Đánh giá của du khách nước ngoài về các lỗi dịch trong bản dịch việt anh của các thuật ngữ mang đặc trưng văn hóa trên tên hiện vật tại bảo tàng đân tộc học việt nam

Readers are the ultimate users to decide the success of a text translation, yet this fact is often neglected in research about Vietnamese – English tourism text translations. Additionally, cultural translation has long proved itself to be of great importance since Vietnam opened the door to a flat world. This study thus aimed at shedding light on the reactions of foreign tourists to translation errors of object labels at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and their expectations to improve the translation quality of this text type. The researcher based on a study by Bui (2014) about procedures and errors in object label translations at VME to select research subjects (21 translation errors of four types) according to ATA framework. The use of questionnaire in qualitative interview (questerview) was applied as the method of collecting data from 20 random English native speakers visiting VME. Then, both statistical analysis (for questionnaires) and content analysis (for interviews) were employed to answer the research questions. The researcher figured out several interesting findings. First, each translation error type exerted its different impacts at unidentical levels of seriousness on foreign tourists, thus receiving different evaluations from them. Also, three main factors that might impact readers’ translation quality assessment were (1) tourists’ background knowledge about the source language’s culture, (2) their personal interest in the objects and (3) their familiarity with the terms. More interestingly, it was pointed out that informativeness ranked first in terms of importance when it came to foreign tourists’ expectations for a translation of cultural terms in object labels. Hence, the participants suggested using descriptive equivalent translation procedure and asking for comments and recommendations from foreigners or experts to improve the translation quality of object labels at the museum

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

FOREIGN TOURISTS’ ASSESSMENT OF

TRANSLATION ERRORS IN VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF CULTURE-SPECIFIC TERMS IN OBJECT LABELS

AT VIETNAM MUSEUM OF ETHNOLOGY

Supervisor: Ngô Hà Thu, MCS Student: Nguyễn Thị Thùy Trang Course: QH2012.F1.E15

HÀ NỘI – 2016

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

ĐÁNH GIÁ CỦA DU KHÁCH NƯỚC NGOÀI

VỀ CÁC LỖI DỊCH TRONG BẢN DỊCH

VIỆT-ANH CỦA CÁC THUẬT NGỮ MANG ĐẶC TRƯNG VĂN HÓA TRÊN TÊN HIỆN VẬT TẠI BẢO TÀNG DÂN TỘC HỌC VIỆT NAM

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: ThS Ngô Hà Thu Sinh viên: Nguyễn Thị Thùy Trang

Khóa: QH2012.F1.E15

HÀ NỘI – 2016

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang, QH2012.F1.E15, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited

in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Date

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I owe the completion of this thesis to Ms Ngo Ha Thu, my supervisor She has been my valuable source of inspiration, ideas, guidance and support throughout the course of conducting the research

Many thanks then go to my sister, Nhung and friends, Huyen, Huong, Quynh, Hoan, etc who have continuously provided me with a great deal of encouragement, support and advice during the process

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to my two respectable foreign ex-teachers at university, Ms Susan Lucass and Ms Kellie Herod for their willingness to participate in my pilot interviews through Skype despite the striking difference in time zone between Vietnam and their homelands Thanks to these valuable talks, I gained precious consultation and comments on the first version of

my questionnaire and interview questions, thus greatly improving them later on

Finally, I appreciate the love and support from my parents from the beginning

to the end of this process

Without all of them, hardly could I accomplish this rewarding, yet challenging task

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ABSTRACT

Readers are the ultimate users to decide the success of a text translation, yet this fact is often neglected in research about Vietnamese – English tourism text translations Additionally, cultural translation has long proved itself to be of great importance since Vietnam opened the door to a flat world This study thus aimed at

shedding light on the reactions of foreign tourists to translation errors of object

labels at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and their expectations to improve the translation quality of this text type The researcher based on a study by Bui (2014) about procedures and errors in object label translations at VME to select research subjects (21 translation errors of four types) according to ATA framework The use

of questionnaire in qualitative interview (questerview) was applied as the method of

collecting data from 20 random English native speakers visiting VME Then, both statistical analysis (for questionnaires) and content analysis (for interviews) were employed to answer the research questions The researcher figured out several

interesting findings First, each translation error type exerted its different impacts at un-identical levels of seriousness on foreign tourists, thus receiving different evaluations from them Also, three main factors that might impact readers’

translation quality assessment were (1) tourists’ background knowledge about the source language’s culture, (2) their personal interest in the objects and (3) their

familiarity with the terms More interestingly, it was pointed out that

informativeness ranked first in terms of importance when it came to foreign tourists’

expectations for a translation of cultural terms in object labels Hence, the

participants suggested using descriptive equivalent translation procedure and asking

for comments and recommendations from foreigners or experts to improve the

translation quality of object labels at the museum

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AEC: ASEAN Economic Community

