Vietnamese translated variants of verbs of giving receiving in “harry potter and the half blood prince” by j k rowling

DECLARATION I declare that this thesis, entitled Vietnamese translated variants of verbs of Giving/Receiving in "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince" by J.K.. In order to facilitate

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Hanoi - 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lâm Quang Đông

DECLARATION

I declare that this thesis, entitled Vietnamese translated variants of verbs of

Giving/Receiving in "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince" by J.K Rowling, and

the work presented in it is my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own research

I confirm that when I quoted from the work of others, the source was always given and no part of this work has been published before submission

Hanoi,2016

Trần Thị Ánh Diệp

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During the whole process of conducting this study for her MA thesis, the writer has received the support as well as encouragement from a number of people Thus, it will probably be an unacceptable mistake if this invaluable contribution to the accomplishment of this thesis is not mentioned

First of all, her heartfelt gratitude is reserved to Assoc Prof Dr Lâm Quang Đông, her supervisor, for the patience in providing constant and careful guidance, advice as well as useful corrections and suggestions

Secondly, I want to thank all of the lecturers, professors and doctors teaching

at the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies of ULIS for their lessons and supports during my MA course

Additionally, her sincere thanks are delivered to her beloved family and friends, whose unlimited love and support have become a strongly motivation for her to complete this paper

ABSTRACT

Recent studies have shown that translation is a problematic procedure with numerous complicated issues that should be detected In order to facilitate the translator in the process of translation, especially at word level, this paper is carried out at the endeavor of exploring the English verbs of Giving/Receiving and their

corresponding variants in the sixth novel “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

of the Harry Potter series From that, the most used verbs as well as the verbs with the highest number of variants could be revealed To reach these aims, the qualitative, contrastive and quantitative approaches are employed The original version is examined to list the English verbs and then contrasted with the Vietnamese translation to find out the variants The explanation of the appearance

of these variants is suggested The results of the study reveal that the Giving verb

give and the Receiving verb get are the most common verbs in the novel They are

also the verbs with the highest number of variants The translator‟s choice in this novel is believed to rely on the context of the utterance, the structure of the verb phrase in the utterance and the original word choice However, the extent of influence of each factor on Giving verbs are not the same as on Receiving verbs

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research Approaches and Procedure 2

4 Significance of the study 3

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Structure of the thesis 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

1 The generality of translation 5

2 Verbs of Giving/Receiving 11

3 Concluding Remarks 16

CHAPTER II: THE TRANSLATION VARIANTS OF VERBS OF GIVING/RECEIVING IN “HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE” BY J.K.ROWLING 18

1 Introduction: “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K.Rowling 18

2 Verbs of Giving/Receiving in the English (original) version and their variants in the Vietnamese translation 20

3 Concluding remarks 42

PART C: CONCLUSION 44

2 Implications 44

3 Limitations of the study 45

4 Suggestions for further study 46

REFERENCES 47 APPENDIX I

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

1 SL: Source Language

2 TL: Target Language

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Giving verbs and some related verbs 12

Table 2: The semantic roles of participants in the case of the verb send/gửi 15

Table 3: English verbs with explicit meaning of Giving/Receiving in the original

version 21 Table 4: English verbs with temporary meaning of Giving/Receiving in the original

version 22 Table 5: Vietnamese variants of verbs of Giving 24

Figure 1: Vietnamese variants of verbs of Receiving 32

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In recent years, foreign literary works, especially English ones, have been widely introduced in Vietnam Had it not been for the substantial efforts made by many excellent translators, these works would not have become a great enjoyment of Vietnamese literature enthusiasts In other words, translation procedure has a significant influence on the reception of readers, and, obviously, the popularity of a particular work A number of problems could be detected during this procedure, and the solutions to these should be explored to assist the translators These troubles might come from many complicated issues namely cultural elements, technical terms, verb phrases, and so on This inspires the author to conduct a study of English and Vietnamese, and the chosen subjects are the meanings of verbs of

Giving/Receiving and its Vietnamese translated variants

Verbs of Giving/Receiving are widely-used; however, their variety of meanings

tends to cause considerable difficulties to translators Particularly, in the translation process of a literary piece, it is crucial that the translator have deep understanding of the intent and the messages conveyed by the author The intentions and messages are generally generated from every single word in the text, and verbs of

