Translation as cultural transfer the case of translating idioms of food and drink

---**0**---ĐÀO MAI LAN TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI VỀ VĂN HÓA: ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DỊCH THÀNH NGỮ VỀ Đ

-**0** -ĐÀO MAI LAN

TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF

FOOD AND DRINK

(DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI VỀ VĂN HÓA:

ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DỊCH THÀNH NGỮ VỀ ĐỒ ĂN THỨC UỐNG)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

HANOI - 2010

-**0** -ĐÀO MAI LAN

TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER: THE CASE

OF TRANSLATING IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK

(DỊCH THUẬT NHƯ SỰ CHUYỂN ĐỔI VỀ VĂN HÓA:

ỨNG DỤNG TRONG VIỆC DỊCH THÀNH NGỮ VỀ ĐỒ ĂN THỨC

UỐNG)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Assoc Prof., Dr Lê Hùng Tiến

HANOI - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale……….

2 Aims of the study………

3 Limitation of the stuy……….

4 Method of the study………

5 Design of the study………

DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. LANGUAGE ANDCULTURE……… 3

1.1 Definition of language and culture……….

1.2 The relation between language and culture………

2 TRANSLATION……….

2.1 Definition of translation………

2.2 Translation Process and Methods………

3. IDIOMS AND TRANSLATION……… 10

3.1 Definition of idioms……….

3.2 The interpretation of idioms………

3.3 Idioms versus proverbs……….

3.4 Culture in idioms and its relation to the transfer in translation………

CHAPTER TWO: CULTURAL TRANSFER THROUGH TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK 1.Idioms of food and drink……… 18

1.1 Criteria for idioms of food and drink………

1.2 Syntactical feature of idioms of food and drink………

1.3 Cultural features of idioms of food and drink………

2. Cultural transfer through translation of idioms of food and drink………… 23

2.1 Idiomatic equivalence………

2.2 Conceptual equivalence……….

2.3 Lexical equivalence……….

2.4 Semantic and pragmatic equivalence……….

3.Suggestions of some strategies in translating idioms of food and drink………… 31

CONCLUSION 1 Review of the study……… 35

2.Suggestions for further studies……… 36

REFERENCES……… 37

1 Rationale

Since human’s society developed, there has been a trend of integration between peopleand nations People living together in the world need to help each other to gain economicdevelopment, political stabilization and equality That, the need of understanding betweenpeople and nations has increased Translation constitutes an essential tool for bettercommunication, better understanding each other

Of all the translation work, translating idioms seems to be the most challenging since it

is a meaning-based translation which makes every effort to communicate the meaning ofthe source language ( SL) text in the natural forms of the target language (TL) To deal withtranslating idioms, one must have good cultural background of not only the SL but also ofthe TL Therefore, mastering translation theory in general and strategies of translatingidioms in particular is very important to learners and translators

Being interested in idioms for a long time, I choose idioms as my thesis topic Due tothe limited time and knowledge, I just focus on how culture transfers through the process

of translating idioms of food and drink When searching for equivalence in translation tosee how cultural transfer occurs, some strategies of translating idioms of food and drinkwill be discussed to overcome the difficulties of idiom translation

2 Aims of the study

The study has the following aims:

 considering how cultural transfer occurs through the process of translating idioms

of food and drink;

 suggesting some practical strategies in translating idioms of food and drink

3 Limitation of the study

Due to the limited time and knowledge, I cannot cover all aspects of idiomatic expression

of food and drink in this study Thus, I just focus on the cultural transfer through theidiomatic translation and suggest some strategies of translating English – Vietnameseidioms of food and drink and vice versa

4 Method of the study

To achieve these aims, I have consulted many dictionaries and books of languages, idioms,proverbs, etc in both English and Vietnamese in which whatever relating to idiomaticexpressions of food and drink is taken into consideration One hundred idioms of food anddrink in Vietnamese and another hundred idioms of food and drink in English which arethought to be widely used are selected for the study For English idioms, a number ofreference books were consulted, but the main ones are Longman Dictionary of Idioms(1998), Collins Cobuild Idioms Dictionary (2002), Thành ngữ Tục ngữ Tiếng Anh (2008).These books were selected because they contain a large number of idioms of food anddrink Vietnamese ones were selected from Từ điển Thành ngữ Tục ngữ Việt-Anh (2006),

