 10 3.4 Research procedure page 10

3.5 Data analysis page 11

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION page 12

4.1 Students’ problems with ambiguity page 12 4.2 Differences in the score between lexical ambiguity and structural

ambiguity page 13

4.2.1 The test result in lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity page 13 4.2.2 An analysis of each item page 14 4.3 Recommendations page 23

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS page 25

5.1 Discussions page 25 5.2 Limitations page 26 5.3 Suggestions for Further research page 26

APPENDICES page 28 APPENDIX 1: Translation test page 28 APPENDIX 2: Answer keys for translation test page 30 APPENDIX 3: The scale to score the translation test page 32 APPENDIX 4: Interview questions page 33 APPENDIX 5: The table of test result page 34

APPENDIX 6: Scale: all variables page 36

REFERENCES page 38

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In writing the thesis, I acknowledged the help from a number of people; their influence remains in the new version Firstly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Luu Hoang Anh M.A., for her constructive comments and criticism in the most positive and encouraging fashion

Secondly, I would like to express my great thanks to Huynh Trung Tin M.A and Vuong Le Thien Thanh M.A., for their valuable help, when I collected the data Many thanks go to Truong Nguye Quynh Nhu M.A and Le Thi Huyen M.A., for their valuable suggestions to make the research better

Thirdly, I was extremely fortunate to get the comments from teachers of Can Tho University, especially those of the English Education Department, who helped me with innumerous ways during the research and choose the research topic

Next, many thanks go to all CTU four-year English students (course 32) who took part in the translation test and contributed a great deal to the completion of this study I only hope that they will look upon the results of their influence with pleasure Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and friends for their support in different ways during the time I carried out this research

All the best,

Can Tho, April 2010

Nguyen Thi Cuong

ABSTRACT

Lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are complicated and appear not only in literature but also in our daily speech Therefore, they raise a lot of difficulties such as misinterpretation, mistranslation and confusion for learners, especially in translation The purposes of the study is to find out the problems that lead students to confusion and difficulties in translating ambiguous sentences and then analyze the problems to withdraw some suggested ways to help students perform well in their translation In order to carry out the survey, 70 seniors majoring in English Language Studies at Can Tho University were chosen as the subjects At the first stage, the research instrument was the translation test which included 20 sentences divided into

2 parts: lexical ambiguity (ten items) and structural ambiguity (ten items) According

to their results of translation test, their marks were classified into three classes: below average, average and above average During the process of analysis, the researcher recognized that most of the students did not translate lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity well Most of the students’ translation were divergent and reflected the sentence meanings differently toward the meanings of the source text The data collected proved that lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity were difficult to translators It also revealed that between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, the lexical ambiguity was more problematic to students At the second stage, interview was conducted to translation teachers and some students to withdraw some possible ways to help learners overcome their problems in translating ambiguous sentences

LIST OF CHARTS, TABLES AND FIGURES

Chart 1.1: The process of translation page 3 Table 4.1: Descriptive statistics of the test performance page 12 Table 4.2: Descriptive statistics of the mean scores of lexical ambiguity

and structural ambiguity page 13

Table 3.1: The distribution of types of lexical ambiguity and the scores page 32 Table 4.3: Students’ score page 35 Table 4.4: Case processing summary page 37 Table 4.5: Reliability statistics page 37 Table 4.6: Item statistics page 37 Table 4.7: Summary item statistics page 37 Table 4.8: Item-total statistics page 37 Table 4.9: Scale Statistics page 37 Figure 4.1: The mean scores of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity page 13

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins with the rationale that the researcher chooses this field to study, and then the research aims, research questions and some research hypotheses It ends with the research organization to help the readers know how this research is organized

1.1 Rationale

Translation is a complicated field During four years at university, many students

have been fully equipped with the knowledge of Linguistic such as An Introduction to

