An english – vietnamese translation quality assessment on “the great gatsby” by f scott fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald.‖ This study firstly aims at reviewing different models for translation quality assessment all over the world and indicating the comprehensive model for assessing the tr

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



TRIỆU THU HẰNG

AN ENGLISH - VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT ON

“THE GREAT GATSBY” BY F SCOTT FITZGERALD

ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƯỢNG BẢN DỊCH ANH – VIỆT

TÁC PHẨM “ĐẠI GIA GATSBY”

CỦA NHÀ VĂN F SCOTT FITZGERALD

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



TRIỆU THU HẰNG

AN ENGLISH - VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT ON

“THE GREAT GATSBY” BY F SCOTT FITZGERALD

ĐÁNH GIÁ CHẤT LƯỢNG BẢN DỊCH ANH – VIỆT

TÁC PHẨM “ĐẠI GIA GATSBY”

CỦA NHÀ VĂN F SCOTT FITZGERALD

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that this thesis entitled: ―An English-Vietnamese Translation Quality Assessment on The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald‖, which is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, is the result

of my own work I have provided fully documented references to the works of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for any other formal course of study

Signature

Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not have been made possible without the guidance and the support of individuals who contributed and extended their valuable assistance in the preparation and completion of this study

I would like to sincerely express my innermost gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến who inflames fervent passion inside me towards research topic and research progress Without his continuously constructive feedback and overwhelming encouragement, the graduation paper could not come into being

Besides, I wish to thank my warm-hearted family for their immense tenderness, deep empathy, inspiration and support to show me throughout upheavals and realize tremendous ambition I also wish to thank genuine companions and colleagues always beside me

ABSTRACT

Needless to say, people today can approach innumerable foreign literature works through their translations; however, the questions regarding the quality of a good translation still triggers ongoing debates With the deep concerns about the issue, the researcher conducts a study entitled: ―A Vietnamese-English translation quality assessment on the Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald.‖

This study firstly aims at reviewing different models for translation quality assessment all over the world and indicating the comprehensive model for assessing the translation of literary works, which is the model proposed by House (1997) Secondly, based on the model proposed by House (1997), the study assesses the translation quality of ―The Great Gatsby‖ – an American masterpiece translated into

a host of different languages including Vietnam

The major methods adopted throughout the study include both qualitative and quantitative approaches, which enables the researcher to figure out the similarities and differences between the source text and the translation The findings reveal a number of mismatches in comparison with the source text On the basis of such findings, implications for literary translations are drawn out Hopefully, the study proves beneficial to translators and researchers who share the same topic interest

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF DIAGRAMS vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

I Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

II Significance of the study 2

III Research aims and research questions 2

IV Scope of the study 3

V Research methodology 3

VI Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

I Translation theory 5

1 Concepts of translation 5

2 Translation methods and procedures 6

II Literary translation 8

1 Definition 8

2 Difficulties in literary translation 10

III Translation quality assessment 12

1 Definition of TQA 12

2 Different approaches to TQA 13

IV Related studies and literature gaps 33

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 36

I Research design 36

1 Case study 36

2 Qualitative and quantitative approach 38

II Research questions 39

III Analytical framework – House’s model (1997) 22

1 Theories underlying House’s model (1997) 22

2 Operation of House’s model (1997) 24

3 Translation typologies following House’s model (1997) 29

4 Advantages and shortcomings of House’s model (1997) 31

IV Data collection procedures and analysis 39

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 41

I The Profile of the Source Text 41

1 Field 41

2 Tenor 57

3 Mode 62

4 Genre 64

II Statement of function 64

III Comparison of Target Text and Source Text 66

1 Covertly erroneous errors 66

2 Overtly erroneous errors 77

IV Statement of quality 86

PART C: CONCLUSION 88

I Key findings 88

II Implications 90

REFERENCES 92

Table 2 Alliteration in The Great Gatsby

Table 9 Syntactic mismatch in Field dimension

Table 10 Textual mismatch in Field dimension

Table 11 Lexical mismatch in Tenor dimension

Table 13, 14, 15 Creative translations

Table 16 Overtly erroneous errors

PART A: INTRODUCTION

I Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

The massive global integration has witnessed a proliferation of translating as Munday (2001: 5) accentuates ―Throughout history, written and spoken translations have played a crucial role in interhuman communication‖ More notably, the 21stcentury fosters nations around the world to come together in tremendous vigor to promote socio-economic development; thus, translators have been entrusted with the role of bridging the gap between people coming from various cultures

As a result, a surging number of novels have been translated into different languages Among those, ―The Great Gatsby‖, a masterpiece by F Scott Fitzgerald first published in 1925, has also been made available for the readership all over the world With a unique and original writing style and profound insights into American values, Fitzgerald has been greatly regarded as one of the most influential representatives of American literature in the 1920s (Perkins, 2004) His novel ―The Great Gatsby‖ has gained its recognition since the World War II It is also widely known as a literary classic and ranked among the greatest works of American literature More strikingly, the Modern Library Editorial Board voted it the 20thcentury’s best American novel in 1998

Following its fame, the novel has also been translated into Vietnamese In fact, there are three translated versions of ―The Great Gatsby‖, namely ―Con người hào hoa‖ by Mặc Đỗ (1956), ―Gatsby vĩ đại‖ by Hoàng Cường (1985), and the recent

―Đại gia Gatsby‖ by Trịnh Lữ (2009) Among these three translated versions, the translation of Trịnh Lữ (2009) has indeed attracted a myriad of contending reviews from translators (Đỗ Phước Tiến, 2010)

Moreover, there have been little agreement about how ―good‖, ―satisfactory‖ or

―acceptable‖ of a translation is The concept of acceptability in translation still

remains the issue of ongoing debate National and international translation standards now exist, but there are no generally accepted objective criteria for assessing the quality of the translations