Giving/Receiving are the ones that cannot be left out They are difficult and

complicated elements that should be carefully investigated to make any translation refined As a result, this paper is conducted with the expectation that the

Vietnamese equivalents of verbs of giving/receiving in the examined literature piece

might be brought to light

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", the sixth novel in the Harry Potter series

by J.K Rowling, is chosen as the source of data for this study because of its

abundance and variety of instances where those verbs occur, and hence the diversity

of its Vietnamese equivalents, and because of the writer‟s own interest The

researcher was strongly appealed and impressed by this novel and then she made a decision to choose this piece, both Vietnamese and English versions to examine

For all of the above reasons, the researcher proposes Vietnamese translated variants

of verbs of Giving/Receiving in "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince" by J.K Rowling as the title of the study

2 Aims of the study

As mentioned, the aim of this study is to investigate the translation variants of English verbs of Giving/Receiving in the corpus novel This aim can be reached by answering the following research questions:

1 What verbs are used to denote the meaning of Giving and Receiving in the

novel “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K.Rowling?

2 How are these verbs translated in the Vietnamese version?

3 Research Approaches and Procedure

In the study, the following approaches are employed:

Qualitative and descriptive approach: the whole novel is thoroughly examined in

order to note down and to list all the English verbs of Giving/Receiving

Contrastive analysis approach: the English (original) version is contrasted with

then Vietnamese translation so as to identify the translation variants of the investigated verbs

Quantitative approach: The collected data are presented quantitatively according to

their number of occurrences in both the English (original) version and the Vietnamese translation

The data collection procedure consists of three main steps

First of all, the original version of the novel is examined to enumerate the English verbs of Giving/Receiving and their number of occurrences These verbs are found based on the verb list and the definition of the act of Giving/Receiving proposed by Lâm Quang Đông (2008) and Newman (1996) The dictionary meaning also plays

an important role in this step This addresses the first research question

Secondly, the Vietnamese version is studied and contrasted with the original to find the translated counterparts (the variants) of the English verbs

Finally, based on the gathered data, the reasons for the appearance of these variants are suggested The theory of context by Halliday/Hassan (1990) could be considered one of the key bases of this part

4 Significance of the study

The study will contribute to understanding of the different Vietnamese variants of

English verbs of Giving/Receiving through a translated literary work Besides, practical options for translating verbs of Giving/Receiving into Vietnamese will be

proposed on the basis of the study results

5 Scope of the study

As mentioned earlier, the research merely examines the Vietnamese translation of English verbs having the literal meaning of Giving/Receiving in the Vietnamese

version of the sixth novel in the Harry Potter series named “Harry Potter and the

Half-Blood Prince”

6 Structure of the thesis

The thesis, which reports the different stages of the study and its results, is expected

Part A: Introduction

This part includes the rationale, aims of the study, research questions, reseach approaches and procedure, scope and significance of the study as well as the structure of the thesis

Part B: Development

Chapter I: Theoretical Background In this chapter, the theory of translation and the

matter around the problems of translation variants are provided Moreover, the chapter reviews some aspects of verbs of Giving/Receiving

Chapter II: The translation variants of verbs of Giving/Receiving in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K.Rowling This chapter presents the results and

the data analysis concerning the English verbs of Giving/Receiving and their translation variants in the selected novel

Part C: Conclusion

The last part briefly summarizes the main ideas of the study, presents the limitations

of the study as well as suggests further research on the same topic

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 The generality of translation

1.1 Definition

In Approaches to Translation, Newmark (1982:7) states:

Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language

According to Bell (1991:5), "Translation is the expression in another language (or TL) of what has been expressed in another, SL, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalence.”

As might be drawn from the above definitions by the two scholars in different times, in the theory of translation, equivalence might be considered a central concept Therefore, equivalence relation is applied in defining translation by a number of theorists As Pym (1992) claims, equivalence is believed to define translation, and translation, in turn, defines equivalence Thus, the next part presents some discussions about equivalence in translation, especially at word level

1.2 Equivalence

Translation equivalence can be classified in various ways based on different factors

In terms of meaning, equivalence could be divided into five main groups: denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic and formal equivalence

- Denotative equivalence: The SL and TL words refer to the same thing in the real world

- Connotative equivalence: Additional values besides denotative are provided This equivalence is achieved by the translator‟s choice of synonymous words or expressions

- Text-normative equivalence: The SL and TL words are used in the same or similar context in their respective languages