Language, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax, Phonology and Theory of Translation, so

they are able to translate exactly and fluently thanks to their understanding of

language meaning and language uses However, to Lam Quang Dong

chuyên nghiệp của nghề dịch thuật”, there are a few good translators who can do the

translation with high quality Besides, if we take part in a translation forum, we will really recognize that many students seldom succeed in translating even when it is a simple sentence Particularly, they have some problems in translation that stem from the fact that ambiguity in sentence raises confusion and many other difficulties for those who have learnt English as a foreign language Moreover, human language

contains ambiguity at many levels of linguistic representation (Altmann, 1990; Small,

Cottrell, & Tanenhause, 1998) Ambiguity arises in the sentence when more than one interpretation, so translators can not decide which meaning should be understood One

of the most significant issues that every translator should take account of is lexical ambiguity (homonymy and polysemy) and structural ambiguity (attachment ambiguity, gap-finding and filling ambiguity and coordination ambiguity), because when a sentence contains ambiguity, it may have more than one meaning Furthermore, if a word or a sentence contains modifiers, the translators don’t know what the modifiers are attached to Also, different attachments in the sentence may have more than one meaning These are the problems that not only the translators but also the teacher as well as students including the researcher usually face in the translation, so in this study, the researcher would like to find out whether the last-year English major students have these problems in translation, and between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, which one is more problematic The researcher

also hopes to present some solutions to help translator overcome them Therefore, the

research titled “An Investigation of Ambiguity in Translation of English-Major Students” was conducted

1.2 Research aims

The researcher is expected to get three aims First, it is very necessary to conduct the research to recognize whether the lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are problematic to English major students at Can Tho University or not Second, the researcher wants to find out which ambiguity is more problematic to students, lexical ambiguity or structural ambiguity Third, the researcher wants to withdraw some recommendations to help students translate the ambiguous sentences better

1.3 Research questions

In the study, the researcher will try to answer the following questions:

1 Are lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity problematic to English major students?

2 Between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, which one is more problematic?

3 What are some possible ways to help translators overcome their problems

of ambiguity in translation?

1.4 Research hypotheses

When conducting this research, the researcher formulated these hypotheses First, the students face problems in lexical and structural ambiguity when translating Second, between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity, lexical ambiguity is more problematic to students Third, the respondents will give a lot of possible ways of overcoming ambiguity problems

1.5 Research organization

The study consists of 5 chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Research Methodology, Results, Discussions, Limitations and Suggestions for Further Practice

Chapter one: Introduction generalizes the rationale, research aims, research

questions, research hypotheses and research organization

Chapter two: Literature Review provides the background to the research questions Chapter three: Research Methodology includes a description of design, participants,

instruments and procedures of the research

Chapter four: Results analyzes the results of the translation test

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Being a key to open the door to all development of the study, part one will start by giving some definitions of translation Next, it will introduce process of translation Some definitions and typical types of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity and ambiguity in translation will be presented in the next parts

2.1 Some definitions of translation

Prochazkas (as cited in Lawrence Venuit, 2001, p 131) defines a good translation in terms of certain requirements which must be made of the translator, namely:(1) “He must understand the original words thematically and stylistically”, (2)

“He must overcome the differences between the two linguistic structures” and (3) “He must reconstruct the stylistic structures of the original words in his translation”

A next definition of translation is that “Translation is the replacement of a representation of a test in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language” (Bell, 1991)

“Translation (from http:www.completetranslation.com) is the accurate rendering

of a document into another language so that it is suitable for its intended purpose To

be effective, a translation must be accurate and complete but also grammatically correct, stylistically appropriate and terminologically consistent.”

Chart 1: Process of translation (Larson, l998, p 4)

As illustrated in this chart, translation is a process based on the theory that it is possible to abstract the meaning of a text from its forms and reproduce that meaning with the very different forms of a second language In this translation process, meaning is a very important factor deciding the fidelity of any translation

2.3 The translation methods (NewMark, 2001)

Here are some typical translation methods normally used in translating

Word-for-word translation: The source language word-order is preserved and the

words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context

Literal translation: The source language grammatical constructions are

converted to their nearest target language equivalents but the lexical words are again translated singly, out of context

Faithful translation: A faithful translation attempts to reproduce the precise

contextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the target language grammatical structures It “transfers” cultural words and preserves the degree of grammatical and lexical “abnormality” in the translation

