is background theories which focuses on definitions, methods, procedures of translation in general and technical translation in particular

Accordingly, Homaidanadvocates the use of loan words from the source language, in-text paraphrasing or explanation in a glossary besides coinage of new target text terms asstrategies to

This paper reports the problems that need to be addressed in the process oftranslating industrial machinery names into the import contract and gives somesuggestions for solving the problem Participants in the study are employees ofthe Sales Department of Lac Hong Joint Stock Company who must directlytranslate the import contract Ten of the company's 2011 to 2014 contracts wereused for research data Then, the researcher uses a qualitative descriptivemethod to analyze the data The four main problems raised in the paper include:difficulty in adding information, difficulty in removing words, difficulty inchoosing words and difficulties when translators lack technical knowledge

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to all people whogave me the possibility to complete this research I want to thank the EnglishFaculty – Thuong Mai University for giving me permission to commences thisthesis in the first instance and to do the necessary research work

I am deeply indebted to my supervisor Mrs Nguyen Thuy Linh whosereference materials, support, stimulating suggestions and encouragementshelped me in all stages of this research for and writing of this research

All the member from Lac Hong Joint Stock Company where I conductedthe research supported me a great deal and I want to thank them for all theirsupport, cooperation and valuable suggestions I would like to express mysincere appreciation to my friends who looked closely at the final version of thethesis foe English style and grammar, correcting both and offering suggestionsfor improvement

Finally, I can not fully express my gratitude to all the people whose directand indirect support helped me complete my research in time

Hanoi April 18 , 2018

Student

Tran Thanh Binh

TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II TABLE OF CONTENT III

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1: RATIONALE 1

1.2: PREVIOUS STUDY: 2

1.3:AIMS OF THE STUDY 7

1.4: RESEARCH SUBJECTS 7

1.5: SCOPE OF THE STUDY: 8

1.6: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 8

1.5: ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 10

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 11

1.TRANSLATION THEORY 11

1.1.WHAT IS TRANSLATION? 11

1.2 TRANSLATION METHODS 12

1.3 TRANSLATION STRATEGIES: 15

1.3.1 HOW TO DEAL WITH NON EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 15

1.3.2 HOW TO DEAL WITH IDIOMS AND FIXED EXPRESSIONS: 17

1.3.3 HOW TO DEAL WITH VOICE, NUMBER AND PERSON 18

1.3.4 HOW TO DEAL WITH PROPER NAMES 20

1.3.5 HOW TO DEAL WITH NON-SUBJECT SENTENCES 20

1.3.6 HOW TO DEAL WITH NEWSPAPER HEADLINES 21

2 ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSE (ESP) 21

2.1WHAT IS ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSE 21

2.2TYPES OF ESP 22

2.3 DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL TRANSLATION 22

2.4 WHAT IS TERM 23

2.5 TRANSLATION OF TECHNICAL TERMS 24

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND SUGESSTION 28

1.RESEARCH FINDING: 28

2.DIFFICULTIES AND SUGGESTIONS 37

3 RECOMMENDATIONS 39

CONCLUSION 41

REFERENCES 42

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1: Rationale

Currently, Vietnam’s economy has strongly integrated into global, there is

a large number of policies which is carrying out to develop Vietnam’s economy.Globalization is promoting a large number of companies to expand theirbusiness beyond their nation and become the international companies A study

by JPMorgan Chase found that 61 percent of medium-market companies areactivating in international markets in 2013, compared with 58 percent in 2012and 43 percent in 2011 respectively The reality that employees and companiesdealing with customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners who are on abroadare becoming more and more popular The question is how to deal withcustomers, colleagues, suppliers and partners who do not share the samelanguage with you In this case, knowing international languages becomes veryimportant and necessary Nowadays in the world, English is being usedextensively and is considered as the common language in all global transactions.Proficient use of English skills has become an effective tool for gaining goodopportunities in the workplace as well as in trade negotiations It is an essentialfactor that helps business get opportunities in the new market and seek forpartners or customers

However, language is an extremely abstract and vast field Every industry,every field uses its own words that no one can know all For this reason,translators appear as intermediaries to help solve problems in how the partieswho do not share the same language understand each other Interpretation aswell as interpreters play a very important role in the development of the worldeconomy as well as exchanges and cooperation among countries By playing

such an important role, the translator needs to possess a high level ofunderstanding in the language and above all acquire complex translation skills