- Pragmatic equivalence: With readership orientation, the SL and TL words have the same effect on their respective readers

- Formal equivalence: produces and analogy of form in the translation by either exploiting formal possibilities of TL, or creating new forms in TL

(Adapted from Koller ,1979)

In addition, Nida (1964) suggests another way of categorize equivalence based on function: dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence These two types of equivalence are distinguised as basic orientations rather than as a binary choice:

- Formal equivalence is achieved when the SL and TL words have the closest possible match of form and content

- Dynamic equivalence is achieved when the SL and TL words have the same effect on their effective readers

On the other hand, Munday (2001) seems to stick to numeracy and suggests the following classification based on the quantity: one-to-one equivalence, one-to-many equivalence, one-to-part-of-one equivalence and nil equivalence

- One-to-one equivalence: A single expression in TL is equivalent to a single expression in SL

- One-to-many equivalence: More than one TL expressions are equivalent to a single SL expression

- Many- to-one equivalence: there is more than one expression in the source language, but there is a single expression in TL which is equivalent to them

- One-to-part-of-one equivalence: A TL expression covers part of a concept designated by a single SL expression

- Nil equivalence: no TL expression is equivalent to a single SL expression -> Loan or borrowing should be used

Moreover, in Baker (1992), a discussion of the notion of equivalence in terms of form could be found She seems to offer a more detailed list of conditions upon which the concept of equivalence can be defined She distinguishes between equivalence at word level and above word level Because the subject of this research is the translation variants of giving/receiving verbs, only the equivalence at word level is discussed further

To begin with, Baker (1992) defined a word as “the smallest unit which we would expect to possess individual meaning” (Baker, 1992:11) With more precision, she also defines the written word “as any sequence of letters with an orthographic space

on either side” (Baker, 1992:11)

Besides, she deals with the lexical meaning of a word The lexical meaning refers to

“the specific value it has in a particular linguistic system and their „personality‟ it acquires through usage within that system” (Baker, 1992:11) The four main types

of the lexical meaning of a word (Cruse, 1986) are also presented in Baker (1992): propositional meaning, expressive meaning, presupposed meaning and evoked meaning

- Propositional meaning: This meaning refers to the relation between it and what

it refers to or describes in a real or imaginary world This meaning provides the basis on which we can judge an utterance as true or false

- Expressive meaning: This meaning relates to the speaker‟s feelings or attitude It cannot be judged as true or false

Baker (1992) claims that two or more words/utterances might share the same propositional meaning but differ in their expressive meanings, for example, the

words famous in English and fameux in French They both basically mean known‟ (propositional meaning) However, while famous is neutral in English,

„well-fameux is potentially evaluative and could be used in some contexts in a derogatory

way

- Presupposed meaning: It could be defined as the restrictions on what other

words or expressions we expect to see before or after a particular unit

+ Selectional restrictions: For instance, we expect a human subject for studious and an inanimate one for geometrical

+ Collocational restrictions: In English, teeth are brushed, but in German and

Italian they are „polished‟, in Polish they are „washed‟, and in Russian they are „cleaned‟

- Evoked meaning: This meaning arises from dialect and register vairation

+ Dialect: dialect: a variety of language which has currency within a specific community or group of speakers Dialect might be classified according to

geographical (e.g lift in British English BE - and elevator in American English AE), temporal (e.g verity – really) and social (e.g scent - and

In normal communication lexical items do not occur in isolation In point of fact, when humans use lexical items, the lexical items always occur in context and their precise interpretation changes with each use

Consequently, it can be inferred that one word in one language could be translated

in different ways into another language This perception is also mentioned in Diệp Quang Ban (2004) According to Diệp Quang Ban (2004), the events […] are expressed via the perspective built by people, and encoded in the grammar of a specific language Therefore, the same event could be perceived and expressed in different ways which can differ among different speakers, and languages Besides, these ways can vary among different times of perception of the same person or within the same language but with different means of expression allowed in this language Thus, the central element that causes the changes of word interpretation,

as agreed by the above authors, is the context where the lexical items occur

1.3 Context of situation

Discussing the effects of context on the meaning of language, the concept of

“context of situation” has been raised According to Schaeffner (2002), this concept

was formulated in 1923 by Malinowski in The Meaning of Meaning It was then

elaborated by Firth (1951) and extended in numerous studies (Schaeffner, 2002) The best-known treatment might be Hymes‟ (1971) discussion of models of the language and social setting interaction (Schaeffner, 2002) In this discussion, speech situation is categorized in terms of eight components which summarized as form and content of text, setting, participants, ends (intent and effect), key, medium, genre and interactional norms (Halliday/Hasan, 1990:22, mentioned in Schaeffner, 2002)