Semantic translation: Semantic translation must take more account of the

aesthetic value (that is, the beautiful and natural sound) of the source language text, compromising on “meaning” where appropriate so that no assonance, word-play or repetition jars in the finished version

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”, often prolix and pretentious, and not translation at all

Communicative translation: Communicative translation attempts to render the

exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the readership

Service translation: That is translation from one’s language habitual use into

another language

Information translation: This conveys all the information in a non-literary text,

sometimes rearranged in a more logical form, sometimes partially summarized, and not a form of a paraphrase

2.4 Definitions of ambiguity

Ambiguity is an expression whose meaning cannot be determined from its

meaning (Le, 2003) An example for ambiguous word is that the word “light” can mean “not very heavy” or “not very dark” An example for ambiguous phrase is that the phrase “an old English teacher” can mean an old teacher/ experienced teacher

who is from England or an old teacher/ experienced teacher who teaches English language or a teacher who teaches the old English language The ambiguous sentence

“Sherlock saw the man using binoculars.” can mean whether Sherlock saw the man

who has binoculars or Sherlock used binoculars to see the man

There are many kinds of ambiguity in English, but in the study, the researcher only focus on presenting lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity In the next part, the definition of lexical ambiguity and its types will be looked at

2.5 Lexical ambiguity and types of lexical ambiguity

2.5.1 Definition of lexical ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity is the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings (Small, Cottrell

& Tanenhause, 1988) A good example is that “she cannot bear children” means whether she is unable to give birth to children or she cannot stand children, because it contains the ambiguous word “bear” with two possible meanings

2.5.2 Types of lexical ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity can be further subdivided into homonymy and polysemy

2.5.2.1 Polysemy

Polysemy occurs when a word has several related meanings but one etymology

The different meanings of a polysemic expression have a base meaning in common

(Small, Cottrell & Tanenhause, 1988) An example is that the word “point” can mean

“punctuation mark”, “sharp end”, “detail”, and “argument"

2.5.2.2 Homonymy

Homonymy occurs when two different words have the same written and phonetic

representation, but unrelated meanings, different etymologies, and different histories

of development Each of the homonyms has its own semantics (Small, Cottrell &

Tanenhause, 1988) For example, “bark” means both “the noise a dog makes” and

“the stuff on the outside of a tree”

Homonyms consist of homograph and homophones However, the study focuses

on the problems in written translation not in oral translation Therefore, the case of homophone will be ignored because this case can be recognized easily when it is

written It may not create challenge for translators The study focuses on homograph which causes difficulties for students in translation from English to Vietnamese Homographs are words that are spelled the same yet have different meanings They may be pronounced differently in speech (Small, Cottrell & Tanenhause, 1988)

For example, the word “watch” functions as the verb which means “look at closely” or the noun which means “portable timepiece for the wrist or pocket.”

The lexical ambiguity and its types have just been presented above, and the next part is the definition of structural ambiguity and its types

2.6 Structural ambiguity and types of structural ambiguity

2.6.1 Definition of structural ambiguity

Structural ambiguity arises when a complex phrase or a sentence can be parsed in

more than one way (Hirst, 1992) An example is that “He ate the cookies on the

couch.” It could mean whether he ate those cookies which were on the couch, or he

was sitting on the couch when he ate the cookies

2.6 2 Types of structural ambiguity

There are many types of structural ambiguity in English, but its three types (attachment ambiguity, gap finding and filling ambiguity and coordination ambiguity) are chosen to examine The first type presented is attachment ambiguity

2.6.2.1 Attachment ambiguity

The first class of structural ambiguity is attachment ambiguity There is more than one node to which a particular syntactic constituent may legally be attached Attachment problems are mostly problems of modifier placement The most common example is that a prepositional phrase may either modify a verb or an immediately

preceding noun phrase (Hirst, 1992) The sentence “Mary saw the man with the

telescope.” is a typical example The preposition phrase “with the telescope” is either

a manner adverbial modifying the verb “saw”, or preposition phrase modifying the noun “the man” It means whether Mary uses the telescope to see the man or Mary

saw the man who has the telescope

Here is the other occasion on which attachment ambiguity may occur When a sentence contains a sub-sentence, both may contain places for the attachment of

prepositional phrase or adverb (Hirst, 1992) A good example for this case is that:

“Madia knew that Ross fried the chicken with garlic.” In this example, the preposition

phrase “with garlic” can be attached to the verb “knew” or “fried” or the noun

(object) “the chicken” As a result, it means whether Madia biết rằng Ross đã chiên

thịt gà với tỏi or Madia biết rằng Ross đã chiên thịt gà mà đã được ướp tỏi sẵn

2.6.2.2 Gap-finding and filling ambiguity

Gap-finding ambiguities occur when a moved constituent has to be returned to its pre-transformational starting point, and there is more than one place that it might go

(Ford, Bresnan, and Kaplan, 1982) A good instance is that “Those are the girls that

the police debated about fighting.” In this sentence, there are two possible gaps in the

relative clause which we denote by that the relative pronoun (whose referent is

underlined) may fill: Those are the girls that the police debated about fighting Taking the first gap means the police debated with the girls on the topic of

fighting The second gap means the police debated among themselves about fighting the girls

2.6.2.3 Coordination ambiguity

Coordination ambiguity is the ambiguity that occurs from the use of coordinators

such as and and or In other words, ambiguity occurs when more than one conjunction like “and” or “or” is used in a sentence “I saw Peter and Paul and Mary saw me.”, or when one conjunction is used with a modifier “young man and woman” Words and

phrases of all types can be coordinated (Okumura & Muraki, 1994), with the external modifier being a word or phrase of almost any type and appearing either before or

after the coordination In this sentence: “Assumptions and dependencies that are of

importance.” the external modifier “that are of importance” may apply either to both

“assumptions and dependencies” or to “dependences”

The lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity have showed above In order to know some problems that translators usually face when translating ambiguous sentences, we will consider the following part

2.7 Ambiguity in translation

Translation is a complex process of transferring meaning from one language to another because it is related to grammar structures, lexis, vocabulary knowledge, word meaning, and so on Human language contains ambiguities at many levels of linguistic representation, but two kinds of ambiguity, lexical and structural, have received the most attention in recent psycholinguistic research (Altmann, 1990; Small Cottrell & Tanenhaus, 1988) The ambiguities of language, especially those highlighted by the process of translation, do of course carry the threat of misinterpretation and false conclusions

As we know, a word normally conveys several meanings, especially lexical ambiguity which results from polysemy and homonymy, which cause the confusion for the translators Also, words can bear various meanings in terms of polysemes and homographs Pustejousky and Boguvaev (1996) present that lexical ambiguity creates the difficulty in considering the meaning of language They also emphasize that words

in languages usually convey more than one meaning To put it in another way, the word with multiple meanings creates lot of difficulties for the learners It is necessary

to overcome the difficulties so that we can avoid misunderstanding as well as making mistakes in translation Moreover, there is no one to one equivalent between form and meaning of a word To deal with the word with several meanings, it is not an easy task because we cannot decide which meaning is appropriate; in particular, it stands in isolation Kempson (1997), who has the same ideas with Pustejousky and Boguvaev, recognizes that the concepts of ambiguity is far from clear, and yet, as the part of the problem of interpreting forms of natural language, the explanation of ambiguity is an essential task This idea makes clear that words with multiple meanings create a lot of difficulties It is necessary to surmount the difficulties in order to avoid misunderstanding as well as making mistakes and to transfer exactly the meaning of the source language The more carefully we figure out the meaning of the ambiguous words, the more clearly, exactly and deeply we understand them By now, this study addresses some typical problems of words and some grammar structures with multiple meanings that can arise in translation

In brief, there are many kinds of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity in English However, the study focuses on analyzing some typical kinds To lexical

ambiguity, polysemy and homonymy will be analyzed, then three common types of structural ambiguity: attachment ambiguity, coordination ambiguity and gap-finding

and filling ambiguity will be examined Research methodology will be presented in

the next section

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

To start this chapter, the research design will be recommended first, then participants and research instruments that the researcher uses to carry out the study The procedures

of the research will be presented at the end of this chapter

3.1 Research design

The design of this study is a descriptive research Quantitative techniques such

as translation test and interview were used to collect data The researcher graded the test and interviewed the translation teachers and some last year students directly The data collected were analyzed by SPSS software