All these aforementioned reasons have motivated the researcher to conduct the

study entitled ―A Vietnamese-English translation quality assessment on the Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald.‖

II Significance of the study

It is of great importance to be able to assess a translation as translation has become

a pivotal part in human civilization In Vietnam, English is a popular foreign language, a tool of communication as well as a key to unlock human knowledge The demand for knowledge has fostered the development of translation; however, it seems that many non-professionals and semi-professional translators undertake the task of translating This research serves as an useful source for both non-professionals and professional translators to improve the quality of other literary translated works in general Within the scope of this study, it is hoped to greatly enhance the translation of the masterpiece ―The Great Gatsby‖ Besides, the study can be used as guidelines for other researchers to conduct further research with the application of House’s model (1997) in assessing literary translation and other different genres

III Research aims and research questions

The study firstly aims at providing a theoretical background on some issues relevant

to the topic of the study, which are translation, literary translation and TQA, particularly a model for TQA proposed by House (1997)

Secondly, based on a model for TQA proposed by House (1997), the study is to assess the quality of the translation of ―The Great Gatsby‖ – a popular American

novel translated into a host of different languages including Vietnam

These aims can be formulated into the following research questions

1 To what extent does the translation of ―The Great Gatsby‖ achieve the dimensions of House’s model for TQA?

Addressing the aforementioned issues is hoped to assist English translators in enhancing their awareness of TQA for literary works and improve their own translations The study is also expected to be a beneficial reference to any Vietnamese readers who fancy romantic novel and are fans of ―The Great Gatsby‖ for a high-quality translation

IV Scope of the study

First, the theoretical background of the study limitedly focuses on some fundamental issues in translation theory of vital importance to the examined issue including translation, literary translation and particularly TQA

Second, the study concentrates on the analytical scheme for TQA that is proposed

by House (1997) The analytical scheme proposed by House (1997) are employed to assess the translation quality of the whole novel ―The Great Gatsby‖ (1993) by F Scott Fitzgerald of Wordsworth Editions Publisher and its translation ―Đại gia Gatsby‖ (2009) by Trịnh Lữ of Nhã Nam Publisher

V Research methodology

In order to achieve the aims of the study, case study from both qualitative and quantitative approach is employed The researcher conducted the study in the procedure proposed by Munday (2001):

Phase 1: ST is analyzed in details to produce a profile of the ST register with the text-specific linguistic correlating to the situational dimensions (syntactic, lexical, and textual means)

Phase 2: A description of the ST genre realized by the register is added

Phase 3: A statement of function of the ST is made, including the ideational and interpersonal component of that function

Phase 4: A similar profile and statement of function is made of the TT

Phase 5: The TT profile is compared to the ST profile based on House’s model (1997) and a statement of ―mismatches‖ is produced, categorized according to genre and to the situational dimensions of register and genre

Phase 6: A statement of quality is made of the translation

Phase 7: The translation is categorized into either overt translation or covert translation

VI Design of the study

PART A – INTRODUCTION identifies the central problems and main aims of the

study Research questions, scope, methodology and significance of the study are also clearly stated in this part

PART B – DEVELOPMENT comprises three chapters

Chapter 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW represents fundamental theoretical

background that precedes and necessitates the formation of the research A brief overview on several previous studies is also indicated in this chapter

Chapter 2 – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY covers the sources of data, research

methods and analytical framework to collect and analyze the data to facilitate the research progress

Chapter 3 – FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION contains the analysis, presentation

and interpretation of the results

PART C – CONCLUSION draws important conclusions, yields implications and

proposes recommendations for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter sheds light on fundamental concepts of translation theories and TQA approaches by analyzing, synthesizing related-topic works and indicating their strengths and weaknesses

I Translation theory

1 Concepts of translation

The concepts of ―translation‖ have been thoroughly discussed by a number of researchers in various publications

From linguistic approach, Catford (1965: 20) indicated that translation means ―the

replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent textual material in another language‖ However, this notion remains ambiguous concerning the type of equivalence in which culture had not been taken into account To a certain extent, the notion proposed by Catford (1965: 20) shares the same viewpoint with Hartman and Stork (1972: 713), Newmark (1981), Bell (1991), Landa (2006) They defined that translation is a procedure of transferring a written text into another language in the way that the author aimed in the text Generally speaking, the notion of translation from linguistic approach shares two main similarities Firstly, translation means rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the same way that the author intended in the ST Secondly, the translator has an obligation to seek for the closet equivalent in the TL Nonetheless, there is no indication that culture is taken into consideration

From cultural approach, Nida put strong emphasis on cultural aspect in 1964

More specifically, translators pay sufficient attention to not only lexical aspect but also cultural issues Differences between cultures may even cause more aching complications for the translators Since then, Toury (1978) considers translation as

―a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions‖ Snell-Hornby (1988: 39), Larson (1994) shares the same viewpoint that that previous studies approaching translation from linguistic aspect ignore

―extralinguistic reality‖ including culture, situation, context and so forth Therefore, the latter approach views language as an integral part of culture All in all, it can be witnessed that the above-cited definitions, though differed in wording, all agreed on the nature of translation, denoting it as the accuracy of the written transference of messages from one language into another and resolving problems relating to

cultural differences

2 Translation methods and procedures

In ―A textbook of translation‖ (1995), Newmark mentioned eight translation methods In word-for-word translation, SL order is preserved; words are translated

by their most common meaning and out of context The SL grammatical structures

are converted to the nearest equivalent in the TL in literal translation, but words are still translated singly and out of text In faithful translation, words are translated in context but uncompromising to the TL Semantic translation is more flexible than

faithful translation and greatly focuses on the aesthetic beauty of the SL text

Communicative translation is freer than semantic translation and gives priority to

the effectiveness of the message to be communicated Free translation reproduces

the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original

Idiomatic translation reproduces the ―message‖ of the original but tends to distort

nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where these do not

exist in the original Adaptation is the ―freest‖ form of translation and used mainly

for the translation of plays (comedies) and poetry

Newmark (1995) proposes 16 main types of translation procedures Transference

is the process of transferring an SL word to a TL text Naturalization adapts the SL

word first to the normal pronunciation, then to the normal morphology of the TL

Cultural equivalent replaces a cultural word in the SL with a TL one Functional

equivalent requires the use of a culture-neutral word In descriptive equivalent, the

meaning of the ST is explained in several words Componential analysis means

―comparing an SL word with a TL word which has a similar meaning but is not an obvious one-to-one equivalent, by demonstrating first their common and then their

differing sense components.‖ Synonymy is a ―near TL equivalent‖

Through-translation is the literal Through-translation of common collocations, names of organizations

and components of compounds Shift or transposition involves a change in the grammar from SL to TL Modulation means a change in perspective or thought

Recognized translation occurs when the translator ―normally uses the official or the

generally accepted translation of any institutional term‖ Compensation occurs

when loss of meaning in one part of a sentence is compensated in another part

Paraphrase: in this procedure the meaning of the ST is explained Couplets occur

when the translator combines two different procedures Footnotes are additional

information in a translation

3 Translation equivalence

Translation equivalence is undeniably the central issue of translation studies The definition, categorization and applicability of equivalence have been discussed, analyzed, synthesized from different perspectives

Jakobson (1959) introduced the notion of ―equivalence in difference‖; and on the

basis of his semiotic approach to language, he suggests three categories of translation: Intralingual (within one language), interlingual (between two languages), and intersemiotic (between sign systems) In his opinion, there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units because the translator recodes and transmits the message from another source Thus, translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes

Nida (1964) approaches the issue from function-based perspective From Nida’s viewpoint, equivalence should be dynamic and formal types Formal equivalence

focuses on the messages itself in both form and content, and the message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the

SL Dynamic equivalence is based on the principle of equivalent effect where the

receptor and message should be substantially the same at that which existed between the original receptors and the message

Koller (1979) utilizes meaning-based approach in order to classify equivalence into

five main groups including denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic and formal equivalence Denotative equivalence means that both SL and TL words refer

to the same thing in the real world Connotative equivalence is achieved by the translator’s choices of words As for text-normative categorization, both SL and TL words are used in the similar context in their respective languages Pragmatic equivalence focuses on practical situations Formal equivalence creates an analogy

of form in the translation by their exploiting formal possibilities of TL

Equivalence can also be approached from form-based perspective proposed by

Baker (1992) Equivalence can appear at word level and above word level when translating from one language into another This means that the translator should pay attention to a number of factors when considering a single word, such as number, gender and tense (Baker, 1992: 11) Textual equivalence means the equivalence between the ST and the TT in terms of information and cohesion

In short, as various scholars have dissimilar methods of classifying equivalence, there are many categorizations including form-based equivalence, meaning-based equivalence and function-based equivalence

II Literary translation

1 Definition

The definitions of literary translation have been discussed by many scholars Toury (1993), Venuti (1996), Holmes (1988), Jones (2009), Berman (2000), Pilkington

(2000), Landers (2001), and Stockwell (2002) Most of literary definitions agree with the following definition proposed by Bush (1998: 127): ― Literary translation is the work of literary translator […] The imaginative, intellectual and intuitive writing of the translator must not be lost to the disembodied abstraction often described as ―translation‖ In general, literary texts include all forms of literature written in prose or poetry Reiss (1989) also indicated that literary texts belong to expressive text type in which the authors use the aesthetic dimension of language

In literary translation, the typical features of the source literary text not only need to

be considered but also are the influential elements

When it comes to the work of a literary translation, Lamberts (1998: 130) considers

―a published translation is the fruit of substantial creative effort by the translator, who is the key agent in the subjective activity and social practice of translation‖ He claims it is the literary translator who decides how to translate and gives the literary translation its existence no matter what restraints of the network of social and cultural factors are To emphasize the challenges of the literary translation, Landers (2009:9) added: ― literary translation entails an unending skein of choices‖

In general, definitions of literary translation vary depending on the authors’ emphasis While writers such as Bush, Lampert and Newmark emphasize the subjective work of the translators, others focus on the degree of equivalence between the ST and TT No matter how different they are in their views of literary translation, no one can deny that literary is challenging The next part will discover prominent difficulties that translators have to cope with literary translation as

―when there is any kind of translation problem, literal translation is normally out of question‖ (Newmark, 1988:70)

2 Difficulties in literary translation

2.1 Cultural translation problems

It is apparent that the first challenge of literary translation lies in the differences between cultures According to Catford (1965), instance of untranslatability can arise from two sources: one is culture; the other is linguistics Nida (1964) also mentioned that words have meanings only in terms of the total cultural setting Seeing eye to eye with other scholars, Newmark (1995) defined the culture as the way of life and manifestation that are peculiar to a community that uses a peculiar language as its means of expression It is widely known that language is an important aspect of culture Culture includes and affects language; it is the ground from which language grows and develops

According to Cui (2012), challenges pose literary translators can be material culture, traditional culture, religious culture and historical culture First, different nations live in different places and will have different images for the same thing For example, Vietnamese culture has ―áo dài, bánh chưng, nhà sàn‖ and so on Western culture may have ―pizza, sushi, continental breakfast‖ It would be a huge challenge to deal with those cultural materials Second, people live together in one country or region and will form their own traditions, these traditions will pass from generation to generation In other countries or regions, people may not have those traditions, thus making these traditions untranslatable For example, in Quan Ho Bac Ninh folk songs, there are some traditional customs such as ―tục kết chạ, tục ngủ bọn‖ which exist only in Vietnamese culture Third, the history of a nation is the record of social development Idioms and legends provide ready support in this respect An idiom or fixed expression may have no equivalent in the TL The expression such as ―Kangaroo Court‖ is an example that is difficult to translate into Vietnamese