Kể chuyện thành ngữ Tiếng Anh (2006)

Then a comparative analysis is designed to point out how cultural transfer occurs throughthe translation

5 Design of the study

Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, the study is organized around two chapters Chapter one attempts to look into the nature of culture, culture in relation with language and translation Later, the chapter presents an overview of translation theories developed

by well-known authors with certain basic theoretical items such as definition of translation,the process, and methods of translation The chapter ends by taking idioms into

consideration: the definition of idioms, the interpretation of idioms, idioms versus

proverbs, culture in idioms and its relation to the transfer in translation

Chapter two deals with the translation of idioms of food and drink Firstly, how culturaltransfer occurs through idioms translation is studied by looking for stylistic equivalence,conceptual equivalence, lexical equivalence, semantic and pragmatic equivalence Afterthat, the chapter mentions some of the translation strategies for translating idioms of foodand drink

CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 Language and culture

1.1 Definition of language and culture

Language is a factor that distinguishes man from other animals For existence, humanbeing must work hard to produce goods, food, clothes, machines and other materials…Through out the duration of working, people need to exchange goods, the experience ofproducing and also the information of all fields of the life That’s why language appeared.Language is a means of communication and it is the best way for human to express theirthoughts and feelings To have a better understanding of language, let’s study the definition

of language stated in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995):

“ Language is a system of sounds, words, patterns, etc… used by humans, nations,

or group of people to communicate thoughts and feeling manner of expressing ideas.”

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “A language is a particular kind of system for encoding and decoding information In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to

humankind In cognitive science the term is also sometimes extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation and usage of systems of symbols —each symbol referring to linguistic

concepts with semantic or logical or otherwise expressive meanings.”

From these definitions we can see how important the language is in the process of

communication To serve my purpose, I suggest here another definition: Language is the

means of expressing thoughts and feelings.

Now, we move to the definition of culture Culture can be seen as all humanactivities Some people look at culture as the collective programme of the mind whichdistinguishes the members of one category of people from another Someone concludedthat “there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture” Inmany ways it is correct: culture is everything Because culture is so broad in its scope,

many definitions have been suggested Let us examine some of these definitions so that wemight understand them better.

Anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) reviewed some five hundreddefinitions, phrasings and concepts and proposed the following definition:

“Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired

and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups… the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the other hand, be considered as products of action, and

on the other as conditioning elements of further action”

Another definition by Byram (1998) runs as follows:

“A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believes in order

to operate in a manner acceptable to its members Culture is not a natural phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people’s behaviour or emotions It is rather an organization of these things It is the form of things that people have in mind, their models of perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them”

I believe that these definitions are broad enough to include most of the major territory

of culture However, for the goals of this paper, I think my conclusion is good enough that

“Culture is the people’s ways of thinking, behaving, talking, valuing things and working”

1.2 The relation between language and culture

Language and culture are said to be interwoven Language is a part of culture andculture is a part of language It is difficult to separate one from the other If it weredesirable to separate the two, the significance of either language or culture would be lost.That’s why two individuals taking part in the communication must have a sharedknowledge of both culture and language Misunderstanding may occur if we violate agrammatical rule of language But it is more serious if we violate a social usage

It is apparent that language is a means to describe culture it belongs to and parallelly,culture’s development enriches language For example, before the bicycle was introduced

to Vietnam, there was no word to express it But when the Vietnamese got acquainted with

it, they borrowed the word “bicycle” and either borrowed or invented words to describe thebicycle parts Therefore, the vocabulary of language was enriched along parallel line withthe development of culture

Language usages follow culturally determined patterns The patterns not onlyinfluence the order in which people use words to form phrases, they also influence thinkingpatterns The use of language to describe time, for instance, differs from culture to culture.Western societies perceive time as something that can be kept, saved, lost or waste.Therefore, time system is exactly divided and being on time is extremely important In theVietnamese language, the time system is more complicated and the verb system is such thatonly context can indicate time This different perception directly affects the translationfrom Vietnamese language into Western languages and vice versa