ASEAN: Association of South East Asian Nation

ATA: American Translation Association

FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher Education

SD: Standard deviation

ST: Source text

TT: Target text

ULIS: The University of Languages and International Studies

USSH: University of Social Sciences and Humanities

VME: The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

VNU: Vietnam National University

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: ATA framework for error marking 9

Table 2: List of cultural-specific terms with translation errors 22

Table 3: Summary of statistical data 31

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Procedures of pilot questerviews 27

Figure 2: Procedures of real questerviews 28

Figure 3: Data analysis procedures 29

Figure 4: Foreign tourists’ average rating scores ………32

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Figure 5: Number of foreigners who did not understand/ misunderstood the

translations without images and explanation 34 Figure 6: Foreign visitors' expectations toward the translation quality of cultural specific terms in object labels at VME 47

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter generally introduces the whole research, leading the readers from a general to specific field of research The section establishes the context and significance of the study by summarizing current background knowledge of the topic and stating the aims of the work The research problem, rationale, objectives, and importance as well as the organization of the study are presented one by one

1.1 Statement of research problem and rationale for the study

Since the implementation of “Doi Moi” policy in 1986, and then the establishment of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism in 1992, the country has made great leaps in tourism sector The renewed international interest in Vietnam has brought about a surge in the number of tourists, which grew up over four-fold within four years, from 1990 to 1994 (Hall & Page, 2011) Indeed, the past three decades has seen significant advances in Vietnam’s tourism industry The official launch of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – ASEAN and the ASEAN Economic Community - AEC by the end of 2015 also promises to open a new page in the history of Vietnamese tourism As ASEAN members open their doors in one common market, travelling will become far easier Tourism development has not only boosted the number of visitors to Vietnam but also put forth the urgent need to improve quality of Vietnamese tourism in general and tourism text translation in particular to meet regional requirements (Dao, 2015)

First, the increasing number of overseas tourists flooding to Vietnam has urged tourism industry to call for high quality of tourist text translation, which is the major means of both “informing” visitors of the beauty spots and convincing them

to purchase tourism goods and services More critically, tourism is an activity involving direct contact between cultures The language used in tourism, hence is of great value between tourists and the places they are visiting, and is a joint element between the domestic and foreign cultures In other words, tourism texts can be

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considered a bridge, narrowing the gap among cultures This makes it more and more difficult to ignore the translation quality of tourism texts so as to assure clear and effective communication between native people and culture and their foreign visitors However, the fact is that translation quality of tourism texts in Vietnam remains a big question to answer as there have not been any international quality standards to ensure the quality of English used in Vietnamese tourism texts, especially in heritage interpretive signage

Second, cultural gaps between dissimilar cultures which exist in several areas namely cultural background, non-equivalence, extension and intention, and derivation (Wu, 2008) have long been headachy issues, challenging any translator One of the most problematic translational issues rooted from this is the translation of culture-specific terms which hardly have adequate equivalence in other languages A considerable volume of studies have probed into the methods, procedures or techniques used by translators to cope with this challenge such as An (2015), and Bui (2014) Nonetheless, the research to date has tended to focus on translators’ perspective rather than readers’ one Meanwhile, readers are the end-users of translations Their understanding and evaluation decide the success of a translation

To put it differently, how the readership responses to the translation of specific terms remains a big question to delve into

culture-Third, of no less importance is the lack of research about foreign readers’ reactions to the translation of domestic texts into English, a foreign language One of the most common theories placing readers and target text at the center of all concerns is Skopos theory, which was originally developed in Germany in the late 1970s and further supported as well as shaped up by several big names like Reiss, Vermeer and Node (Wang, 2013) A wide range of other researchers either chose to look into translation errors such as Ngo (2009), or methods and strategies such as Wang (2013) applied in the translation of tourist texts Yet, hardly did any research analyze readers’ assessments Most of them just focused on analyzing tourism texts

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from the perspectives of either the translators themselves or the researchers rather than readers who receive and use the text as their directions and source of information In other words, readership has not received adequate attention in research about translation quality of tourism texts, especially object labels This motivates the researcher to conduct this study, aiming at giving foreign readers the floor to raise voice about the quality of Vietnamese – English translation of domestic texts