However there are many fields of translation and maybe the most difficult

is technical translation It has been estimated that technical translation accountsfor some 90% of the world’s total translation output each year This isunsurprising given the importance attached to the availability of technicalinformation in a variety of languages, motivated partly by the increasinglyinternational focus of many companies Coupled with increasing internationalco-operation in scientific, technological and industrial activity, it is clear to seewhy technical translation is one of the most significant employers of translators

In contrast, translators sometimes find it difficult in translating these termsespecially machine names Translating machine names is quite difficult, itrequires translators to translate specialized terms exactly Meanwhile, the termsare very difficult because there are many loan words which are originated fromLatin Unfortunately, the translation of the machine is indispensable term in anycontract of machine transactions With employees who work in companies withforeign transactions in general and companies in the field of machinery inparticular, contact and contract translation are unavoidable As a result, the study

of machine translation in the contract was selected with the hope that technical people would find it easier to understand and translate these terms

non-1.2: Previous study:

Only a few researchers writing in the field of technical translation dealspecifically with the texts attached to heavy industrial machine The majority ofthe available study describes the main features of translation generally and thetechnical type of translation when they get more specific on specialized types oftranslations Hence, the researchers believe that the area selected for this

research is part of an immature type of dealing with the translation There is anotable obstacle that translators encounter in providing an equivalence to recenttechnical terms coined in English To illustrate, various studies have shed light

on the ineffectiveness of specialized dictionaries use, and the futility ofcommonly recommended strategies

On the problems of translating specialized terms from English, Homaidan(2004) in his study on “Problems in translating some specialized computerterms” which was conducted by qualitative method identifies many translationalproblems resulting from polysemy and synonymy and leading to ambiguity,misunderstanding, confusion as well as mistranslation Accordingly, Homaidanadvocates the use of loan words from the source language, in-text paraphrasing

or explanation in a glossary besides coinage of new target text terms asstrategies to be adopted in troublesome cases

In a traditional view of translation process, for example, in Vinay andDarbelnet's ‘A methodology for translation’ (1995), a number of strategies fortext transfer are introduced to account for translation procedures However, theirview is problematic and not in line with my stance for two reasons First of all,

in Vinay and Darbelnet’s view, only a 'drafting' phase is assumed to represent awhole translation process, and neither a start-up nor a revision stage isconsidered The second reason is that their categories are only concerned withtransferring procedures from the source language to the target language; noinfluence from the target text is taken into account The translation methods intheir list are, in fact, ordered hierarchically, starting at the top with 'borrowing',which may be described as the most literal translation (or ‘direct’ in theirdefinition), and ending at the bottom with 'adaptation', free or ‘oblique’translation However, this ordering does not explain that the translators’strategy switches according to the change of transfer phase from drafting to the

revision stage In this regard, the scope covered in this present study is a widerrange of the transfer process

In the study named “A study of the translation process through translators'interim products”, Masaru Yamada from Kansai University has revealed the factthat the process of translation is not monolithic nor in harmony with theInterpretive model where the translator de-verbalizes the text and re-expresses itall at once by means of re-verbalization Rather, in conformity with the Monitormodel, the production process proceeds segment by segment, guided by thesource language syntactic order For this reason, renditions that are producedduring the drafting phase seem, overall, closer to literal translation And then,the production stage is shifted to the revision phase, the translator’s focus isplaced more on beyond-sentence level or discourse As a result of textualmanipulation in this phase, the product becomes ‘free’ translation (free from thesource text constraints) Although the behavioral patters may vary depending onthe text type or genre of the source text (i.e literary text might require fortranslators more time to scan the text during pre-drafting phase), a certain extent

of generalization can be made out of this study result Also thanks to screenrecording technology, recording this entire dynamics in

change of process is made possible With that, we are able to capture all ofthe detailed translating activities However, one question that remainsuntouched, however, is the reasons for these behaviors He has suggested thatfurther investigation needs be conducted for full explanation on the cause ofbehaviors It is also interesting to see how development of technology shapestranslators’ behavior Because in recent years, it is becoming very common tomake use of computer-aided translation and translation memory system in theactual practice, the effect of those tools on the translation process is also anotherarea of study that needs to be addressed