We can see that language is distinctly a form of human cultural behaviour.Language helps us understand not only one another but culture as well If one uses alanguage well, one must know the culture that uses the language This is because theability to react with speakers of another language depends not only on language skills butalso on comprehension of cultural habits For example, in Vietnamese culture, it isconsidered polite behaviour to ask someone at first meeting about his or her age andmarital status But this way of talking is not acceptable in other culture like English,Australian and American culture

In learning language, we can see that language is a key element of any culture.Language is a part of social life As a result, every expression such as greeting,addressing…are affected by culture This aspect should be paid attention to when we dotranslation Byram (1998) said that:

“It is readily assumed that exposure to language will lead to some kinds of cultural learning…

Thus as learners learn about language they learn about culture and as they learn to use a new language they learn to communicate with other individuals from a new culture”

That also means that cultural difference leads to the differences in the way and theperception of communication which is the expression of language For example, in the

Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai languages, the greeting “where are you going?” isappropriate instead of “Hello” “Good day” However, it may be inappropriate in othercultures like Western culture; it may be regarded as a curious question So, if Vietnamesepeople think in Vietnamese way and express themselves in their own cultural way whilecommunicating with native speakers of Western cultures they may annoy them Therefore,

it is obvious that if we don’t pay attention to cultural differences while translating andinterpreting, the inevitable result of the translation is something of misunderstanding

2 Translation

2.1 Definition of translation

Though the role and history of translation can be easily agreed upon, it is almostimpossible to find an undisputed definition of translation From different directions, there

can be various definitions Translation, by dictionary definition, consists of changing from

one form to another, to turn into one 'own or another' language (The Merriam - Webster

Dictionary, 1974) Some authors have given the following different definitions oftranslation:

“Translation, as a process of conveying messages across linguistic and cultural barriers, is an eminently communicative activity, one whose use could well be considered

in a wider range of teaching situations than may currently be the case” (Tudor, 1987)

“Translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that

the author intended the text.” ( Newmark, 1988)

As implied in the definitions above, translation is basically a change of form (which isusually referred to as the actual words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs etc, whichare spoken or written)

In translation the form of the source language (the language of the text that is to betranslated) is replaced by the form of the target language (the language of the translatedtext) The purpose of translation is to transfer the meaning of the source language (SL) intothe target language (TL) This is done by going from the form of the first language to theform of a second language by way of semantic structure It is meaning which is being

transferred and must remain unchanged Only the form changes Moreover, translation notonly involves understanding the general meaning of the communication, but calls upon theability to understand the culture of the communication.

Despite the great variety of definitions, we can still have an overall view of whattranslation is by combining the most essential aspects of those definitions The belowquoted definition from “Training Translators and Conference Interpreters” by Weber

(1968) is not quite satisfactory but appears as one of the most widely agreed: “Translation

is the transposition of a text written in a source language (SL) into a target language (TL) The translated version must be absolutely accurate in meaning, contain all nuances of the original, and must be written in clear, elegant language that can be easily understood by the reader Needless to say, punctuation spelling and grammar must be flawless”.

It must be noted that this definition is mainly for the sake of translation theory,

since in practice, there are few translation versions that can be “absolutely accurate in

meaning” and “ contain all nuances of the original” People are different in all aspects so

the message perceived by the reader is frequently not identical to the message meant by thewriter There are numerous elements that cause this distortion of the message and cross-culture is one of the major ones And minimizing this distortion in meaning is the aim of allacademic activity, translation can be defined as a process which is rendering a written textinto another language and a product which is an artistic and scientific result of thetranslating activity

2.2 Translation Process and Methods

Translation is the process to transfer written or spoken source language (SL) texts toequivalent written or spoken target language (TL) texts The basic purpose of translation is

to reproduce various types of texts, comprising literary, religious, scientific, philosophicaltexts etc in another language and thus making them available to wider readers, to a greaternumber of target audiences and to bring the world closer

However, translation is not an easy job If language is just a classification for a set ofgeneral or universal concepts, it will be of course very easy to translate from a sourcelanguage to a target language But translation covers not only word for word translation but

also many other factors The concepts of one language may differ radically from those ofanother This is because each language articulates or organizes the word differently Thebigger the gap between the SL and the TL, the more difficult the process of transfer will be.The difference between the two languages and the difference in cultures makes the process

of translating a real challenge The problematic factors include translation likeform,style,meaning,proverbs,idioms,etc