Last but not least, foreign tourists were chosen to be the subjects of this research for two reasons Apparently, with the common trend of regional integration

in almost any aspects, especially the official launch of ASEAN Economic Community by the end of 2015, mobility in labor and tourism is certain to be boosted (Paryono, 2013) Easier access is likely to increase the number of foreigners

to Vietnam, which can be considered part of the tourists with eagerness towards Vietnamese culture More notably, there have has quite a large body of research about translation quality assessment; however, they only shed light on researchers’

or Vietnamese readers’ perspectives toward English – Vietnamese translations Little

attempt has been made to investigate foreigners’ opinions when it comes to the

quality of Vietnamese – English translations By and large, picking foreign tourists

as the research subjects is both necessary and feasible

In short, it was tourism growth, the increasing number of overseas tourists, translation difficulties caused by cultural gaps, and the lack of research about readership’s translation quality assessment that spurred me to conduct the study

entitled “Foreign tourists’ assessment of translation errors in Vietnamese-English translations of culture-specific terms in object labels at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology”

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1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

Not only does the thesis aim at shedding light on the reactions of foreign

tourists (hereby referred to as ‘the readers’) to translation errors of introductory signs at the museum, but it also seeks for readers’ expectations to improve the translation quality of this text type More specifically, my research will look into the following two questions:

Research question 1: What are foreign tourists’ assessments of the

translation errors in Vietnamese-English translation of culture-specific terms in object labels at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology?

Research question 2: What are the tourists’ expectations in order to improve

the translation quality of culture-specific terms in object labels at the VME?

1.3 Significance of the study

Once completed, the study would bring about certain benefits to translators, researchers, the whole society, readers in general and foreign tourists in particular

who share the same interest in this topic

In the first place, to the readers’ side, the findings of the research may help

them to raise their voice in the field of translation quality assessment Apparently,

though the translation of culture-specific terms in tourist texts has long been a burning subject for research, little has looked into the responses of specific groups

of readers Rather, a majority of the studies were carried out under only one side’s viewpoints, mostly translators Adopting the approaches from another party - readers would offer readers the right to raise their voice in assessing translation work as well as research into this field Moreover, this would also give a more

comprehensive picture of the quality assessment

In the second place, to translators’ side, due to limited number of studies about translation quality from readers’ perspectives, translators consequently encounter a great many difficulties in identifying response and expectations from the

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end-users of their translation work so as to choose the most proper translation strategies This study, therefore, would help inform translators of remaining problems as well as possible approaches in the translation of culture-specific terms

in interpretive signage at tourist attractions in particular and tourism texts in general

In the third place, as for researchers who take interest in the same topic, they can refer to this paper as a source of updated and reliable information

Last but not least, to the society as a whole, in the context of increasing development of tourism, which leads to an urgent need for improving translation quality of tourist texts, this research would provide an insight into the current situations of the quality of existing translated tourism texts in Hanoi This, as a result, would raise authorities’ as well as translators’ awareness of enhancing the quality of translation works

1.4 Scope of the study

Tourism texts are multifarious, ranging from tourist brochures to exhibit signs and labels in museums as well as beauty spots and so on Nonetheless, in this study, emphasis is put on the Vietnamese – English translation quality of object labels only More specifically, under the constraint of time and capability, investigating readers’ evaluation of all labels available in every tourist attraction in Vietnam would hardly be feasible Consequently, the study just focuses on translation errors of culture-specific terms in object labels at a popular museum in Vietnam, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

1.5 Organization of the study

The study has five major chapters In Chapter 1 – Introduction, a big picture

of the research problem, rationale, aims and scope of the study is depicted Chapter

2 is Literature review which provides a theoretical framework, encompassing all major concepts of the research Chapter 3 – Methodology describes the research design, answering how the data was collected and analyzed Chapter 4 – Results and

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

The main focus of this research was how readers receive and respond to translations of cultural terms After several months of reading the literature, the researcher found a research on translation procedures and translation errors identified in object label translation at VME by Bui (2014), which provided quite a comprehensive framework about translation errors contained in translations of the labels The researcher decided to adapt Bui’s theoretical framework and findings about the errors, from which she went on to explore the foreign readers’ assessment

of the translation errors found

Therefore, as a theoretical framework for the whole research, this chapter includes two main parts First, it mainly introduces and critiques Bui’s research, which lays the foundation for this research Then, some new theoretical aspects relating to translation quality assessment and cultural translation are discussed in the hope of covering the gaps in the previous paper

2.1 Research by Bui (2014) – Source of secondary data for this study

2.1.1 Summary of Bui’s research

Research subjects for this study were selected based on a previous thesis named “Translation procedures applied in translating object labels at VME” by Bui (2014) This part was a brief summary of the research