What are factors which influence the translation? Mohamed Ali ElsiddigIbrahim and Ahmed Mohammed Abdulrahman Mansor concluse in theirresearch “Factors influencing the quality of translation” that : “The quality oftranslation depends on a number of factors, some of which, may be beyond theresearcher’s control” The study also identifies the factors which affect ontranslation’s quality, showing the kind of these factors, introducing factors indetails The quality of translation is influenced mainly by three factors: thecompetence, the autobiography and what called the material circumstances ofthe translator, that is the position the translator holds For these purpose,research questions are posed That study of the Investigating factors influencingthe quality of translation, shedding light on the nature of these factors, as well asthe nature of evaluating these the influencing of the factor They have said that

“Translator must have knowledge of the language and the culture of the peopleunder study and fluency in the language”, too

In research “Technical translation challenges” of Kugai K B from KievNational University of Technology and Design, he divided the difficulties intranslation into two groups: internal difficulties and external difficulties Theinternal difficulties are problems like the issues of recognition outlined above,they come from within the translation studies community itself Such problemsrelate to the way in which translation study has evolved over the decades and theway in which this evolution has not always concerned itself with technicaltranslation Internal problems also arise from the ways in which researchers inthis area and in translation study as a whole produce definitions and models as away of going about their work A second category of challenges comes fromoutside both translation study and translation practice Such external challengesrelate to factors, circumstances and constraints which arise in the world in whichtechnical translation takes place but which are not of technical translation itself.They might include various professional and technical challenges posed by

changing work practices, technologies and legal issues which govern theenvironment in which technical translations are produced There may even beinput from other disciplines such as technical communication and psychologywhich further our understanding of technical translation while at the same timechallenge our conceptions of what translators do Now let us try to examinevarious challenges, both internal and external, and make an attempt to outlinetheir implications for technical translation

Imankulova Radha Nuriddinovna in his research “The problems oftechnical translation” divided the problems into three groups: problems in thetranslation process of technical terms, problems with the source text andlanguage problems About problems in the translation process, there are someparticular problems: problems of ambiguity, lack of knowledge of technicalterms Another problem is the grammar because there are several constructions

of grammar poorly understood, in the sense that it isn't clear how they should berepresented, or what rules should be used to describe them The words that arereally hard to translate are frequently the small, common words, whose precisemeaning depends heavily on context Besides, some words are untranslatablewhen one wishes to remain in the same grammatical category The second group

is the problems with the source text such as text is difficult to read or illegibletext, text is spelled incorrectly or printed incorrectly Final difficulty is related

on neologisms, unsolved acronyms and abbreviations and proper name ofpeople, organizations, and places

Pham Thanh Binh (2010) has written a particular interesting studyanalyzing equivalence at word level in English and the translations inVietnamese After examines some typical English – Vietnamese conceptual andlexical semantic fields so as to prove the existence of remarkable differencesbetween English and Vietnamese, he pointed out six reasons for the existence of

non-equivalence at word level between English and Vietnamese These reasonsare:

- No equivalent words between 2 languages, especially culture- specificconcepts The source language word expresses a concept totally unknown intarget language

-Concepts are known but no equivalent words in TL The source languageconcept is not lexicalized in the target language

-The target language lacks a superordinate It may have a specific word but

no general word

-The target language lacks a hyponym

-Differences in expressive meaning

-Differences in physical and interpersonal perspective

Moreover he suggested some strategies can be used to handle cases of equivalence at word level based on Baker theory (1992, p 26-42).Unfortunately, his study is still based on theories and lacked of practicality

non-While as far as translation assessment is concerned, Ilyas (1989) states thatthe reader of a specialized text is interested in the function of the translated term,

in other words, as long as the intended information is communicated, then, thetranslation is successful Méndez-Cendón (cited in Byrne 2009) argues that purepresentation of the information in the technical text is not sufficient; rather thetext should be neatly phrased and structured to achieve coherence and

readability With acronyms and abbreviations related to computer documents,Byrne (2006) advocates the policy of defining and explaining the newexpressions as a strategy for technical translation This could be possible if theabbreviation is not circulated in its shortened form such as RAM and USB

1.3:Aims of the study

-Collecting and presenting some commonly machine names in importcontracts at company

-Identifying difficulties in translating machine names in contract

-Giving some suggestions in translating machine names in import contracts

1.4: Research Subjects

Due to the characteristics of the thesis, Lac Hong Joint Stock Company isselected as research subject Lac Hong Equipment Joint Stock Company wasestablished and developed by its members who have many years of experience

in providing and servicing technical services for maintenance and repairs ofblasting drilling equipment, mining equipment, construction and industryequipment