3.2 Research participants

3.2.1 Student participants

The participants in this study were 70 seniors majoring in English Language Studies from course 32 All of them belong to two different groups at CTU, academic year 2009-2010 These participants were randomly chosen as subjects to availability Therefore, they are fully equipped with linguistic knowledge and theory of translation

It means that they learnt and knew ambiguous sentences in English They were chosen for doing the translation test and ten of them were chosen to answer the interview

3.2.2 Teacher participants

Besides, two translation teachers at CTU were chosen to answer the interview

questions (see appendix 4, p 33) Both of them have been teaching the subjects

relating to translation for years, so they can withdraw some recommendations to help students translate ambiguous sentences better

3.3 Research instruments

3.3.1 Translation test

To know whether lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are problematic to students and which ambiguity is more problematic, the translation test was used as the first instrument It consisted of 20 sentences that included 10 sentences for lexical ambiguity and 10 sentences for structural ambiguity for students to translate from

English into Vietnamese (see appendix 1, p 28).These sentences were ranked in

suitable spaces so that the participants could write down their translations after each sentence The researcher selected them from many books, newspapers and the

Internet Some typical textbooks are Automatic ambiguity resolution in natural language (1996), Semantic interpretation and the resolution of ambiguity (1992), Cẩm

nang ngữ âm, từ vựng, cú pháp Tiếng Anh (2003) and other sources (see references, p

38) Moreover, these sentences were neither too easy nor too difficult to translate

because they were simple sentences and consisted of many grammar structures and familiar words that they have worked on many times Most sentences focused on some typical problems that students could face with

In the test, the highest mark was 10, the lowest mark was zero, and the score for lexically ambiguous sentences and structurally ambiguous ones were equal (5 marks for lexical ambiguity and 5 marks for structural ambiguity) to withdraw which ambiguity is more problematic Moreover, these sentences represented different kinds

of lexical and structural ambiguity such as homonymy, polysemy, attachment

ambiguity, gap-finding and filling ambiguity and coordination ambiguity (see

appendix 3, p 32) The time allotted was 45 minutes The score of each correct

translation was 0.25 marks The total score of a correct sentence was 0.5 marks The score of each incorrect translation was zero

3.3.2 Interview

Interview was another instrument that aimed at getting more problems that students had when translating and some possible solutions to help them perform their translation well To carry out the interview, the researcher conducted two sets of

interview questions for ten students and two translation teachers (see appendix 4, p

33) The interview questions related to the research questions conducted in chapter 1

and some recommendations to translate the ambiguous sentences better

In summary, through the translation test and interview, the answers to the research questions would be clear

3.4 Research procedure

The research procedure consisted of 2 main stages The first stage was the development of the translation test After designing the translation test to students, the researcher piloted it by asking ten students (the same major and course with the participants) to do first to measure its internal consistency Then this test was delivered to the participants They were asked to do the test individually at the class and the researcher waited to collect them back To make sure the test-takers had enough serious-mindedness, the researcher administrated the classes They had totally

researcher began sorting the answers, valuing the internal consistency again, and working out the results

In the second stage, the researcher spent two weeks to interview some translation teachers and ten students randomly to get some recommendations that help translators

transfer ambiguous sentences better (see appendix 4, p 33) When they gave the

answers, the researcher took note to save their time, and then synthesized their answers to withdraw the appropriate recommendations

3.5 Data Analysis

The data that the researcher collected were analyzed in two ways First, they would be analyzed in forms of simple illustration and calculation The scores of the translation test would be shown in the tables Another way was in modern method by Excel and SPSS The Excel was used to input the data collected, draw the figure, and reckon The researcher used SPSS program to check the reliability of the test, the mean score of the translation test in total and the mean scores of lexical ambiguity and structural one These instruments help the researcher have a better view of the results

of work

The data will be analyzed in the next chapter

Chapter 4 RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

To answer the research questions, the students' problems with ambiguity and the differences in the score between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity will be analyzed in this chapter Then some suggested ways will be withdrawn to help students translate ambiguous sentences better