The translating procedures can be divided into two groups:

 Technical procedure: This implies an analysis of the source and target languages

and a complete study of the SL text before translating it

 Organizational procedure: This implies a constant re-evaluation of the translation

made It also includes the comparison of the existing translation with thetranslations of the same text by other translators The organizational procedure alsochecks the translated text's communicative effectiveness by getting the opinion ofthe TL audience to evaluate its accuracy and effectiveness and studying theirreactions

(http://www.thelanguagetranslation.com/translation-process.html)

Methods of Translation

According to Newmark (1988), some of the common methods of translation are as follows:

 Word-for-word translation: Here the source language word is translated into

another language by their most common meanings, which can also be out ofcontext at times, especially in idioms and proverbs

 Literal Translation: Here the source language grammatical constructions are

translated to their nearest target language However the lexical words are translatedsingly, out of context

 Faithful Translation: Here the translation interprets the exact contextual meaning

of the original within the constraints of the grammatical structures of the targetlanguage

 Semantic Translation: Semantic translation refers to that type of translation which

takes into account the aesthetic value of the source language text

 Adaptation: Adaptation refers to that type of translation which is used mainly for

plays and poems The text is rewritten considering the source language culturewhich is converted to the target language culture where the characters, themes,plots are usually preserved

 Free Translation: This method of translation produces the translated text without

the style, form, or content of the original text

 Idiomatic Translation: It translates the message of the original text but tends to

distort the original meaning at times by preferring colloquialisms and idioms

 Communicative Translation: This method displays the exact contextual meaning

of the original text in a manner where both content and language are easilyacceptable and comprehensible to the readers

Translation processes

The translation processes implies an entire process of how a translator producesequivalences between a text or portions of a text into another language The translationprocess can be described as:

 Decoding the meaning of the source text, and

 Re-encoding or translating this meaning in the target language

Behind this simple process lies various activities like checking grammar, syntax, idioms,semantics, and the like of the source language and also the culture of its speakers Thetranslator needs in-depth knowledge in decoding and then re-encoding the meaning in thetarget language In many cases, it is necessary that the translator's knowledge of the target

language is more important than his knowledge of the source language.

The following is the process that is usually followed by all to ensure a well written,

 The document is proofread by a person who is fluent in both languages It is also necessary to check spelling and layout

 Finally, before the document goes to the client , the document is further rechecked

to ensure that the translation is correct, there is no missing texts and the layout isperfect

in Bible What, then, is an idiom?

McMordiew (1983:4) in her book English Idioms and How to Use Them provides a

definition for the idiom:

“we can say that an idiom is a number of words which, taken together, mean something different from the individual words of the idiom when they stand alone”.

Moon (1998:3) in her book Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English: a Corpus-Based

Approach defines idiom as “an ambiguous term, used in conflicting ways In lay or

general use, idiom has two main meanings First, idiom is a particular means of expressing something in language, music, art, and so on, which characterizes a person or group Secondly (and much less commonly in English), an idiom is a particular lexical collocation or phrasal lexeme, peculiar to a language”.

Baker (1992:63) in her book In Other Words distinguishes idiom from collocation by

the transparency of meaning and flexibility patterning According to Baker, idioms are

“frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and often carry

meanings which can not be deduced from their individual components” Baker excluded

five things that normally can not be done to an idiom as it will lose its sense: the translatorcan not change the order of the words in an idiom; can not delete a word from it, can notadd a word to it; replace one word by another one and change its grammatical structure

According to Collins Cobuild (1995), “ An idiom is a special kind of phrase It is agroup of words which have a different meaning when used together from the one it wouldhave if the meaning of each word were taken individually… Idioms are typicalmetaphorical: they are effectively metaphors which have become “fixed” or “fossilized”