Halliday/Hasan (1990) proposed a more abstract interpretation with the three headings of field, tenor and mode as a foundation for deriving the text features from the situation features

- Field: the subject matter In other words, it is the answer to the questions: What

is happening, to whom, where and when, why is it happening, and so on

- Tenor: the social relation existing between the interactants in a speech situation

It might consist of relations of formality, power, and effect (e.g the relation between manage/clerk, father/son) It tends to influence interpersonal choices in the linguistic system Hence, the structures and strategies chosen to activate the linguistic exchange are affected

- Mode: the way the language is being used in the speech interaction It includes the medium (spoken, written, written to be spoken, etc.) as well as the rhetorical mode (expository, instructive, persuasive, etc.)

All these three components help the speaker/writer to orient himself in the context

of situation Thus, the translators have to try and maintain the context by seeking the corresponding three elements in the target language

- Field: the translator will have to take decisions about what terminology to use, to what extent the writer‟s context is familiar to the target language reader, the type

of grammatical structures to adopt (e.g: active/passive);

- Tenor: this variable will allow the translator to frame the right choice of register (formal/informal, modern/archaic, technical/non-technical);

- Mode: it is the way the text should be organized (where the information focus lies, what is given and what new information is provided, etc.)

(Adapted from Taylor, 1998)

Generally speaking, equivalence is the central concept in translation One word/utterance in the source language could be translated into a number of variants

in the target language, according to the choice of the translator This choice may be affected by some certain factors, including the context of situation

2 Verbs of Giving/Receiving

2.1 The act of Giving/Receiving

An act of Giving is defined as “an act whereby a person (the giver) passes with the hands control over an object (thing) to another person (the recipient)” (Newman, 1996) Lâm Quang Đông (2008), labels these three entities X, Z and Y, respectively In some cultures, the act of Giving may associate with some rituals and vary in terms of position, movement or kinship obligation (Newman, 1996) Moreover, Newman (1996) suggests that the transfer of control/ownership/possession tends to be the core meaning of Give words Thus, the act of Giving can be considered not only one of the human interactions but also are frequent and generally highly purposeful He also states that Give is a basic verb in every language Lâm Quang Đông (2008) shares the same opinion, and extends this

to the other verbs of Giving Verbs of Giving, as argued by Lâm Quang Đông (2008), belong to the basic vocabularies of languages These verbs are among the earliest linguistic elements to be perceived and used by children Besides, the number of verbs of Giving is abundant to properly express various circumstances, characteristics, manners of the act of Giving as well as the interpersonal relations among the participants

An act of receiving is defined through the verb take in comparison with the verb

give (Newman, 1996) The similarities is that both acts include “the movement of a

thing, typically the hands of a person; the movement is initiated by a person; the thing ends up in the sphere of control of a person” (Newman, 1996: 56-57) They differ in terms of the directions of movement of a thing with respect to the subject

referent (Newman, 1996) Particularly, in the case of give, the movement is away from the subject referent while in the case of take, the movement is toward the

subject referent Another distinction is that there is no Giver necessarily presented

in the base of take In other words, there is only one person necessarily involved in

the sub-categorization of the basic meaning of take Like verbs of Giving, verbs of

Receiving also vary in accordance with certain circumstances

Based on the core concept of an act of Giving/Receiving, Lâm Quang Đông (2008) proposed a list of Giving verbs and some related verbs as follows:

Table 1: Giving verbs and some related verbs

Allocate Allot Assign Award Bequeath Bestow Bribe Buy Cede Concede Confer Contribute Dedicate Delegate Deliver Devote Dig Dispatch

Distribute Divide Donate Endow Entrust Extend Forward Furnish Get Give Hand out Hand Impart Jump Leave Make over Offer Pass

Present Provide Receive Refund Reimburse Relegate Remit Repay, pay back Return

Reward Sell Send Share Submit, hand in Supply

Take Throw Transfer

(Adapted from Lâm Quang Đông, 2008)