Newmark (1988) indicates the use of two translation procedures of two opposite perspectives At one end, it is transference popular in literary text characterized by local color and atmosphere in specialist texts that make it possible for readers to identify the referent in other texts without difficulty However, brief and concise as

it is, transference may block comprehension for its emphasis on the culture and exclusion of the intended message At the other end, it is componential analysis, the most accurate translation procedure, which excludes the culture and highlights the message In componential analysis, one can add extra contextual distinguishing components in addition to a component common to the source language and the target language Unavoidably, a componential analysis is not as economical and does not have the pragmatic impact of the original

In general, in the process of translating literary texts, there are problems in the translation of cultural words in a literary text due to the cultural gaps between the

SL and the TL It is not enough for the translator to know what words are used in the TL It is even more important for the translator to make the readership understand the sense as it is understood by the readership of the SL

2.2 Stylistic translation problems

Style is also a challenging problem of literary translation Style can be understood

as the way something is written as distinct from its subject matter In a natural way, each language has its own problem of style

For a technical text, for example, style is not a problem in that its informational content remains from the ST to the TT Landers (2001: 7) used the metaphor to illustrate the importance of taking style into consideration in literary translation ―In technical translation the order of the cars is inconsequential if all the cargo arrives intact In literary translation, however, the order of the cars- which is to say the style

- can make the difference between a lively, highly readable translation and a stilted,

rigid, and artificial rendering that strips the original of its artistic and aesthetic essence, even its very soul‖

According to Landers (2001), ―style‖ in a translator is an ―oxymoron‖ In order to perform his or her task well, it would be best if the translator strives to have no style

at all and disappears into and become indistinguishable from the style of the SL author Preferably, the translator should adapt to the style of each author translated but always as faithful to the original as circumstance permit

2.3 Linguistic translation problems

Linguistic translation problems arise due to structural differences between the SL and the TL Linguistically, each language has its own metaphysics that determines the spirit of a nation and its behavioral norms It rejects the commonly held belief that all people of different countries have a common logical structure when processing with language independent of communication Instead, it emphasizes the influence of linguistic patterns on the way people perceive the world Consequently, the modes of thinking and perceiving in groups utilizing different linguistic systems will result in basically different worldview Since words or images may vary considerably from one group to another, the translator need to pay attention to the style, language and vocabulary peculiar to the two languages in order to produce an exact translation of the SL text

III Translation quality assessment

1 Definition of TQA

It can be seen that ―the assessment of translator performance is an activity is researched and under-discussed despite being widespread‖ (Hatim and Mason 1997:199) For decades, TQA has received much attention in the academic sphere (House 1997; Nord 1997; Lauscher 2000; Brunette 2000; Colina 2008; William 2009) House (1981:127) assumed that ―What is a good translation?‖ should be

under-―one of the most important questions to be asked in connection with translation‖ Halliday (1994: 14) also shared the same viewpoint that ―it is notorious to say why

or even whether, something is a good translation‖

Although there have been little agreement about the need for a translation to be

―good‖, ―satisfactory‖ or ―acceptable‖, scholars reach a consensus that TQA is of great significance all the time Newmark (1995) and Schiaffino (2005) proposes some benefits of TQA such as enhancing competence; improving language proficiency, background knowledge and comprehensive understanding about translation-related topic; reducing poor quality; increasing customer satisfaction and creating benchmarking, competitive advantages and so forth

2 Different approaches to TQA

Approaches to TQA have drawn numerous discussions from scholars The comprehensive table below gives an overview on several main and outstanding TQA approaches

Functionalist approach Reiss (1971)

Skopos Theories (1991) E.Steiner (1998)

Jamal Al-Qinai (2000) House (1977, 1986, 1997, 2000, 2006, 2009, 2015) Quantitative approach SEPT (1979)

Sical (1986) Waddington (2001) Linguistically oriented

approach

Baker (1992) Hatim and Mason (1997) Steiner (1998)

Munday and Hatim (2004) Teich (2004)

Munday (2008) House (1977, 1986, 1997, 2000, 2006, 2009, 2015) Behavioristic approach Nida (1964)

Nida and Taber (1969)

Table 1 Some main approaches in TQA

In fact, mentalist views in TQA came into being long time ago In mentalist views, the assessment of a translation is subjective and intuitive In the researcher’s point

of view, this trend should be dismissed due to its bias, and the translation assessment depends on each individual position

2.1 Behaviouristic approach

As opposed to mentalist views, behavioristic views give way for a more scientific way of translation assessment This tradition was influenced by American behaviourism, and it is associated with Nida (1964) and Nida and Taber (1969) Nida (1964) suggested several behavioural tests to enable translation evaluators to formulate more ―objective‖ statements about the quality of a translation The tests used broad criteria such as ―intelligibility‖ and ―informativeness‖, and they were based on the belief that a good translation is one leading to equivalence of response,

a criterion linked to Nida’s famous principle of ―dynamic equivalence‖ In the heyday of behaviourism, several imaginative tests were suggested such as reading aloud techniques, and various cloze and rating tasks, all of which took observable responses to a translation as measuring its quality

Nevertheless, these tests ultimately failed because they were unable to capture something as intricate and complex as the ―overall quality of a translation‖ (House, 2009) Furthermore, the ST is largely ignored in such texts which implies that

nothing can be said about the relationship between the original and texts resulting from different textual operations

2.2 Quantitative approach

The Canadian Government Translation Bureau’s Quality Measurement System

created a system for TQA known as Sical (1986) However, this system itself

illustrates the limitations of quantitative approach to translation quality The system was based on the quantification of errors; and there was a distinction between major and minor errors Texts were given quality ratings following the number of major and minor errors in a 400-word passage: A: superior (0 major errors/maximum of 6 minor); B: fully acceptable (0/12); C: revisable (1/18); and D: unacceptable The major error was defined as follows: The translation fails to render the meaning of a word or passage that contains an essential element of the message; mistranslation resulting in a contradiction or significant departure from the meaning of an essential element of the message The language is incomprehensible, grossly incorrect language or rudimentary error in an essential element of the message (Williams 1989: 26)