4.1 Students' problems with ambiguity

To know whether lexical ambiguity and structural one are problematic to English majors or not, the researcher used the translation test with 20 items (10 items for lexical ambiguity and 10 items for structural one) The items for lexical ambiguity were composed of polysemy and homonymy The items for structural ambiguity included attachment ambiguity, gap-finding and filling ambiguity and coordination

ambiguity After piloting the test, the researcher measured the internal consistency,

which was 78 Then the researcher delivered the test to the participants, collected all

of the papers to score them, and analyze the results with the SPSS program The consistency of the translation test in total was checked again It was higher in comparison with the pilot time The internal consistency 83 indicates the rather high reliability of the translation test

After valuing the internal consistency of the test, the total mean score, minimum and maximum of the translation test was checked to compare with the hypotheses in chapter 3 The results of the descriptive statistics are shown in table 4.1

Number of participants (N)

Minimum (Min.)

Maximum (Max.)

Mean (M)

Standard Deviation

Valid N (listwise) 70

Table 4.1 Descriptive statistics of the test performance

Through table 4.1, it can be seen that students may have some problems with lexical ambiguity and structural one, because the total mean score of the translation test was

Meanwhile the lowest mark was 0 and the highest mark of the test was 10 Besides,

when we look at the table 1.4 (see appendix 5, p.35), we will recognize that most

students did not have good results in the translation test None got the excellent scores and only one student got the highest score (7.75) Whereas, the students got the marks from 1.5 to 3 in total are very high

4.2 Differences in the score between lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity

4 2.1 The test result in lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity

As the researcher mentioned in the research methodology, lexical ambiguity and structural one were included in the research In the following section, the mean scores

of these ones will be presented in order to conclude which one is more problematic to students Table 4.2 will show the descriptive statistics of the mean scores of each type

N Minimum Maximum Mean Standard Deviation

According to table 4.2, it can be seen that the mean score of the lexical ambiguity are lower than that of structural one The mean score of lexical ambiguity that participants employ was 2.31, whereas that of the structural ambiguity was 2.55 These means indicate that between lexical ambiguity and structural one, lexical ambiguity is more problematic to English-major students In addition, the minimum score of lexical ambiguity (Min= 0.5) was lower than that of structural one (Min=0.75) Similarly, the maximum score of lexical ambiguity (Max=4) was lower that that of structural ambiguity (Max=4.25)

4.2.2 An analysis of each item

By now we will consider each sentence that all students did not find ease in translation

4.2.2.1 Polysemes

The data related to polyseme was examined by item 10

Item 10: Dr Jacket gives the talk on moon

This sentence is unclear to what noun the preposition “on” refers, whether Dr

Jacket is on the moon when he gives the talk or he gives the talk which is about the moon Since this sentence itself is far from clearness, we have to rewrite or paraphrase

to make it easier to understand The fact is that the students did not do that and did translate one of the two possible meanings of the sentence that they based on the

meaning of the preposition phrase “on the moon” 29% students could translate this

sentence exactly and express what the writer wants to show as in the source text However, there were 40% of the students who mistranslated the meaning of the

preposition “on” Here are their unacceptable translations: Tiến sĩ Jacket đã nói quá

sức tưởng tượng của tôi, or Tiến sĩ Jacket có cuộc hẹn vào đêm trăng rằm, or Tiến sĩ Jacket nói chuyện viễn vong

In addition, the data collection indicates that many students recognized that this sentence should be understood in two different ways, and they did try to express these possible meanings, but they failed because the meanings they translated were not clear enough to help the readers distinguish the two different meanings of this item It was

translated as: “Tiến sĩ Jacket có buổi nói chuyện trên mặt trăng” or “Tiến sĩ Jacket nói

chuyện trên mặt trăng” Thus, being good at mother tongue is also important to

translators because mother tongue or target language can help them express more accurately what they mean The mean score of this item was 0.21