This list tends to focus on the verbs of Giving Besides, some verbs such as dig, buy and sell are believed to be excluded from the verbs of Giving/Receiving On the

other hand, there are also some other verbs mentioned in the above list among which some verbs of Receiving are also found As can be seen, however, by pre-examining the original version, the researcher find that there are some verbs with the meaning of Giving/Receiving found in the corpus does not exist in the list,

especially the Receiving verbs such as accept, inherit, catch, grab, reap and have

Therefore, in the current study, a contrastive analysis of the two versions (the original and the Vietnamese) of the novel and a dictionary research also serve as the tools for identifying the data

2.2 The representational semantic structure of verbs of Giving/Receiving

Lâm Quang Đông (2008), in his book, presents the representational semantic structure of verbs of Giving He groups the verbs according to the number of participants involved in the act of Giving

2.2.1 The representational semantic structure of verbs of Giving/Receiving with 3 participants or less

a 1 participant

- Only Agent appears, Recipient and Theme cannot be identified

(M1) GIVE <Agent>

Bà ấy toàn cho đi chứ chẳng bao giờ lấy cả CHO ĐI <bà ấy>

She always gives but never takes

- There is no occurrence of the Giver and Recipient Only Theme appears

(M2) GIVE (Theme)

Cái ngọt bùi đem cho, còn đắng cay gánh lấy ĐEM CHO <ngọt bùi>

Advantages to give, disadvantages to retain

(Adapted from Lâm Quang Đông, 2008)

b 2 participants

This case happens when one of the three participants is unspecified and schematic

(M3) GIVE <Agent;Theme>

Tôi thích tặng quà TẶNG <tôi; quà>

I like to give presents The teacher gave the answers after the test GIVE <the teacher; the answers>

(M4) GIVE <Agent; Recipient>

Con thí cho thằng mõ đấy THÍ <con; thằng mõ>

I gave to that circulator!

I like to give to the church GIVE <I; the church>

(M5) GIVE <Theme; Recipient>

Bốn cái móng giò biếu bốn ông to nhất BIẾU<4 cái móng giò; 4 ông to>

Four legs are given to the four leaders

He was given the Nobel Prize for his invention GIVE <the Nobel Prize; he>

(Adapted from Lâm Quang Đông, 2008)

c 3 participants

(M6) GIVE <Agent; Recipient; Theme>

Người cho em tất cả là Bác Hồ Chí Minh CHO <Người; em; tất cả>

The person who gave me everything is Uncle Ho Chi Minh

He handed the report to me HAND <he; me; the report>

(Adapted from Lâm Quang Đông, 2008)

2.2.2 The representational semantic structure of verbs of Giving/Receiving with more than 3 participants

According to Lâm Quang Đông (2008), in the case of the verb send/gửi, it is

hypothesized that the act of Sending can happen through an intermediator In English, an intermediator is realized by a prepositional phrase (the circumstant) Two main kinds of circumstants are proposed by Lâm Quang Đông (2008): Default Circumstants and Non-default Circumstants

Table 2: The semantic roles of participants in the case of the verb send/gửi

Theme Complement Instrument

Intermediary Recipient Means Instrument Direction Goal

Time Manner Reason Etc

I will send you the contract through email (I: Agent, you: recipient, the contract:

theme, email: Non-default circumstant –Instrument)

I have sent you the gift through Mr Brown (I: Agent, you: recipient, the gift:

theme, Mr Brown: Default circumstant – Intermediary Recipient)

(Adapted from Lâm Quang Đông, 2008)

As mentioned above in the act of Receiving, Receiving is the reverse act of Giving Thus, both verbs of Receiving and Giving share the same expressive semantic structures However, the semantic roles of the participants 1 and 2 are reversed with each other As Newman (1996) claims, the distinctive features of the two acts are

the directions of the movement Regarding give, the movement is away from, whereas in the case of take, the movement is toward the subject referent Therefore,

in the structure of Receiving verbs, the participant 1 is the recipient and the participant 2 is the person from whom something is taken Moreover, in the case of Receiving verbs, the appearance of the participant 2 is not necessary

3 Concluding Remarks

This chapter discussed the definitions of translation and the concept of equivalence

in translation Numerous factors could influence the translater‟s choice, and the context of situation is one of the most important factors In the context of situation, the three main aspects namely field, tenor and mode shoud be taken into consideration in the translation process In addtion, the concept of the act of Giving/Receiving suggested by Newman and Lâm Quang Đông as well as the list of some typical verbs proposed by Lâm Quang Đông is presented and chosen to be one

of the main criteria to conduct the investigation Otherwise, a dictionary research and a comparison between the two version are also useful tools for analysis The representational semantic structures of the verbs of Giving/Receiving by Lâm