However, the application of a quantified standard still sparks dissatisfaction among translators inside and outside the Bureau Working conditions, deadlines, level of difficulty of the ST and the ―over-assessment‖ of the TL errors were regularly cited

by the opponents of the system As a result, the ―official‖ set of quantifiable quality ratings has been abandoned

Another model of quantitative approach is Systeme devaluation positive des traduction named (SEPT) This model was developed for the Translation Bureau by Daniel Gouadec but never put into practice due to its complexity

Waddington (2001) explored TQA in his work Different Methods of Evaluating

Translations in which he compared four different methods used at various universities around the world These methods are quantitative error analyses

Method A includes possible errors divided into three categories (1) Inappropriate

translation which affects the understanding of the ST such as nonsense, addition, omission, etc (2) Inappropriate translation which affects the expression in the TT such as spelling, grammar, text and style; (3) Inadequate translation which affects the transmission of either the main function or secondary functions of the ST In each category, the difference is made between serious errors (-2 points) and minor errors (-1 point) The fourth category describes plus points for good (+1 point) and

exceptionally good (+2 points) Method B is based on the work of Kussmaul

(1995: 129) and Waddington (1997) The evaluator has to determine whether each mistake is language mistake (-1 point) or translation mistake (-2 points) Translation mistakes affect the transfer of meaning from the ST to the TT The final mark for

translation is calculated in the similar way with method A Method C is a holistic

method of assessment The scale is unitary and treats the translation competence as

a whole Method D is a combination of error analysis of method B and C in the

proportion of 70/30 In other words, method B accounts for 70% of the total result and method C accounts for 30%

However, Waddington’s model (2001) was criticized due to four main reasons Firstly, this model is highly academic, and it may not be applied to real cases outside academic contexts Secondly, this model ignores translation shifts According to Catford (1965), translation shifts are ―departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL‖ Regarding textual equivalence and particular the ST-TT pairs, there sometimes occurs a divergence between the pairs of languages; thus, translation shifts are inevitable in translation Thirdly, the holistic method C is general and vague, causing the high subjectivity during the translation assessment process In this method, the assessment depends

on the evaluator, and judgment is different from assessor to assessor Finally, the critique falls upon the errors of addition in method A Klaudy (1996) indicated that

it is essential to add some information to the concepts, even grammatical structures

to make them more understandable to the readership Therefore, addition can also

be a good way of conveying the desired meaning in some situations

2.3 Argumentation-Centered approach

The Argumentation-Centered Theory by Williams (2009) attempts to combine a

non-qualitative and qualitative approach to TQA The author states that ―whatever the speciality or purpose, a translation must reproduce the argument structure of ST

to meet the minimum criteria of adequacy‖ (Wiliams, 2001, p.336) He then names the specific parts of an argument: claim/ discovery, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier/ modalizer, and rebuttal/ exception According to Williams, every ST should be analyzed with respect to those categories (whether they are present or not) and compared to the TT The quantitative dimension of the theory rests in the number of arguments correctly or incorrectly rendered by a translator, and the qualitative one in analyzing the arguments and dividing them into smaller components

Nonetheless, this approach is rather a macrostructural analysis disregarding the micro level and not every text must inevitably contain an argument (or such an argument on which the theory can be applied) Besides, Williams totally disregards the context and culture-boundness of the texts

2.4 Functionalist approach

In the 1980s, following the ―pragmatic turn‖ in linguistics, the functionalist paradigm shifted the focus of translation studies towards a consideration of the extralinguistic setting of translation The skopos or purpose is the most important factor in translation The original text is downgraded to a mere offer of information, and the translator is often seen as the ―co-author‖

According to Reiss (1971), the assessment of translations should start with the

establishment of text types She claims that different text types have different

functions and therefore needed to be treated differently She distinguished three types including content-oriented text (news, scientific-technical texts), form-oriented texts (poems and many other types of literary texts), conative texts (advertisements and texts of a rhetorical or polemical bent‖ and audiomedial texts (operas, songs) She claims that it is these text types which have to be kept equivalent in an adequate translation However, she did not indicate how to establish that the desired function is

In the context of functionalist approach, Amman (1990), closely follows Reiss and

Vermeer (1984: 139), adopts a strictly TT oriented perspective on TQA The framework selected by Amman (1990) consists of five phases including (1) determining the function of the translation; (2) determining the intratextual coherence of the translation; (3) determining the function of the ST; (4) determining the intratextual coherence of the ST; (5) determining the intertextual coherence between the translation and the ST However, two major weaknesses in this approach indicated by House (2009) are the vagueness of the procedure for determining the functions of the ST and TT and even the greater vagueness concerning what happens in the heads of the readers

In Nord (1991)’s Skopos theorie model, translation is viewed as an intentional,

interlingual and communicative action Therefore, she proposed an analytical framework based on the function and intention (skopos) of the TT in the target culture Nord’s model (1991: 166-167) comprises the following steps: (1) The TT analysis: the TT is analyzed in terms of intra-textual factors (such as grammatical, lexical, stylistic normativity and semantic coherence) and in terms of extra-textual factors (such as the pragmatic dimensions of recipient, time, and place and so forth) (2) The ST analysis: the ST is analyzed based on the model of translation-relevant text analysis The critic should pay sufficient attention to those factors which have been figured out as ―problematic‖ during TT assessment such as coherence deficiencies, inconsistent terminology, interferences in lexical or sentence structure,

etc (3) A comparison of the TT and ST to create a TT profile (4) A comparison of the TT profile and the TT If the TT profile congruent the TT, the translation can be regarded as functionally adequate Nord (1991:166) stresses that errors analysis is insufficient: ―It is the text as a whole whose functions and effects must be regarded

as the crucial criteria for translation criticisms‖ On the basis of a selection of relevant ST feature; the translator may eliminate ST items, rely more heavily on implicatures or ―compensate‖ for them in a different part of the text