 Bui’s research aims

Bui (2014) mainly sought for procedures applied in translations of object labels at VME However, during the course of data analysis, she encountered several translation errors, which urged her to pose the second research question regarding common errors in object label translations

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 Bui’s theoretical framework

Bui discussed several concepts relating to translation procedures, translation errors and exhibit labels This part, yet only focused on her discussion of exhibit labels and framework for standardized error marking as they were closely related to this research

First, Bui (2014) defined exhibition labels as small pieces of paper or fabric

attached to specific objects, exhibits and places to give information about them (p.17) She went on to classify exhibition labels into four groups, namely

introduction labels (giving an overview of the main sections in the exhibits), section labels (covering sub-topics that introduced each single area in a museum

exhibition), object labels (describing individual objects) and credit panels (including

donations)

Second, as regards framework for error marking, there has been little

agreement on a unified framework of translation error classification Various scholars have proposed different ways of categorizing errors For instance, Newmark (1988) simply classified translations errors into two main types, namely referential errors including all problems related to factual information in the real world and linguistic ones including the use of words, collocations and idioms Meanwhile, American Translation Association (ATA) provided a relatively comprehensive list of 23 translation errors for professional translators ATA has been a prestigious organization established for the promotion of translation and interpretation career and for the professional enhancement of translators and interpreters Among all available frameworks, Bui (2014) chose the “Framework for standardized error marking” by ATA as the backbone of her research 23 types of errors in the framework were summarized as follows (according to the American Translators Association, n.d.):

Table 1: ATA framework for error marking

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1 Addition The translator adds more “superfluous information or stylistic

effects” that are not included in the ST

2 Ambiguity The ST or TT segment reveals more than one “semantic

interpretation”, which makes it hard for readers to make sense

of the meaning

3 Capitalization The conventions of the target language concerning upper and

lower case usage are not followed

4 Cohesion A text is hard to follow because of inconsistency in

terminology, “misuse of pronouns, inappropriate conjunctions,

or other structural errors”

5 Diacritical marks /

Accents

The translator fails to follow the TT’s conventions of accents and diacritical marks

6 Faithfulness The TT does not express the real meaning of the ST

7 Faux ami There is a confusion of words with the same form but different

meaning across the language pair

8 Grammar A sentence in the translation violates the grammatical rules of

the target language

9 Illegibility Readers cannot clearly discern what is translated

10 Indecision More than one option is provided for a given translation unit

11 Literalness ST is translated word for word, leading to awkward,

unidiomatic, or incorrect translations

12 Mistranslation The meaning of a segment of the ST is not conveyed

adequately in the TT

13 Misunderstanding the translator fails to understand what is conveyed by the ST

14 Omission A piece of information in the ST is omitted in the TT

15 Punctuation the conventions regarding punctuation of the TT are not

followed

16 Register The “language level or degree of formality” used in the TT is

inappropriate for the target readers

17 Spelling A word or character in the translation is spelled incorrectly

according to target-language conventions

18 Style The style of the translation fails to maintain that of the ST

19 Syntax The order of words or other elements of a sentence does not

follow to the syntactic rules of the TT

20 Terminology A specific term, especially technical, legal and financial one,

is used incorrectly in the ST

21 Unfinished The translation misses titles, headings, or sentences in a

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Bui (2014) collected around 400 names of the object labels in the museum and then went on with document analysis to figure out the answers to her two research questions regarding translation procedures and errors in object labels at VME

 Bui’s findings

In her research, Bui presented two main findings according to her two research questions about translation procedures and translation errors in translations of object labels at VME

First, she found out that seven major procedures were applied in

translating object labels at VME, namely literal translation, descriptive equivalent, shift/ transposition, modulation, cultural equivalent, reduction and transference The most dominant procedure was literal translation (54.9 %), followed by transposition (24.8 %)

Second, Bui detected 72 translation errors and suggested revision for

each error when examining 394 object labels at VME and classified them according to ATA framework According to the framework, more than 20 translation errors could be made during the translation process However, since the study only focused on translation at word or phrase level, not all errors types would be marked Only six kinds of errors were pointed out through document

analysis The most common errors were omission (57 %), followed by ambiguity,

misunderstanding, faithfulness, addition and literalness

2.1.2 Strengths of Bui’s research

Undoubtedly, Bui’s research did possess several strengths, especially in her shaping of theoretical framework

First, in terms of theoretical framework, the researcher quite agreed with her discussions about exhibition label-related theories and translation error-