Quang Đông (2008) also assist the writer in identifying the verbs of Giving/Receiving in the original version

CHAPTER II: THE TRANSLATION VARIANTS OF VERBS OF

GIVING/RECEIVING IN “HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD

PRINCE” BY J.K.ROWLING

1 Introduction: “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K.Rowling

The subjects of the study are English verbs of Giving/Receiving in the sixth novel

in the Harry Potter series published in 2005, and their translation in the Vietnamese version by Lý Lan

1.1 Harry Potter and J.K.Rowling

Harry Potter is one of the most popular book and film franchises in history It is a series of seven fantasy novels, which were written by J K Rowling, a British author In this series, the adventures of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger are chronicled All of the three characters are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry The whole series illustrates Harry‟s quest to overcome Lord Voldemort, the Dark wizard, who attempts to become immortal, control the wizarding world, subdue non-magical people and is willing to destroy all those who stand in his way, especially Harry Potter

Joanne Rowling, best known as J K Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter series,

was born in 1965 in Yale, England Before writing “Harry Potter and the

Philosopher's Stone” (the word "Philosopher" was changed to "Sorcerer" for its

publication in America), the first novel of the Harry Potter series, she came from humble economic means as a single mother As her work was an international hit, she wrote six more novels in the series, and became an international literary sensation

(Adapted from Biography.com)

1.2 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, the sixth novel in the Harry Potter

Series, was published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury on 16 July 2005 Set during protagonist Harry Potter‟s sixth year at Hogwarts, this novel unveils the past

of Lord Voldemort and Harry‟s preparations for the battle alongside Albus Dumbledore, his headmaster and mentor The book is noted to take on a darker tone than its predecessors, though some humor was contained Its core themes appear to consist of love and death, and trust and redemption

The return of Lord Voldemort is no longer deniable, since havoc is severely made in both magic and Muggle communities by the Dark Lord and his minions This leads

to the resignation of Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic Arthur Weasley, Ron‟s father, is promoted to Head of Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects; thanks to this, the Weasley‟s financial situation is improved On the dark side of the world, Draco Malfoy‟s mother makes Severus Snape swear to protect Draco Snape, finally, takes a position that he has long coveted – Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts In the meantime, emotions among Harry, Ron and Hermione are at an all-time high because of the relationship between Ron and Lavender It is not until Ron is poisoned that Harry stops being caught between Ron and Hermione‟s cross fire Dumbledore hypothesizes that Voldemort‟s soul was split into seven parts, the Horcruxes, to acquire immortality and he shares this theory with Harry As a result, Voldemort is

a goner for good as long as all his Horcruxes are destroyed In order to find out the locations of the Horcruxes, all the memories about Voldemort collected by Dumbledore are reviewed The third Horcrux is sought out Upon the return of Harry and Dumbledore, Voldemort‟s Dark Mark looms over Hogwarts and the school has been infiltrated by the Death Eaters Draco is charged to kill Dumbledore but hesitates; therefore, Snape performs the killing instead The Dumbledore‟s Army defends the campus until the arrival of the Order of the Phoenix The Horcrux

in Harry‟s possession turns out to be a fake The death of Dumbledore results in an immense sadness of all the students, professors and ghosts at Hogwarts Harry makes a decision to end his budding romance with Ginny so as to protect her from Voldemort He also decides to leave Hogwarts, and vows to find the four remaining Horcruxes with the help of Ron and Hermione

2 Verbs of Giving/Receiving in the English (original) version and their

variants in the Vietnamese translation

2.1 English verbs of Giving/Receiving in the English (original) version

The selected novel has been carefully examined and it has been found that in this novel, there exist a total number of 52 verbs of Giving/Receiving in which the number of Giving verbs is 43 and that of the Receiving verbs are only 9 It has also been found that beside the verbs with the explicit meaning of Giving/Receiving, as listed in the verb list by Lâm Quang Đông (2008), there also exist the verbs that only carry the Giving/Receiving meaning in some certain contexts In other words, these verbs just carry a temporary Giving/receiving meaning The verbs and their number of occurrence will be presented in the following sections