From the definitions above, we learn that idioms tell much about a people's traditionalways of experiencing reality, about the proper or expected ways of doing things, aboutvalues and warnings, and rules and wisdoms the elders want to impress on the minds oftheir young Linguistically, an idiom is an expression which is unique to a language andcannot be understood simply from the meaning of its individual words In other words, theactual meaning of an idiom is not the total of the meaning of its individual parts An idiom

is a figure of speech

3.2 The interpretation of idioms

As far as idioms are concerned, the first difficulty that a translator comes across isbeing able to recognize that s/he is dealing with an idiomatic expression This is not always

so obvious There are various types of idioms, some more easily recognizable than others.Those which are easily recognizable include expressions which violate truth conditions,

such as It's raining cats and dogs “ trời mưa như trút”, throw caution to the winds “ thiếu

thận trọng khi hành động”, storm in a tea cup “chuyện bé xé ra to”, jump down someone's

throat “nói chặn họng ai” , and food for thought “ điều đáng suy nghĩ” They also include

expressions which seem ill-formed because they do not follow the grammatical rules of the

language, for example the powers that be “ kẻ nắm quyền thực sự, người có thực quyền”,

by and large “ nhìn chung, nói chung, rút cục” Expressions which start with like (simile

-like structures) also tend to suggest that they should not be interpreted literally These

include idioms such as like a bat out of hell (ba chân bốn cẳng) and like water off a duck's

back (nước đổ đầu vịt) Generally speaking, the more difficult an expression is to

understand and the less sense it makes in a given context, the more likely a translator willrecognize it as an idiom Because they do not following text are easy to recognize asidioms (assuming one is not already familiar with them)

Provided a translator has access to good references works and monolingual dictionaries

of idioms, or, better still, is able to consult native speakers of the language, opaque idiomswhich do not make sense for one reason or another can actually be a blessing in disguise.The very fact that s/he cannot make sense of an expression in a particular context will alertthe translator to the presence of an idiom of some sort

There are two cases in which an idiom can be easily misinterpreted if one is not alreadyfamiliar with it

a) Some idioms are 'misleading'; they seem transparent because they offer a reasonableliteral interpretation and their idiomatic meanings are not necessarily signaled in thesurrounding text A large number of idioms in English, and probably all languages, have

both a literal and an idiomatic meaning, for example go out with ('have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone') and take someone for a ride ('deceive or cheat someone

in some way') Such idioms lend themselves easily to manipulation by speakers and writerswho will sometimes play on both their literal and idiomatic meanings In this case, atranslator who is not familiar with the idiom in question may easily accept the literalinterpretation and miss the play on idiom

b)An idiom in the SL may have a very close counterpart in the TL which looks similar onthe surface but has a totally or partially different meaning For example, the idiomatic

question Has the cat had/got your tongue? is used in English to urge someone to answer a

question or contribute to a conversation, particularly when their failure to do so becomesannoying Instances of superficially identical or similar idioms which have differentmeanings in the source and target languages lay easy traps for the unwary translator who isnot familiar with the source-language idiom and who may be tempted simply to impose atarget-language interpretation on it.

Apart from being alert to the way speakers and writers manipulate certain features

of idioms and to the possible confusion which could arise from similarities in formbetween source and target expressions, a translator must also consider the collocationalenvironment which surrounds any expression whose meaning is not readily accessible.Idiomatic expressions have individual collocational patterns They form collocations withother items in the text as single units and enter into lexical sets which are different from

those of their individual words Take, for instance, the idiom to have cold feet Cold as a separate item may collocate with words like weather, winter, feel, or country Feet on its own will perhaps collocate with socks, chilblain, smelly, etc however, having cold feet, in its idiomatic use, has nothing necessarily to do with winter, feet, or chilblains and will

therefore generally be used with a different set of collocates

The ability to distinguish senses by collocation is an invaluable asset to a translatorworking from a foreign language It is often subsumed under the general umbrella of'relying on the context to disambiguate meanings', which, among other things, means usingour knowledge of collocational patterns to decode the meaning of a word or a stretch oflanguage Using our knowledge of collocational patterns may not always tell us what anidiom means but it could easily help us in many cases to recognize an idiom, particularlyone which has a literal as well as a non-literal meaning

3.3 Idioms versus proverbs

It is easy to find that idioms and proverbs have some in common, and until now therehave been no clear-cut borders between them However, basing on some criteria, we candistinguish idioms and proverbs