On 9th of September, 2010 Hanoi Department of Planning and Investmentissued an official Certificate of business registration No 0104906487 aboutapproval for establishment of Lac Hong Equipment Joint Stock Company

Lac Hong Equipment Joint Stock Company is an enterprise with fully

separate legal status, property and rights with a management system and an

accounting system prescribed by law

Lac Hong Equipment JSC mainly Supplies mining and constructionmachinery such as:

+Multipurpose wheel loaders

+Probe boring machines

+Rock hammer drills

+Rock breaker mounted on excavator

+Hield machines, rake machines

+Self propeling boring machines

+Hydraulic rock boring machines

Due to the limitation of time and knowledge, my study could not cover allthe documents but only focus on the import contracts at Lac Hong JSC Morespecific this thesis investigate the machine name in the import contract at LacHong from 2011 to 2014

1.6: Research methodology

The thesis uses both descriptive and analytical tools to study translations oftexts related to the field of heavy industrial machine In order to tackle thisproblem and try to find possible solutions for it, the researcher followed onemethod to collect the needed data It is also worth noting that the thesis is turnedout to be a short and rather focused work both analytically and descriptivelybecause it is very limited in scope and highly specialized in subject

Commercials were chosen to represent the access texts The selectedmaterials were collected from Lac Hong Joint Stock Company In concrete, tenimport contracts at Lac Hong JSC from 2011 to 2014 will be analysed byquanlitative descriptive analysis method in order to identify some main troubles

in translating machine name process

Traditional Descriptive Analysis leverages a panel of expert assessors todetect, describe and quantify products sensory properties Assessors use adetailed lexicon and a rating scale (both need extensive training), to providedetailed documentation of products’ attributes and their intensities The task isquantitative in nature, leading to profiles that can be statistically compared both

at the attribute level and overall However, diverse needs require diversemethods As a result, qualitative approaches to descriptive analysis haveemerged and gained in popularity Qualitative Descriptive Analysis refers to aset of methods that aim to summarize the sensory characteristics of products

using technical language The goal of qualitative descriptive studies is acomprehensive summarization, in everyday terms, of specific eventsexperienced by individuals or groups of individuals To some researchers, such aqualitative design category does not exist Unfortunately, this has forced otherresearchers, especially novices to the methods of qualitative research, to feelthey have to defend their research approach by giving it ‘epistemologicalcredibility.’ This has led to the labeling of many research studies asphenomenology, grounded theory, or ethnography, when in fact these studiesfailed to meet the requirements of such qualitative approaches Qualitativedescriptive studies tend to draw from naturalistic inquiry, which purports acommitment to studying something in its natural state to the extent that ispossible within the context of the research arena Thus, there is no pre-selection

of study variables, no manipulation of variables, and no prior commitment toany one theoretical view of a target phenomenon Although qualitativedescriptive studies are different from the other qualitative research designs,qualitative descriptive studies may have some of the overtones of the otherapproaches In other words, a qualitative descriptive study may have groundedtheory overtones, because it used constant comparative analysis when examiningthe data However, a qualitative descriptive study is not grounded theory,because it does not produce a theory from the data that were generated.Regarding the use of sampling in a qualitative descriptive design, virtually anypurposeful sampling technique may be used Like any other qualitative researchdesign, the goal is to obtain cases deemed rich in information for the purpose ofsaturating the data Of basic importance is for researchers to be able to defendtheir sampling strategies to meet the purposes of their studies

Becase of all characteristics of qualitative descriptive method, theresearcher decides to choose this method as the main methodology of thisresearch This method is perfectly suited to the selection of sample that is given

from company’s contract and the purpose of the study that is identify difficulties

in translating the machine name

From ten import contracts, the researcher will analyse to introducedifficulties which can face with

Then some subjective solutions will be suggested in order to solve thatdifficulties above

1.5: Organization of the study

My research is divided into four chapters, in which the third and the fourthare the most important chapters

CHAPTER I is overview of the study in which rationale, previous study,purposes, methods, scope are presented

CHAPTER II is background theories which focuses on definitions,methods, procedures of translation in general and technical translation inparticular

CHAPTER III is an investigation on translation of machine names in theimport contracts at Lac Hong JSC and some recommendation to solve thedifficulties when translate machine names analysed before