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related ones, especially her selection of ATA framework as the backbone to classify errors in object label translations The researcher also chose this as the framework in classifying errors for this study for two reasons First, ATA framework undoubtedly covered almost all possible errors in a professional translation More importantly, the framework seemed to focus more on sentence level errors (or under sentence level) than text level errors Accordingly, it was appropriate for this specific research indeed as the scope of this paper was only the translation of words or phrases in object labels, which was also at or under sentence level

Second, in terms of findings, Bui’s clear and relatively comprehensive categorization of translation errors in the object labels was a great source of help for the researcher for her own selection of research subject The researcher decided to adapt these findings selectively in this thesis by choosing only dominant culture-specific terms with translation errors pointed out by Bui (2014)

as the subject of this thesis However, instead of delving into the classification of translation errors and providing suggested translations again, this study focused

on the responses and evaluations of foreign readers about the translation errors of object labels

2.1.3 Weaknesses of Bui’s research

In an attempt to develop a research about readers’ response to errors in object label translation, the researcher detected certain weaknesses in Bui’s research which created a gap to fill in

Firstly, ATA framework was not enough when it came to investigating readers’ evaluation Obviously, this framework was mainly based on linguistic analysis of texts, which excluded readership’s role in TQA Meanwhile, the major focus of this thesis was readers’ response Therefore, there was a need for another response-based TQA approach – behavioristic view, which attached much

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significance to the readers’ understanding of the TT With the combination of these two quite different frameworks, the approach is no longer one-sided It brought together the concerns for both TT and readers Details about TQA approaches were discussed in the next section

Secondly, as regards methodology, Bui failed to take into account the real

setting of the museum where translations of object labels were aided with real

objects beside them She just analyzed the translations out of their real setting which might result in wrong assessment of translation quality Consequently, in this study, the researcher decided to improve this aspect by providing the interviewees with both the translations and the images of real objects for their translation quality assessment

2.2 Related theories about translation quality assessment (TQA) and cultural translation

2.2.1 Translation quality assessment

2.2.1.1 Definition and approaches of TQA

Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) is a large and growing sub-field of Translation Studies which encompasses the relationships between the source text (ST) and its translation into target text (TT) At the heart of all concerns is how to measure and illustrate the quality of translation An increasing number of scholars have investigated this field, proposing several approaches Each of these has their own strengths and weaknesses TQA approaches can be classified into three main types: “psycho-social approaches”, “response-based approaches” and “text and discourse-oriented approaches” (House, 2015, p.8), among which “response-based approaches” seem to suit this research the most Details about each approach are discussed as follows:

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First, psycho-social approaches, or “mentalist views” represent a

selective view of translation underlining the “translator’s processes of interpretation” Supporters of this type hold the strong belief that the quality of a translation depends greatly on the “translator’s subjective decisions”, which in turn are based on his experience (House, 2015, p.8) Therefore, mentalist approaches tend to be subjective, and intuitive

Second, in contrast to subjective-hermeneutic psycho-social approaches

above, response-based approaches provide a more reliable way of evaluating

translations They involve certain variables The first one is Behavioristic views,

developed by Nida (1964, as cited in House, 2015) Nida took the readers’ reactions as the main yardstick for assessing a translation’s quality He also proposed several behavioral tests such as “reading aloud techniques”, or diverse

“cloze and rating tasks” to elicit more “observable” and “objective” responses from translation evaluators Broad criteria such as “intelligibility” and

“informativeness” were made full use of (House, 2015, p.10) Although these tests were claimed to be inefficient when it came to the “overall quality of a translation”, they are helpful when assessing translation quality of items at word

or phrase level The second approach is Functionalistic, Skopos-Related

Approach Supporters of this approach (Reiss and Vermeer, as cited in House,

2001, p.11) claimed that it is the “skopos” or purpose of a translation that is of overriding significance in assessing a translation’s quality Therefore, the way

“target culture norms are heeded or flouted by a translation” is taken as the crucial yardstick for judging a translation However, the vital concept of

“function” in this theory is “never made explicit, let alone operationalized in any satisfactory way” (House, 2015, p.11) In other words, functionalistic approach proves inefficient in several cases

Last but not least, linguistically oriented approaches aim at explicating

the relationship between the text or features of it and how these are perceived by

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authors, translators and readers Recently, a growing number of linguistically oriented works on translation assessment have appeared, expanding the scope of translation studies to “include speech act theory, discourse analysis, pragma-linguistics and socio-pragmatics” (House, 2015, p.14) These approaches put emphasis on the link between the source text and the target text Nonetheless, these two are dissimilar in terms of their capacity to provide detailed procedures for analysis as well as assessment