2.1.1 Verbs with explicit meaning

The table belows presents the verbs of Giving/Receiving found in the novel in their number of occurrence The number of occurrence of each verb is typed to the right

of the verb and is put in parentheses

Table 3: English verbs with explicit meaning of Giving/Receiving in the

Provide (1) Return (2) Reward (1)

Send (18) Take (1) Throw (2)

Get (14) Receive (7) Take (12)

It is noteworthy that in the English version, the verbs of Giving outnumber the verbs

of Receiving by roughly five to one (16 verbs to 3 verbs, respectively) In terms of

verbs of Giving, it might be drawn that in this novel, the verb give gets the dominant position (53 times), followed by the verb hand (25 times) Among the Receiving verbs, the verb get occupies the highest number of occurrence (14 times- roughly four times lower than give-the most used Giving verb)

Example 1

Original Novel Dialogue

„It‟s the thing she touched,‟ said Harry

„Good Lord‟, said Professor McGonagall, looking alarmed as she took the necklace from Harry

„No, no, Filch, they‟re with me!‟ she added hastily, as Filch came shuffling eagerly across the Entrance Hall holding his Secrecy Sensor aloft „Take this necklace to Professor Snape at once, but be sure not to touch it, keep it wrapped in the scarf!‟

(Page 299, Line 11-18)

Besides, the two verbs take and get both convey the meaning of Giving and

Receiving, depending on the structures they are involved As can be seen in

example 1, take in she took the necklace from Harry means to receive the necklace whereas in Take this necklace to Professor Snape at once, it means to give the

necklace to another person

2.1.2 Verbs with temporary meaning

As stated, the data also contain a number of verbs which only have a temporal meaning of Giving/Receiving These verbs are displayed in the following table with their number of occurrence (also in parentheses)

Table 4: English verbs with temporary meaning of Giving/Receiving in the

Push (2) Put (3) Seal (1) Set (5) Shove (1) Show (5) Slip (1)

Smuggle (1) Spare (1) Stuff (1) Thrust (5) Tip (2) Turn (1)

Accept (2) Catch (1) Grab (1) Have (5) Inherit (2) Reap (1)

As can be seen in the table, the number of the verbs with temporary meaning is relatively high comparing to that of the explicit Giving/Receiving verbs; however, it seems that these verbs occur in a relative low number throughout the text As claimed earlier, these verbs may have the meaning of Giving/Receiving in some certain contexts The following examples illustrate the appearance of these verbs in the novel In the examples, the verbs are underlined

Example 2

Original Novel Dialogue

„My grandmother thinks Charms is a soft option,‟ mumbled Neville

„Take Charms,‟ said Professor McGonagall, „and I shall drop Augusta a line reminding her that just because she failed her Charms O.W.L., the subject is not necessarily worthless.‟

(Page 208, Line 3-6)

Particularly, drop itself means let or make (something) fall vertically (according to Oxford Dictionaries); however, in and I shall drop Augusta a line reminding her

that […], drop a line is an idiom which means send a short letter or note (example

2)

Example 3

Original Novel Dialogue

Not long after this, Hagrid became tearful again and pressed the whole unicorn tail upon Slughorn, who pocketed it with crires of, „To friendship! To generosity! To ten Galleons a hair!‟

(Page 576, Line 17-20)

Or the verb press, which itself refers to the action of move or cause to move into a

position of contact with something by exerting continuous physical force (Oxford

Dictionaries), in […] pressed the whole unicorn tail upon Slughorn […] means to

hand the tail with a strong physical force (example 3)

2.2 Translation variants of the verbs of Giving/Receiving in the Vietnamese version

2.2.1 Vietnamese variants of verbs of Giving

2.2.1.1 The number of the variants

After comparing and contrasting the original version with its Vietnamese translation, the variants of each Giving verb are explored (See Appendix for more details)

Table 5: Vietnamese variants of verbs of Giving

English

verbs

No of variants

English verbs

No of variants

English verbs

No of variants

English verbs

No of variants Allow

variants, respectively On the other hand, because of appearing only once in the

whole novel, many verbs like assign, chuck, convey, entrust, fling, or grant have just 1 variant Besides, some other verbs namely encase, lend and return share the

same number of variants: 1, despite the fact that they are used twice, three times and twice, respectively

2.2.1.2 The translation variants of some significant verbs of Giving

This section discusses the translation variants of the significant verbs in the text As

described in the above table, the verbs with the highest number of variants are give,