A proverb is a sentence expressing a completed meaning of social relation, livingexperience, moral lessons or criticism Therefore, a proverb is regarded as a literature work

containing three functions of literature: awareness, aesthetics and education For example,the Vietnamese have a proverb: “ thuận vợ thuận chồng, tát bể Đông cũng cạn” “ a burden

of one’s own choice is not felt” which expresses the power of solidarity, an experience ofworking in group leading to good results, the morality of relationship between husband andwife The awareness function of this proverb is to express the equality between husbandand wife in family life The educational function is to guide the relation between husbandand wife in particular and between people in general to equality and justice Its aestheticsfunction is the use of metaphor with illustrating image which persuades readers

An idiom is a fixed phrase or other sequence of words Syntactically, it’s not a sentencebut just a word An idiom does not give any criticism, experience or morality, so it has onlyaesthetics function Without the awareness and education function, it is not a literaturework For example, the Vietnamese idiom “ mặt hoa da phấn” just expresses the beauty ofthe woman It does not give any experience or criticism about social life, so it does nothave awareness and education functions

Considering the content and the way of expressions we see that the content of idioms isconcept while that of proverbs is judgment The relation between idioms and proverbsreflects the relation between the forms of concept and judgment For example, the concept

of “uổng công” “uselessness” must go through the process of generalization of “ nước đổ lákhoai, nước đổ đầu vịt, dã tràng xe cát…” As described, these are isolated phenomenaacquired through the senses The aim of this awareness is to confirm the features of thesephenomena The confirmation is presented as judgment: “ nước đổ đầu vịt thì nước lại trôi

đi hết, nước đổ lá khoai thì nước lại trôi đi hết hay dã tràng xe cát biển Đông, nhọc lòng màchẳng nên công cán gì” So the similarity between idioms and proverbs is that they bothcontain the people’s knowledge about the phenomena The difference lies on the way weexpress them If that knowledge is generalized to concept, we have an idiom If we explain

it in the way of a judgment, we have a proverb

Considering the function of linguistics form, idioms are actually the creations of words

to meet the demand of describing and naming things and phenomena So idioms belong tolinguistics Proverbs, while doing its informing function, has a nature of an awareness

activity among other activities like science, art, literature… therefore, it’s seen as socialand cultural phenomenon.

In brief, the differences between proverbs and idioms can be seen as in this table:

3.4 Culture in idioms and its relation to the transfer in translation

As mentioned in the previous part, language is closely related to culture and can besaid as a part of culture From a dynamic view, language and culture interact with eachother and shape each other Language is the carrier of culture which in turn is the content oflanguage We can find out cultural features from language and explain languagephenomena with culture Idioms as a special form of language exist in both of them and

carry a large amount of cultural information and rich in cultural connotation as theyrepresent the unique culture of the language, and therefore are closely related to culture.They are the heritage of history and product of cultural evolvement Consequently, weknow much about culture through studying idioms and in turn get better understanding ofidioms by learning the cultural background behind them There are great differencesbetween English and Vietnamese idioms as the result of respective geographicenvironment, national experience, cultural inheritance and formation of thinking Many

English idioms connect with ocean as the result of the oceanic culture (e.g drink like a

fish, on the rock, sea of troubles, rats leave a sinking ship…), some with the traditions of

Britain, which traditionally belongs to commercial and marine economy (e.g sow the wind

and reap the whirlwind, put money aside for a rainy days, penny wise and pound foolish…), while Vietnamese idioms with agricultural economy (mất bò mới lo làm chuồng, một nắng hai sương…)

Having good cultural background knowledge is useful for translators when dealingwith translating idioms because translation is not simply a linguistic transformation oftexts, but it is also a rendering of cultural concepts from one language to another Thetranslation of idioms takes us a stage further in considering the question of meaning and

translation, for idioms are culture bound Bassnett (2002) stated that: “Translation involves

far more than replacement of lexical and grammatical items between languages and, as can be seen in the translation of idioms and metaphors, the process may involve discarding the basic linguistic elements of the SL text so as to achieve Popovic’s goal of “expressive identity” between the SL and TL texts.”