Despite various existing theories in TQA, the researcher decided to adapt

Nida’ s behavioristic views (a variable of response-based approaches ) as the

core approach because it fits this particular study in many ways, namely research subjects, participants as well as aims and objectives This research basically investigates the assessment of foreign students as readers of Vietnamese - English translations of objects labels at VME So far, behavioristic view is one of a few theories which have put emphasis on readership and can be feasibly applied at word level translation for object labels More critically, Nida (1964) also suggested several practical behavioral tests (such as reading aloud, rating and cloze tests) to generate “objective” assessments from readers, which the researcher can successfully adapt in this study Last but not least, the application

of this approach fills in the gap of Bui’s theoretical framework as mentioned in the previous part (2014) While adopting ATA framework helps classifying the translation errors well, behavioristic view is the backbone for the researcher to design rating tasks in the questionnaire & interview questions to test readers’ response Refer to chapter 3 – methodology for more details

2.2.1.2 Readership in TQA

It is significant to note the role of readership in translation quality assessment Placing readers and target text at the center of all concerns, Skopos theory was initially developed in Germany in the late 1970s, and gained further support from other famous figures, such as Reiss, Vermeer and Node (Wang,

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2013, p.255) The theory holds a more functionally and socio-culturally oriented concept of translation Wang (2013) stated that it is the readers who are the final ones to use the translation Hence, investigating readership’s responses and expectations in order to improve the quality of translation is of great importance Additionally, reception aesthetics was another theory attaching great significance

to readership in translation Wang (2015) claimed that it was the readers who realized and relived the true meaning of the texts According to him, readers should not be a “passive part” in the triangle relationship between texts, authors and readers as without readers’ active reception, no matter how fantastic the text was, it was merely a “physical existence of no value” Undoubtedly, to evaluate the success of tourism translation, it is necessary to explore the effects that it creates on readers This concept about readership’s importance is also what the researcher has strongly believed in

2.2.2 Cultural translation

2.2.2.1 Culture definition and classification

Culture is a commonly used notion in everyday life, yet it is a concept difficult to define and categorize precisely The definition and classification of culture are rather fluid and vary from scientists to scientists For Jervis (2006), culture refers to “the thoughts, behaviors, languages, customs, the things we produce and the methods we use to produce them” Spadley and McCurdy (2012), however, proposed a different definition which illustrated culture as “the acquired knowledge” people apply to understand experience and determine behaviors

To ensure the consistency with other parts of the theoretical framework, the researcher decided to adopt the theory by Newmark (1988, p.94) He defined culture as “the way of life and its manifestation that was peculiar to a community which used a particular language as its means of expression.” He also classified culture into five main categories:

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 Ecology: Flora, fauna, winds, plains;

 Material: Food, clothes, houses, transports;

 Social: Work and leisure;

 Organizations, customs, activities, procedures and concepts: Political and administrative, religious and artistic; and

 Gestures and habits

2.2.2.2 Definition of culture-specific terms

Just like the definition of culture, the concept of culture-specific terms also varies greatly in the literature Nord (1997, p.34) used the term “cultureme” to refer to cultural words, defining them as “cultural phenomenon that is present in culture X but (not present in the same way) in culture Y” Likewise, Newmark (1988, p 94) defined culture as “the way of life and its manifestation that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression” Culture may relate to a religious belief, social custom or even a type

of food They are unique words of a specific community that do not exist in another one Despite various expressions, there was a concurrence among various theorists that culture-specific terms were considered popular or familiar in one culture, yet might either be irrelevant or even not exist in another culture

2.2.2.3 Characteristics of culture-specific terms

It is significant to find out the main characteristics of culture-specific items

in order to collect data for this research This part portrays two distinctive criteria

of a cultural term

First, cultural-specific terms are easy to detect for its close relationship with a specific culture For instance, Sake is associated with Japanese culture, Vodka with Russian culture and Ao dai with Vietnamese one (Vuong, 2013,

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p.10) The linguistic forms of those cultural terms are undoubtedly dissimilar However, more notable are their referents Each cultural term signifies a particular referent that can only be found in their host culture

Second, cultural words are impossible to be literally translated Newmark (1988, p.95) claimed that besides linguistic meaning, each cultural word carries in itself cultural meaning which could be distorted or dismissed when literal translation is applied For example, in Vietnamese culture, neither can “bánh giầy” be literally translated as “thick cake”, nor can “bánh gai” be translated into