4.2.2.2 Homonymy

Another aspect of word with multiple meanings that creates a series of major problems such as misinterpretation, mistranslation and confusion for translators is homonymy Here are some typical items that will be considered

Item 2: Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence

The immediate problem in this item is the misunderstanding There were 9% of the students that could understand the implication of the author and their translation was nearly correct Meanwhile, the translations of 37% students were deviatory and more than 50% students who could translate one meaning among two possible

meanings And the following is the samples of the divergent translations: Hôn nhân là

việc không thể nói bằng lời là hiểu hết được, or Hôn nhân không phải chuyện đơn giản mà nó phức tạp hơn ta nghĩ The meanings “câu” or “bản án” may lead people to

understand differently toward the word “sentence” of the source text Thus, these

translations were not good Compared to the mean score of other testing items, the mean score for item 2 was rather low Its mean score was 0.18

Item 4: I saw her run to the bank

There are the homonymous noun “bank” and the polysemous verb “run” that

made students difficult to translate, but in this case, we only focus on the meanings of

the word “bank” 44% of the students could recognize that the word “bank” here falls

into two possible word classes and clarified it However, 47% students transferred one accurate meaning The rest of the students translated incorrectly These are the

inappropriate translations that they gave: Tôi thấy cô ấy khi tôi đi đến ngân hàng, or

Tôi đã thấy vị trí của cô ấy trong ngân hàng, or Tôi thấy cô ấy hết cạn tiền The mean

score was 0.35, which was pretty high It indicates that most students translated this sentence well

Item 7: The captain corrected the list

This sentence contains the homonymic word “list” which made most students

confused Although they usually meet this word in their reading or writing many times, some of them forgot its meaning There were 13% of the students who

completely failed to translate this item Here are the inexact translations: Đội trưởng

đã trả tiền, or thuyền trưởng đã đúng về cái danh sách or Đại úy đã trừng phạt những người có tên trong danh sách They did not know that the word “list” can mean

“inventory” or “tilt” 86% students transferred the common meaning that they normally work on This is the translation: đội trưởng đã chỉnh sửa lại danh sách Only

1 student among 70 could translate this sentence exactly and naturally The following

is the correct translations: Đội trưởng đã sửa lại danh sách or Đội trưởng đã sửa lại

trạng thái nghiêng của thuyền The mean score for this item was 0.21

The data collection proved that most students translated one meaning among many meanings of a word despite the fact that they were explicitly informed of how the test task was done They did not transfer fully the message that the writer wants to send to his readers and all of them did not recognize the ambiguous word within the sentence which should be done

Item 9: Flies like bananas

Similarly, this item can have more than one meaning However, ten students gave exact meanings similar to the proposed translations Meanwhile, 51,73% of the

students translated one meaning of ambiguous word “flies” used in this sentence They

also gave the second meaning, but it was not closed to the source text There were 13% of the students who transferred incorrectly the messages that the writer wants to

send to his readers They did not recognize that the word “flies” can function as the noun with meaning “con ruồi” or the verb meaning “bay” These are some examples

of the unacceptable translations: Chuối thì rất hấp dẫn, or Chuyến bay như chuối ấy,

or Trắng như chuối, or Loài ruồi thích ngửi chuối, or Mèo nào mà không mê mở, or

Loài ruồi to như trái chuối, or Trượt vỏ chuối The mean score was 0.25

Item 11: The present is a good time to present the present

Although this sentence is not complex and difficult, all the students did not find

out all its meanings The word “present” here can be either a noun which means “món

quà”, or “thời hiện tại”, or “hiện tại” or a verb which means “tặng” or “thể hiện, trình bày” 29% of the students translated its two possible meanings accurately and

naturally The others could translate one meaning Here is their translation: Hiện tại là

thời điểm tốt để tặng quà

One of the most possible factors that lead the students to translating one possible

meaning of the word “present” is that this word is familiar to the general meaning

When they work on it, they will translate it immediately as their natural reaction If the students try to think and analyze the meanings of this item carefully, they are able

to find out another meaning, but it seemed that they ignored or refused to do that Besides, they didn’t distinguish the part of speech and different meanings of the word

“present” clearly, so they couldn’t translate this sentence better There were 40% of