Also according to Bassnett (2002), transference is the process of transferring a SL

word to a TL text as a translation procedure On translating idioms, translators do not

simply deal with transferring the individual words that form the idiom but rather transferthe idiomatic meaning and of course, the culture within the idioms as well Anuradha

(1995) stated that “ the translation involved in making another culture comprehensible

entail varying degrees of violence, especially when the culture being translated is constituted as that of the “other” That is the reason why translator is considered as a

creative artist who ensures the survival of writing across time and space, an intercultural

mediator and interpreter, a figure whose importance to the continuity and diffusion ofculture is immeasurable.

In brief, translation is an intercultural activity as well as an intralingual one as itdeals with (at least) two linguistic systems embedded in two different cultures However,the difficulties inherent in the translation process vary proportionately with the degree ofdistance between the languages and the cultures involved

Cultural value systems are difficult to grasp as they are intricately woven into thetexture of the native language A conscientious translator, therefore, must be willing tomake the extra effort that is required to unearth the full cultural meaning hidden in thelanguage He must be alive to the two sociocultural systems with which he is working inorder to narrow the gap that separates them It is definitely true for translators in translatingidioms

CHAPTER TWO: CULTURAL TRANSFER THROUGH TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS OF FOOD AND DRINK

1 Idioms of food and drink

1.1 Criteria for idioms of food and drink

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, food is any substance, usually composed ofcarbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal, includinghumans, for nutrition or pleasure Items considered food may be sourced from plants,animals or other categories such as fungus or fermented products like alcohol Althoughmany human cultures sought food items through hunting and gathering, today mostcultures use farming, ranching, and fishing, with hunting, foraging and other methods of alocal nature included but playing a minor role

Almost all foods are of plant or animal origin However water and salt (both inorganicsubstances) are important parts of the human diet Salt is often eaten as a flavoring orpreservative

Other foods not from animal or plant sources include various edible fungi, such asmushrooms Fungi and ambient bacteria are used in the preparation of fermented andpickled foods such as leavened bread, alcoholic drinks, cheese, pickles, and yogurt Manycultures eat seaweed, a protist, or blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) such as Spirulina.Additionally baking soda, another inorganic substance, is used in food preparation

- Plants:

Many plants or plant parts are eaten as food There are around 2,000 plant specieswhich are cultivated for food, and many have several distinct cultivars Plant food mayinclude cereals (such as maize, wheat, and rice), legumes (such as beans, peas, and lentils),and nuts Fruits are the ripened ovaries of plants, including the seeds within Many plantshave evolved fruits that are attractive as a food source to animals, so that animals will eatthe fruits and excrete the seeds some distance away Fruits, therefore, make up a significantpart of the diets of most cultures Some botanical fruits, such as tomatoes, pumpkins andeggplants, are eaten as vegetables

Vegetables are a second type of plant matter that is commonly eaten as food Theseinclude root vegetables (such as potatoes and carrots), leaf vegetables (such as spinach andlettuce), stem vegetables (such as bamboo shoots and asparagus), and inflorescencevegetables (such as globe artichokes and broccoli) Many herbs and spices are highly-flavorful vegetables

- Animals

Animals can be used as food either directly, or indirectly by the products they produce.Meat is an example of a direct product taken from an animal, which comes from eithermuscle systems or from organs Food products produced by animals include milk produced

by mammals, which in many cultures is drunk or processed into dairy products such ascheese or butter In addition birds and other animals lay eggs, which are often eaten, andbees produce honey, a popular sweetener in many cultures Some cultures consume blood,some in the form of blood sausage, as a thickener for sauces, a cured salted form for times

of food scarcity, and others use blood in stews such as civet

Drink is defined by the dictionary as any liquid suitable for drinking It may be water,tea, coffee, alcoholic drink, coca, fruit juice, etc…

From these definitions of food and drink, I consider all idioms related to any kind of foodand drink in their forms as “idioms of food and drink” The idioms of food and drink mayrelate to a certain kind of food or drink as “ butter and cheese”, “good egg”, “bad egg”,

“fish in troubled water”… or food and drink in general as food in “food for thought”, cỗ(party) in “ma ăn cỗ”, lương (food) in “cao lương mĩ vị”…

1.2 Syntactical feature of idioms of food and drink

It can be seen that idioms in both languages are lexically fixed Different types of idioms offood and drink are found in both English and Vietnamese They vary in size form andstructure from verb phrases or clause idioms as classified by Oxford Dictionary of Englishidioms: noun phrases to adjective phrases or phrase idioms In the two languages thereappear to be correspondent to each other in kind of phrases

Examples of verb phrases:

Bear fruit

Chew the cud

Chew the fat

Don’t cry over spilt milk

Eat humble pie

Go fry an egg

Separate the wheat from the

chaff Spill the beans

Ăn nói cà riềng cà tỏi

Ăn mận trả đào

Đâm bị thóc chọc bị gạo

Được con diếc tiếc con rô

Khát nước mới lo đào giếng

Mọc lên như nấm Nằm gai

nếm mật

Thuộc như cháo

Vặt đầu cá gá đầu tôm

Examples of noun phrases:

Apple of your eyes

Bread and butter

Salt of the earth

Bạn bè xôi thịt

Cao lương mĩ vị

Củi quế gạo châu

Examples of adjective phrases:

Flat as a pancake

Full of beans

Worth your salt

Ngọt như mía lùi

Nhạt như nước ốc

Sinh quả Nghiền ngẫm, ngẫm nghĩ Nói chuyện phiếm, tán dóc Khóc cũng bằng thừa Phải nhận lỗi, chịu nhục

Đi chỗ khác, đừng quấy rầy nữa Phân biệt cái tốt với cái xấu Để lọt tin tức ra ngoài Speak disrespectfully.

Return gift for gift Play off two adversaries Get inch and want mile Act at last minute

To spring up like mushrooms

Nhạt nhẽo, vô vị Đầy năng lực, hăng hái, sôi nổi Xứng đáng với tiền kiếm được As sweet as honey insipid

Apart from the above similarities, both languages also have sentence idioms They may be simple or complex sentences.

Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth

Half of loaf is better than no bread

You can not have your cake and eat it too

It’s no use crying over spilt milk

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Cà cuống chết đến đít còn cay

Cơm tẻ no xôi vò chẳng thiết

Không có cá lấy rau má làm ngon

Không ưa thì dưa có giòi

Vỏ quýt dày có móng tay nhọn

Làm ra bộ đoan trang

Có còn hơn không Được cái nọ mất cái kia Khóc cũng chẳng ích gì Cuộc sống thật đẹp It’s difficult to change one’s nature.

Not want, not wait

There is small choice in rotten apples.

Faults are thick where love is thin.

Diamond cut diamond

The simile in idioms of food and drink of the two languages is another similarity Simile is

an expression that describes something by comparing it with something else, using the words “as” or “like” (Longman Exam Dictionary:1435)

Here are some common idioms of English and Vietnamese which are widely used ineveryday life

1.3 Cultural features of idioms of food and drink

Vietnamese idioms in particular and Vietnamese language in general base on theagricultural civilization, experiences of the poverty together with the struggle for existence.Therefore, Vietnamese idioms reflex the agricultural lifestyle of our nation Rice is thestaple food of Vietnamese people That’s easy to understand why there are so many idiomsrelated to rice The examples are:

- Cơm trắng canh ngon

- Củi quế gạo châu

For living basing on the agriculture, Vietnamese people depend so much on theweather and crops The hunger and the poverty is one part in their life experience As aresult, there are many idioms showing the difficult conditions of living We can see that inthose idioms “ cơm niêu nước lọ - to live on simple fare”, “cơm thừa canh cặn – amiserable life of a servant”, “cơm đen vận túng – stroke of bad luck”

English idioms are different in this sense Though English people experienced anagricultural life a long time ago, they are affected by the industrial civilization Therefore,English idioms of food and drink don’t express the poverty or the agricultural experience.Though bread and butter or soup… ( their staple food) are mentioned in the idioms, theydon’t reflex the poverty so much as in Vietnamese Let’s check some examples here:

- half a loaf is better than no bread

- quarrel with bread and butter

For the reason of different living conditions, of course, the two nations have different lifestyles While working together in the fields, Vietnamese people seem to be more