“thorn cake” Not only does literal translation make these cultural words sound odd and unnatural in English, but it is also wrong in terms of meaning Actually,

“bánh giầy” is not thick, and “bánh gai” does not have any thorn (Vuong, 2013, p.11) Without doubt, literal translation is not feasible for culture-specific words

Accordingly, as culture-specific terms are distinct in terms of characteristics, they cause numerous translation difficulties and require the application of several particular translation procedures

2.2.2.4 Translation of culture-specific terms

Translation of culture-specific items was the way to translate words and sentences with cultural items from one language to another Cultural translation was also defined as a process in which “the content of the message” is manipulated to fit the “receptor culture” in some way (Nida & Taber, 1982)

Given the cultural “gap” or “distance” (Newmark, 1988) between different communities, translators encounter various challenges in transferring cultural words of a specific language to another one The translation problems related to culture-specific concepts were also poited out by Baker (1998)

In order to cope with such “greatest obstacle in translation” (Newmark, 1988) various approaches have been proposed In his theory of “foreignization”

Among multifarious theories on cultural translation, the researcher decided

to base on Newmark’s perception for data collection, analysis and further comparison because of certain reasons First, so far, the theory has provided the most comprehensive, popular and rational list of translation procedures More notably, Newmark’s theory was also the backbone of the research by Bui (2014) from which the researcher took initial data as an input Applying this perception assured the consistency in theoretical framework of the thesis

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section describes the rationale for the application of particular procedures used to identify, collect and analyze the information applied to solve the research problem The whole chapter enables readers to critically evaluate the research’s overall validity and reliability

3.1 Sampling

3.1.1 Selection of research subjects

Vietnamese-English translations of object labels that included specific terms with translation errors at VME were chosen to be assessed for several

culture-reasons

First, VME was chosen as the museum aimed at introducing a wide range of features in the multifarious Vietnamese culture to tourists, the density of culture-specific terms would be higher than common materials, which facilitated the data collection and analysis stage for this particular study The museum was established

on October, 24, 1995 and has officially opened to the public since November, 12,

1997 VME plays the dual role of both a research center (for conducting scientific research and collecting historical elements) and a public museum (for maintaining historical artifacts) The museum focuses on different features of 54 Vietnamese ethnic groups Over a decade of development has witnessed considerable success of the museum Most recently, as reported by Vietnamplus (2014), VME ranked fourth

in the list of Asia’s top 25 attractive museums in Asia, up from sixth place in 2013, according to Museum Director Vo Quang Trong The Museum has received numerous compliments for its efforts to “bring history and culture to life” It is well-known to tourists, domestic and foreign alike, thanks to its collections on the historical and cultural features of Vietnam’s 54 ethnic groups, as well as the cultures

of other ASEAN member states This justifies the researcher’s choice of this

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museum as the place to conduct this thesis on quality assessment of translated object labels

Second, the translation errors in object labels at VME were clearly spot out in

a previous study by Bui (2014), serving as a base for the researcher’s selection and categorization of research subjects In her research, Bui (2014) purposively selected

400 object labels at the VME among which she classified 322 items into different

translation procedures and found translation errors in 72 items She also put the

translation errors into six specific groups based on ATA Framework

The main findings from Bui’s study served as the basis for data collection

and analysis in this research However, the researcher merely focused on translation

errors found and purposively adapted the findings in specific ways to suit this

research paper Firstly, among 72 items containing errors as Bui (2014) pointed out,

only those with culture-specific terms (19 items) were chosen Secondly, to verify the secondary data, the researcher went to the museum to look at the real labels on

her own to ensure preciseness in Bui’s data and findings It turned out that almost all

data were correct Yet, the researcher found and added more translation errors (2

items) that were not mentioned in Bui’s findings, such as “Đàn Nguyệt” – “Zither”

(obmission) and “Đầu lân” – “Lion’s head” (ambiguity) Finally, the researcher took photos of real objects at VME and placed beside each translation so that it was

similar to the real setting of the museum Attaching the translation into its real setting would help foreign interviewees a lot in translation quality assessment The final list contained 21 errors classified into four types according to ATA Framework

as follows:

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Table 2: List of culture-specific terms with translation errors

Type of errors No Vietnamese name English

4 Quả đựng lễ vật ăn hỏi

Box given at betrothal

5 Bộ giỏ lễ trong đám cưới

Marriage basket

6 Tượng thờ tổ hát bội Ritual dolls for

hat boi singers

Household basket for valuable ọbjects

3.1.2 Participants and the selection of participants

The data for this research was collected from: 20 foreign visitors from

English speaking countries to VME First, they had to be actual tourists to VME so

that the naturalness in the setting of the museum and the participants’ interest in the research topic were assured Somehow, this would lead to natural responses in

interviews Second, the researcher only chose English native speakers to interview

in order to minimize the chances of distortion in findings because of the

participants’ poor English language proficiency Also, they were from Western countries, so their culture differentiated with Vietnamese culture – an Asian one

This might result in special findings in their evaluation of the translations of specific terms because of culture gaps In this paper, in order to keep the

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participants’ identities unrevealed, the researcher coded them from P1 to P20 See

Appendix 1 for the list of participants and their background information (on their

nationality, age, job, frequency of visiting VME, etc.)