Another essentially functionalist approach to evaluate a translation – but with respect to specialist texts that fulfill the same function in source and target cultures

is one suggested by D’Hulst (1997) She equates function with ―text act‖ which

seems to be similar to illocution, and further subdivides this into topic-centered and hierarchical text structure Text structure relates to text connectivity comprising macro- and micro- units The author assumes that text structures can be correlated with text acts, such as a directive text act correlates with a hierarchical text structure However, this theory goes against theories in previous decades such as speech act theory, discourse analysis, contrastive pragmatics and text linguistics (House, 2009)

Another approach to TQA worth mentioning is proposed by Canadian scholar

Larose (1998) Like other skopos theorists, Larose firmly believes that the purpose

of a translation is the most important aspect for measuring its quality He differentiates textual and extra-textual features His focus on textual features includes three different levels: a microstructural one that relates to graphic, lexical and syntactic expression forms at sentence and phrase level; a macrostructural level that relates to the semantic structure of discourse content, and a superstructural level relating to the overall structure including narrative and argumentative structure

A more recent approach to TQA is that of Jamal Al-Qinai (2000) Al-Qinai (2000:

497) attempts to ―develop an empirical model for TQA based on objective parameters of textual typology, formal correspondence, thematic coherence,

reference cohesion, pragmatic equivalence and lexical – syntactic properties‖ The author elaborated a list of concrete parameters according to which the ST and TT relative match should be tested Al-Qinai’s model is similar to the Nord’s model in which it strives to be holistic

2.5 Linguistically oriented approach

In more recent times, many linguistically oriented works on TQA have appeared such as Baker (1992), Hatim and Mason (1997), Steiner (1998), Munday and Hatim (2004), Teich (2004) and Munday (2008) They all widened the scope of translation studies to include speech act theory, discourse analysis, pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics

Steiner’s approach (1998) is partly based on the systemic functional theory

proposed by Halliday (1964, 1978) According to Steiner (1998, as cited in Hoang Van Van, 2006: 147), a comprehensive assessment of a text should consider meta-functional equivalence (the experiential, logical, interpersonal, textual meanings; the pragmatic meanings and the situational environment in which the text is embedded) When assessing a translation, the assessor should compare the TT with the ST regarding three register components: Field, tenor and mode (1) Field refers

to subject matter, goal orientation, social activities (i.e production, exchange, communication, reproduction, etc.) (2) Tenor refers to agentive roles, social roles, social distance (i.e degrees of formality, degrees of politeness) and effects (3) Mode refers to language role, channel of discourse, and medium of discourse

Regarding House’s model (1997), House’s model generally draws on pragmatics,

functional and systemic linguistics, register theory, stylistics, discourse analysis, the notion of equivalence and concepts developed in the Prague school of language and linguistics (House, 1996: 29) In particular, the model is based on Halliday’s (1973) view of the function of language as well as Crystal and Davy’s (1969) situational

dimensions of texts The model proposed by House (1997) will be discussed in depth in the next chapter of the study

There are several models that do not belong to these aforementioned specific

approaches Some are illustrated as follows Newmark’s model of criticism (1988: 186) includes the analysis of SL text, a comparison between ST and the translation,

and comments about the translation’s potential role as a translation The five parts

of this comparative model include: (1) A brief analysis of the SL text focusing on its intention and its functional aspects; (2) The translator’s interpretation of the SL text’s purpose, his translation method and the translation’s possible readership; (3)

A selective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with the original; (4) An evaluation of the translation: a) in the translators terms, b) in the critic’s terms (5) Where appropriate, and the assessment of the possible place of the translation in the TL culture or discipline However, Newmark’s model is only applicable for practitioners

Berman (1995) incorporates a positive assessment of literary translation He

introduces an assessment that demonstrates not only the shortcomings but also the qualities and originality of translation as work of art His design is then specialized

by a general procedure, of which choosing significant passages in the translation that encapsulates its essence and comparison of these ―zones significates‖ (1995:70) with the original is the key point Then, the statement of ―confrontation‖ may show the differences between the ST and the TT text However, such differences in some cases may be considered as strong points contributing to the originality of the translation Nevertheless, Berman’s model is a closed system with no specific assessment criteria His overarching purpose is to demonstrate the superiority of a translation approach that brings out the essence of the original

3 Analytical framework – House’s model (1997)

Julian House is the president of IATIS (International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies) and one of the key figures in Translation Studies Her first important publication was her PhD dissertation entitled ―A Model for Translation Quality Assessment and some Implications for Foreign Language Teaching‖ (1976) The model that she developed in her thesis was revised in 1981 and then officially updated after 20 years in ―Translation Quality Assessment: A Model Revisited‖ (1997)

3.1 Theories underlying House’s model (1997)

Generally, House’s model draws on pragmatics, functional and systemic linguistics, register theory, stylistics, discourse analysis, the notion of equivalence and concepts developed in the Prague school of language and linguistics (House, 1997: 29) In

particular, the model is based on Halliday’s (1973) view of the function of language as well as Crystal and Davy’s (1969) situational dimensions of texts

House first introduced her model (1977) for situational-functional text analysis and assessment of translation by adapting and modifying Crystal and Davy’s (1969) scheme and coming up with the following model:

A Dimensions of language user

1 Geographical origin

2 Social class

3 Time

B Dimensions of language use

1 Medium: simple/ complex

2 Participation: simple/ complex

3 Social role relationship

4 Social attitude

5 Province

On each of the situational dimensions, House differentiated syntactic, lexical and textual means, although it may not always be the case that all three categories are found to be operative on a particular dimension According to House (2015), the importance in the conception of this model was the inclusion of textual means, which were not considered in Crystal and Davy’s approach House also indicated that one of the more serious objections to the Crystal and Davy’s approach was that they were only concerned with breaking down stretches of language into their constituent linguistic elements without seeking to establish the meaning construed via different ways of sentence connections, thematic movements and so on This objection was not valid for her own approach because she did take account of textual devices

Therefore, House revised her model, and textual means were incorporated into the model The updated model for TQA was officially introduced in 1997 House (1997) based her treatment of textual means of realizing a particular situational feature on Enkvist’s work on linguistic stylistics (1973), on work done in Prague school on theme-rheme distribution and on the insightful work on texts in spoken and written language by Soll (1974) as well as on Edmondson’s work on discourse analysis (1981)

Furthermore, House’s model (1997) was based on Halliday’s (1973) Systemic – Functional Theory in terms of two functional components In House’s revised model (1997), the Halliday register concepts of ―Field‖, ―Tenor‖ and ―Mode‖ are used According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the functions of language include

the ideational, interpersonal and textual function Firstly, the ideational function

(Field) is the ―content function of language‖ (Halliday, 2007: 183) It serves to represent situations and events in the world and entities, actions and processes involved It is in the ideational function that text-producers embodies in language

their experience of the phenomena of the real world (Halliday, 1973: 106) The ideational function has two sub-functions, namely Experiential and Logical The experiential part deals with the representation of experience, and the logical part is concerned with logical relations which are not directly drawn from experience

(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 26) The second language function, the interpersonal function (Tenor), refers to how we use language to communicate The interpersonal

function is the ―participatory function of language‖ (Halliday, 2007: 184) It allows the expression of a relation set up between the text-producer and the text-consumer

(Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999: 7) The textual function (Mode) of language is an

enabling one (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) It is in the textual function that ideational and interpersonal meanings are actualized (Halliday, 2007: 184) The textual function is realized in information structure and cohesion

3.2 Operation of House’s model (1997)

From House’s viewpoint (1997: 31), translation is ―the replacement of a text in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the target language‖ It can be revealed from this definition that House focused on three aspects including semantic, pragmatic and textual aspect

The semantic aspect is the most easily accessible from the three aspects and has

been given preference by the evaluators (Nascimento, 1996) On the other hand, the

pragmatic aspect which is ―the particular use of an expression on a specific

occasion (House, 1981: 27) is of great importance since translation deals with

language in use The textual aspect, though, is highly important; it has been

frequently neglected because all the references such as substitutions, anaphora, ellipsis, etc that make up the different ways of text constitution account for textual meaning that should be preserved in translation

Therefore, from her viewpoint, equivalence should be functional and pragmatic and

be achieved for ―meaning‖ to be preserved across two different languages In other

words, both the ST and TT must present the same function, and the function of the text can only be made explicit via a thorough analysis of the text itself

Moreover, the model for TQA of House is based on systemic-functional theory by Halliday (1973) and aims at the analysis and comparison of an original and its translation on three different levels: The levels of Language/ Text; Register (Field, Mode and Tenor), and Genre The House’s model is illustrated via the following schema (House, 1997: 108)

Diagram 1 House’s model for Translation Quality Assessment (1997)

In House’s revised model (1997) for TQA, the classic Hallidayan register concepts

of Field, Tenor and Mode are used

Individual textual function

Genre Register

+ social role relationship + social attitude

Mode

+ Medium (simple/complex) + Participant (simple/complex)

Language/Text

Field captures subject matter, topic, social action or social activity with

differentiations of degrees of generality, specificity or granularity in lexical items according to the rubrics of specialized, general and popular

Tenor captures the nature of the participants and the relationship between them in

terms of social power and social distance as well as the degree of emotional charge, including the text producer’s temporal, geographical and social provenance as well

as his intellectual, emotional or affective stance or his viewpoint

 Author’s Provenance reveals his temporal, geographical and social

provenance and thus represents the former Dimensions of Language User

 Author’s Stance indicates his intellectual, emotional and affective position

towards the subject he presents and his point of view

 Social Role Relationship is the relationship between addresser and

addressee It can be either symmetrical marked by the existence of solidarity

or equality or asymmetrical marked by the existence of some kind of

authority In other words, symmetrical means the text contains features indicating solidarity and equality between addresser and addressee Asymmetrical means the text contains features indicating authority relationship between addresser and addressee

 Social attitude means the degree of social distance or proximity indicating

formality and informality In other words, social attitude refers to different styles (formal, consultative and informal) Five styles of formality: frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate

Mode captures Medium and Participation

 Medium: both channel of being either simple (written to be read) or complex

(written to be spoken), the degree of participation between the writer and the reader

 Participation: can also be “simple” such as a monologue with no addressee

participation built into the text or “complex” with various addressees involving linguistic mechanism characterizing the text

However, register analysis itself cannot directly lead to a statement of the individual

textual function Therefore, the concept of genre is newly incorporated in the

analytic scheme for analyzing and comparing the original and the translation text Genre, the conventional text type associated with a specific communicative function, enables to refer any single text to the class of texts sharing a common purpose As House (2001: 248) stated, genre connects texts with the “macro-context” of the linguistic and cultural community in which texts are embedded Genre, Register and Language correlates to each other Genre is the content-plane

of Register, which at the same time is the expression plane of Genre Besides, Register is also the content-plane of Language while Language is its expression plane According to House (1997), Genre serves as a bridge connecting Register and Function

The analysis of these situational dimensions can create the function of a text As stated above, ―a translation text should not only match its ST in function, but employ equivalent situational – dimensional means to achieve that function‖ (House, 1981: 49)

Each of these situational dimensions is manifested through syntactic, lexical and textual means