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.Translation theory

During the Middle Ages, translations were scarce All educated peoplespoke Latin in Europe From the fifteenth century, with the invention ofprinting, translated works became widespread and had greater audiences Thisled some scholars and thinkers to have some thoughts about translation and itspractical difficulties The theory and practice of translation have been studiedsince Cicero's time Views and remarks on translation were derived directlyfrom practice, and translation studies were more like instructions on how totranslate rather than studies of the problems and difficulties of translating In thenineteenth century, studies on translation became more theoretical, and in thetwentieth century, the help of linguistics was sought to investigate the problemsand difficulties of translation Before embarking on any discussion of thedifferent theories and approaches to translation, certain translation definitionswill be reviewed in the following section discussing what translation is

1.1.What is Translation?

Traditionally, translation is considered to be a change of form, that is achange of surface structures from a source language into a target language Arather simple definition of translation as "the replacement of textual material(SL) by equivalent textual material in another (TL)" is suggested by Catford(1965,20) In this respect, Catford is more concerned with formal language rulesand grammar, rather than the context or the pragmatics of the text to betranslated Nonetheless, he stressed that: "Since every language is formally sui

—generis, and formal correspondence is, at best, a rough approximation it is

clear that the formal meaning of SL items can rarely be the same" (Catford,1965,36)

Indeed, form is a vehicle of meaning, and translation consists mainly oftransferring the meaning of the SL text into the TL Hence, translation,according to Nida (1969,12), "consists of reproducing in the receptor languagethe closest natural equivalent of the source language message first in terms ofmeaning and secondly in terms of style" This definition reveals a notion ofequivalence in translation at the semantic and stylistic levels It views translation

as a reproduction of a similar response of the TL reader by reproducingequivalent meaning and style In other words, it favours a maximum equivalence

of meaning and effect as suggested by Tytler (1793) : " A good translation is one

in which the merit of the original is so completely transfused into anotherlanguage as to be distinctly apprehended and as strongly felt by a native of thecountry to which that language belongs as it is by those who speak the Language

of the original"

Most definitions of translation describe an aim being sought fromtranslation Others are instructions on how to translate, or a List of factors thatshould be taken into consideration when translating Mounin(1976), forexample, suggests that to translate is not only to respect the structural orlinguistic meaning of a text but also the global meaning of the messageincluding the environment, the period, the culture, etc

In brief, it seems that definitions differ from one another in certain aspects.While some definitions present the aim of translation, others describe theprofession itself, the translator as a mediator in a communication process, orconsider the general aspect of interlingua transfer The present study isconcerned more with the process of translation itself Hence, we shall consider

translation as a mediation and as a complex interlingua transfer We do notintend to give a new definition to translation, for any definition is bound to belimited in its scope The profusion of definitions to translation and the problem

of finding a unified definition are, most probably, due to the complexity of theprocess of translation itself

1.2 Translation methods

As stated by Peter Newmark (1988), there are eight methods of translationand they are put in a V-diagram as below

-Word-for-word translation: This is often demonstrated as interlineartranslation, with the TL immediately below the SL words The SL word order ispreserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings, out

of context Cultural words are translated literally The main use of word translation is either to understand the mechanics of the source language or

word-for-to construe a difficult text as a pre-translation process For example : “What isyour name?” when translated into Vietnamese is: “Cái gì là tên bạn?” Originalsentences have been translated word by word in order from left to right as inVietnamese We can see the overall translation is very fickle and weird

-Literal translation: The SL grammatical constructions are converted intotheir nearest TL equivalent but the lexical words are again translated singly, out

of context As a pre-translation process, this indicates the problems to be solved

For example: “Học, học nữa, học mãi” is translated into English as “Study, study more, study forever”

-Faithful translation: A faithful translation attempts to reproduce the precisecontextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the TL grammaticalstructures It “transfer” cultural words and preserves the degree of grammaticaland lexical “abnormality” (devitation from SL norms) in the translation Itattempts to be completely faithful to the intentions and the text-realization of the

SL writer

For example: “They were as much alike as two balls of cotton”, when usefaithful translation is translated into “Hai anh em cùng giống nhau như hai bànhbông vải” In this translation, the grammar of the original verse is preserved.However, the translation of "as two balls of cotton" into "như hai bành bông vải"

is closer to the source language than the target language because, in Vietnamese,the comparison "as two cotton cloth" is strange and difficult to understand

-Semantic translation differs from “faithful translation” only in as far as itmust take more account of the aesthetic value (that is, the beautiful and naturalsound) of the source language text The distinction between “faithful” and

“semantic” translation is that the first is uncompromising and dogmatic, whilethe second is more flexible, admits the creative exception to 100% fidelity andallows for the translator’s intuitive empathy with the original

For example: “I never hear or read the name of Yarmouth but I amreminded of a certain Saturday on the beach ”(extracted from DavidCopperfield by Charles Dickens) into “Tôi không bao giờ nghe hoặc đọc đếntên 'Yarmouth' mà tôi lại không nhớ đến một sáng thứ bảy nào đó trên bãibiển…” ( không bao giờ mà lại không )

-Adaptation is the “freest” form of translation It is used mainly for playsand poetry; the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the Sourcelanguage culture converted to the target language culture and the text rewritten

Example: “ Outside, the immense sea is a deep blue In the shade of greencoconut trees, the buildings appear like a desert oasis”

“Mặt biển bên ngoài xanh mướt mát, màu xanh thẳm như chính đại dươngvẫn xanh từ hàng triệu năm không thay đổi sắc màu, còn bên trong, nép dướinhững tán dừa xanh là các khối nhà mơ màng trong nắng.”

In the above example, the translation is much longer than the meaning ofthe original A series of adjectives not included in the original such as: “mướtmát”, “mơ màng”, have been added that make the translation smoother and moreflexible

-Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the contentwithout the form of the original Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than theoriginal, a so-called “intra-lingual translation”, not translation at all

For example: Business is business

Việc nào ra việc nấy

-Idiomatic translation reproduces the message of the original but intend todistort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialism and idioms where there

do not exist in the original

Example: Man proposes, God disposes

Mưu sự tại nhân, hành sự tại thiên.

-Communicative attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of theoriginal in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable andcomprehensible to the readership

Example: Keep off the grass into: Không giẫm lên cỏ

1.3 Translation strategies:

The following strategies have been suggested by translators, commissioners

of translations, and others involved in translating as ways to approachdifficulties in translation from English to Vietnamese

1.3.1 How to deal with non equivalence at word level

It is often the case that no direct equivalents can be found in Vietnamesefor English words We can use some strategies listed below to handle cases ofnon equivalence

-Translation by a more specific word: in many cases , the translators mustchoose among several different words, as there may be many Vietnamese wordsthat correspond to the general category or meaning expressed by the Englishterm For example, the word “rice” can be translated by many differentVietnamese words depending on whether one is planting it, harvesting it,cooking it or eating it In these cases, it is necessary to examine the Englishcontext in deciding which Vietnamese word is to be used For example, theword "wear" is translated in the sentence "The optician advise me not to wearcontact lense for too long" as “đeo” while in the sentence "The color of the

gown she is wearing really matches her eyes" the “wear” word must be specific

to the word “mặc”

-Translation by a more general word: in other cases, it may be appropriate

to use a more general word to translate an English word wit no specificVietnamese equivalent For instance, Vietnamese makes distinctions among tre,nứa, trúc, mai, vầu, on the other hand, English as “bamboo”

-Translation by cultural substitution: this strategy involves replacing aculture-specific item or expression with one of different meaning but similarimpact in the translated text Because of their self-described “respect” for theoriginal text, most Vietnamese translators object to this strategy and tend totranslate directly, even when it may be highly inappropriate One example is theword “Don Juan” in the sentence “ He is in fact a kind of Don Juan” This word

is a typical Western cultural concept that refers to men who have attraction forwomen However, when translated into Vietnamese, it is translated into "sởkhanh" refers to the people who are unfaithful, got women all over the place.The meaning of this concept seems to be different from that of the original

-Translation using a loan word plus explanation : there is some resistance

to this strategy in Vietnam, as many translators prefer to create new Vietnamesewords rather then borrow English words However, this strategy can be usefulwhen dealing with concepts or ideas that are new to Vietnam, cultural specificitems, and proper names of diseases or medicines that are widely known by theirEnglish names For instance, ODA, which stands for Official DevelopmentAssistance, is a form of foreign investment Because of its popularity inVietnam, the translation is usually remained "ODA"

-Translation by paraphrase: this strategy can be used when translating anEnglish word or concept that does not exist in Vietnamese, or when theVietnamese term for it does not include all the meanings conveyed by theEnglish term for the same concept Example, “Diana Holmund found the BeanieBabies on e-Bay” cannot be translated simply as “Diana Holmund đã tìm đượcBeanie Babies trên e-Bay” This does not account for their full meanings, whichmust be unpacked for better understanding This can be done by paraphrasing asfollowing translation: “Cô Diana Holmund đã tìm được món đồ chơi BeanieBabies trên mạng đấu giá trực tuyến e-Bay”

-Translation by omission: it is sometimes appropriate to omit words orphrases that are not essential to the meaning or impact of the text This isespecially true for words that would need lengthy explanations, awkwardparaphrases, or literal and unnatural translations, which would interrupt the flow

of the text and could distract the reader from the overall meaning Whentranslating the sentence “She is reliable and trustworthy” , the means of

“reliable” and “trustworthy” in Vietnamese are the same So, when translating,one of the two words can be omitted to prevent the sentence becoming awkward

1.3.2 How to deal with idioms and fixed expressions:

Idioms and fixed expressions can be dealt in ways based on meaning andform

-Using an idiom or fixed expression of similar meaning and form: it issometimes possible to find a Vietnamese idiom or examples with a similarmeaning to an English idiom or expression, and which is expressed in the sameway However, this kind of correspondence is not common, and it is usuallynecessary to use other strategies in dealing with idioms and fixed expressions

One example is the idiom “As white as snow” which is expressed using thesame words in Vietnamese “Trắng như tuyết”; another is “As heavy as lead”which translates as “Nặng như chì”

-Using an idiom or fixed expression of similar meaning but dissimilarform: it is also possible, and usually easier to find a Vietnamese idiom with asimilar meaning to an English idiom, but which is expressed differently Bysubstituting similar Vietnamese idiom, then, the flow and the impact of theoriginal text are retained in the translation A good example is the translation for

“beggars can not be choosers” to “ăn mày còn đòi ăn xôi gấc”

-Translation by paraphrase: when Vietnamese equivalents cannot be found,paraphrasing may be the best way to deal with an idiom or fixed expression.However, even if this phrase were clearly understood, it would be difficult tofind a correct equivalent in Vietnamese; in fact it would be difficult to re-stateconcisely in English This phrase is best dealt with by paraphrasing, which inEnglish should read something like, “summing up the problem by referring to itsimply as a number, which does not reflect its true magnitude or impact” Theexpression “to slip into easy usage” is problematic for the same reasons, and isalso best dealt with by paraphrasing as a direct translation into Vietnamesewould be nonsensical For example, “I have a sweet tooth” is translated as “ Tôi

về nhà an toàn” “safe and sound” can be translated as “bình yên”, However, themeaning “bình yên” here is not consistent with the context of the sentence so

we omit the meaning of that idiom

1.3.3 How to deal with voice, number and person

-Voice: the passive voice is used frequently in English and poses someproblems for translation into Vietnamese Passive voice can be translate fromEnglish into Vietnamese in the following ways:

English Vietnamese

A bị + động từ (bởi B)Người ta + động từ

Example: “The illegal immigrants were squeezed into a truck and takenaway to the closely-monitored camp” is translated “Những người nhập cư bấthợp pháp bị nhồi lên xe và bị đưa tới trại tị nạn được kiểm soát gắt gao” Passivehere is negative meaning so translated into Vietnamese is "bị nhồi vào”, “bị đưađến”

-Number: though both languages have similar notions of number andcountability, each language expresses this in very different ways In Vietnamese,number often not expressed at all In English, number is expressed as agrammatical category, that is, there are different grammatical forms for thesingular and plural nouns In Vietnamese, however no such distinction is madegrammatically Example “phụ nữ” can mean either “woman” or “women”

-Person: participants roles and forms of address are expressed inVietnamese through a very complicated system of personal pronouns basedlargely on kinship terms Unlike the English counterparts Vietnamese pronounsconvey many different distinctions, depending on relationship within the family,familiarity, social status, and even one’s particular mood or attitude in a givensituation These distinctions are not always clear in English and can usually bedetermined by the context, if at all If it is not possible to determine thedistinctions of the English pronouns, the decision should be based onconsideration of tone and overall purpose of the document The significantexample of this situation is the word “you” in English when translated intoVietnamese depends on relationship within family can translated as “bố, mẹ,