3.2 Data collection instruments

This study employed the use of standardised self-completion questionnaires

during in-depth interviews This method was termed “questerview”, a research

method in which participants were recorded while “they completed the standardised questionnaires and were encouraged to discuss their definitions of terms and responses to items in-depth” (Adamson, Hill, Woolhead, & Donovan, 2004)

There were several reasons justifying the researcher’s choice of this particular method In the first place, the study aimed at investigating readers’ assessments of translations, so precise statistical data from questionnaires would efficiently illustrate a general overview of the readers’ translation quality evaluation However, why the respondents evaluated each item that way, what the stories behind their answers to the paper-based questionnaires were, whether the respondents correctly understood the items or not, etc remained big questions that qualitative data from in-depth interviews could answer effectively In other words, cognitive interviews would generate interesting data as regards individuals’ perceptions, definitions of complex items and usually provoked detailed stories about personal experiences to explain and justify their responses to each item in the paper-based questionnaires This eventually produced more comprehensive knowledge of the research problem

In the second place, the researcher intended to use two sets of results from the two instruments to validate each other Narrative and non-textual information was able

to add meaning to numeric data, while numeric data was likely to add precision to narrative and non-textual information To cut it short, questerview not only ensured

a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem but also enhanced the validity of the findings

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3.2.1 Questionnaire

Basically, the questionnaire asked the 20 participants to rate each translation

(from 1 to 4) according to their level of agreement with that way of translating

Below is an extract from the questionnaire:

How do you agree with each English translation of the Vietnamese object labels below?

Circle or underline (1,2,3,4) the number that best describes your opinion

1 2 3 4

1 Đàn ống tre Tubular

zither

Also known as Chapi zither - a

traditional musical instrument of Raglai people, made of bamboo

1 2 3 4

It should be noted that the Vietnamese names, English translations and

images were all taken from the museum However, the explanation column was not

in the museum, but added by the researcher from different references Hardly could

the foreign visitors understand the Vietnamese names Therefore, the explanations

aimed at providing the participants with sufficient understanding about the cultural

items they were assessing so that they were able to give adequate judgement of the

English translations The informants were instructed to look at the first four columns

first and then compare with the explanation column later to see the difference when

reading the English translation and the explanation Please refer to Appendix 2 for

the full version of the questionnaire

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3.2.2 Interview

The interview included two major parts Part A asked the informants to

further explain their evaluation of each translation in the questionnaire and their

overall satisfaction with the translations Part B investigated their expectations and

recommendations to improve the current translation quality of cultural specific

terms Details about interview questions can be found at Appendix 3

3.3 Data collection procedures

3.3.1 Stage 1: Pilot questerviews

To ensure the accuracy, appropriateness and effectiveness of the questionnaire and interview, six pilot ones were carried out These included two questerviews through Skype with the researcher’s ex-lecturers (both were from America) and four other face-to-face questerviews with foreign visitors to VME Phases of the pilot questerviews were illustrated in the following diagram

Figure 1: Procedures of pilot questerviews

3.3.2 Stage 2: Real questerviews

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One-to-one questionnaires and face-to-face interviews were carried out

simultaneously to collect data from 20 foreign visitors from English speaking

countries to VME for more interaction and in-time clarifications The interviews

were conducted in English to make it easier for both the interviewer and the respondents The semi-structure allowed flexibility and more freedom for new questions to be probed in Both recording and note-taking were used to record the data (with the agreement of the participants) The following chart describeed

different steps of the questerviews

Figure 2: Procedures of real questerviews

3.4 Data analysis procedures

To answer the aforementioned research questions (RQ), a combination of statistical analysis (for survey) and content analysis (for interviews) was applied Detailed steps were illustrated as follows

Figure 3: Data analysis procedures

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The researcher made full use of efficient features in Microsoft Excel program to calculate Mean and Standard Deviation, then presented them in charts and tables Other features like highlight and filter were also helpful