Lexical means refer to the choice and patterns of lexical items, collocations,

co-occurrence, the use of onomatopoetic elements and so on Lexical cohesion is divided into two main categories: reiteration and collocations

Syntactic means refer to the nature of the verb phrases, mood; tenses; sentence

structures: simple, compound or complex; repetition, coordination or subordination;

structure of noun phrases; simple or complex with pre-modification or modification, etc

post-Textual means was distinguished into three main textual aspects including theme dynamics, clausal linkage and iconic linkage According to House (1977), theme

recurs in texts (e.g repetition, anaphoric and cataphoric reference, preforms, ellipsis, synonymy and near-synonymy) Theme refers to facts taken for granted, universally known or given from the context and therefore it does not or marginally

contribute to the new information conveyed by the total utterance Rheme contains

the main new information conveyed by the utterance Word order is the primary formal means of realizing the theme-rheme distribution: in normal, unmarked speech, the theme precedes the rheme; however, in emotive speech, the rheme precedes the theme

Clausal linkage is described by a system of basically logical relations between

clauses and sentences in a text such as additive, adservative, alternative, causal, explanatory or illative relations

Iconic linkage or structural parallelism occurs when two or more sentences in a text

cohere because they are, at the surface level, isomorphic (House, 1977) Based on

Soll (1974) and Pike (1967), House distinguishes into emic and etic text An emic text is one which is solely determined by text-immanent criteria, and an etic text is

one which is determined through text-transcending means such as temporal, personal, or local deictic pointing to various features of the situation enveloping, the addresser and the addressee

A textual profile is established then for the ST under the form of a Statement of

Function The TT is also analyzed using the same dimensions to create the textual

profile of the TT The comparison of the two textual profiles reveals the degree to which the translation text matches the ST, and a Statement of Quality is provided

3.3 Translation typologies following House’s model (1997)

Overt translation

According to House (2015), an overt translation is one in which the addressees of the translation text are ―overtly‖ not directly addressed In an overt translation, the original is tied in a specific manner to the SL community and its culture, and is often specifically directed at source culture addressees House divided overt translation into two groups The first is overt historically linked source texts such as those tied to a specific occasion in which a precisely specified SL audience is being addressed A political speech given in 1942 by Winston Churchill in Bradford is an example The second is overt timeless source texts such as those transcending as works of art and aesthetic creations a distinct a historical meaning while always necessarily displaying period – and culture – specificity because of the status of the addresser who is a product of his time and culture ―The End of the Beginning‖ – an excerpt from Sean O’Casey’s one-act play is an example This text is specific to the source culture because they are marked on the language user dimensions and they have independent status in the language community

Covert translation

A covert translation is a translation which enjoys the status of an original source text in the target culture The translation is covert because it is not marked pragmatically as a translation text of ST but may conceivably have been created in its own right A covert translation is thus a translation whose ST is not specifically addressed to a particular source culture audience Some sample texts analyzed in House’s model (1997) include a scientific text (an excerpt from a coursebook in mathematics), a tourist information booklet (advertising brochure on Nuremberg),

an economic text (a letter written by the presidents of an international investment company to the shareholders) and so on

In evaluating a translation, it is essential that the differences between these two types of translation be taken into account Overt and covert translations make different demands on translation criticism According to House (2015), the major difficulty in translating overtly is finding linguistic-cultural equivalents, particularly along the dimension of Tenor and its characterizations of the author’s temporal, social and geographical provenance In evaluating covert translations, it is necessary

to consider the application of a cultural filter in order to be able to differentiate between a covert translation and a covert version Cultural filter is a term proposed

by House (1977) which is a means of capturing socio-cultural differences in expectation norms and stylistic conventions between the source and target linguistic-cultural communities

When the textual profile of the ST and TT do not match, there is an error Two types of errors were categorized:

Covertly erroneous errors: those which result from a mismatch in one situational

dimension A covert translation is a translation that appears as if it produces in the target culture The translation text aims at addressing their audiences in the same way that the ST addresses their source culture community A ST and its covert TT are pragmatically of equal concern for source and target language addressees and they have equivalent purposes: both are based on contemporary, equivalent needs of

a comparable audience in the source and target language communities She then introduces the concept ―cultural filter‖ to better adapt the translation to the target culture In other words, a cultural filter between the ST and TT enables the TT audience to view the ST through the glasses of the target culture member

Overtly erroneous errors: those which result from non-dimensional mismatch Such

errors can be divided into: Not translated; Slight change in meaning; Significant change in meaning; Distortion of meaning; Breach of the language system; Creative translation; Cultural filtering In overt translation, the cultural features of ST are purposefully retained In other words, texts do not directly address the target

audience of the translation as they are tight to culture and the language community where they originate Thus, the function of the translation text cannot match with that of the ST’s function ―either because the ST is tied to a specific non-repeatable historic event in the source culture […] or because of the unique status (as a literary text) that the ST has in the same culture‖ (House, 1997: 67)

1-Not Translated 2-Slight Change in Meaning 3-Significant Change in Meaning 4-Distortion of Meaning

5-Breach of the SL System 6-Creative Translation 7-Cultural Filtering

Diagram 2 Translation Errors by House’s model (1997)

3.4 Advantages and shortcomings of House’s model (1997)

In order to guarantee the objectiveness in this study, both advantages and shortcomings of House’s TQA model (1997) are clearly indicated:

House’s model (1997) generally has four main advantages Firstly, House’s TQA model can be applied to assess the translation quality of numerous text types

including scientific texts, commercial texts, journalistic articles, tourist information booklets, fictional and non-fictional texts (House, 1997:67) In House (1981, 1997), the above model of TQA was put to an empirical test with a corpus of eight authentic English and German textual pairs

Translation Errors

Covert Errors: result from a

mismatch of one situational

dimension with a similar one in TT

Overt Errors: result from a

non-dimensional mismatch, and can be divided into: