Chiến lược dịch các thuật ngữ văn hóa liên quan tới trò chơi dân gian việt nam

Translating culturespecific items has permanently been a great challenge to translators. As an inevitable consequence, few bilingual books on Vietnamese culture have been published. Being a person who is interested in folk cultures and also a translator, the researcher hopes to contribute to conserving traditional cultural values and promoting them to international friends. These desires inspired her to conduct the thesis “A Study on The Translation of Vietnamese Folk Games”. With an attempt to finger out the most common strategies used in translating culturespecific items related to Vietnamese folk games, the researcher actively sought cultural words on this topic and their translations from available materials. The majority of data was exploited from famous works on Vietnamese folk culture by Huu Ngoc, a proficient translator, to guarantee the reliability of results. Textual analysis, observation and interview were instruments to collect necessary data. Qualitative and quantitative analysis was employed to find answers to research questions. Accordingly, paraphrase by using related words and use loan words or more general concepts are the most common strategies to deal with culturespecific items. Not only does this paper determine the most used translation strategies to tackle with cultural words but it also gives practical glossaries for readers who are interested in folk culture. The researcher does expect that her work will stimulate further studies on the subject Translating culturespecific items has permanently been a great challenge to translators. As an inevitable consequence, few bilingual books on Vietnamese culture have been published. Being a person who is interested in folk cultures and also a translator, the researcher hopes to contribute to conserving traditional cultural values and promoting them to international friends. These desires inspired her to conduct the thesis “A Study on The Translation of Vietnamese Folk Games”. With an attempt to finger out the most common strategies used in translating culturespecific items related to Vietnamese folk games, the researcher actively sought cultural words on this topic and their translations from available materials. The majority of data was exploited from famous works on Vietnamese folk culture by Huu Ngoc, a proficient translator, to guarantee the reliability of results. Textual analysis, observation and interview were instruments to collect necessary data. Qualitative and quantitative analysis was employed to find answers to research questions. Accordingly, paraphrase by using related words and use loan words or more general concepts are the most common strategies to deal with culturespecific items. Not only does this paper determine the most used translation strategies to tackle with cultural words but it also gives practical glossaries for readers who are interested in folk culture. The researcher does expect that her work will stimulate further studies on the subject chiến

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

CHIẾN LƯỢC DỊCH CÁC THUẬT NGỮ VĂN HÓA LIÊN QUAN TỚI TRÒ CHƠI DÂN GIAN VIỆT NAM

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Vương Thị Thanh Nhàn

Sinh viên:Trần Thị Thúy Vượng

Khóa: QH2011.F1.E20

HÀ NỘI – 2015

ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Trần Thị Thúy Vượng from class 11E20, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the University of Languages and International Studies 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: May 31st, 2015

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During the completion of this paper, I have appreciated precious support from many people First and foremost, I would like to express sincere gratitude towards my beloved supervisor, M.A Vương Thị Thanh Nhàn for her devoted instruction during the last year Despite her business, she was always willing to give me advice on the thesis She was dedicated to guide me ways to conduct this study and correct each mistake of forms and contents in my work Without her assistance, it would have been

so difficult for me to accomplish the paper

Secondly, I want to show my deep thankfulness to the lecturer who helped me to carry out an interview for this paper I highly appreciate his invaluable suggestions to

my work Furthermore, I am thankful to his advice on enhancing translation and interpretation competence

I also desire to say thanks to teachers in charge of guiding students to do research and evaluating the progress of their works Owing to their lessons and comments, I knew how to carry out a study and what to improve in my paper

Last but not least, my special gratefulness is to my much –loved family At all times, they stood by my side and encouraged me to overcome difficulties in conducting this thesis Thanks to their material and spiritual support, I had more time and motivation to get over the challenge

ABSTRACT

Translating culture-specific items has permanently been a great challenge to translators As an inevitable consequence, few bilingual books on Vietnamese culture have been published Being a person who is interested in folk cultures and also a translator, the researcher hopes to contribute to conserving traditional cultural values and promoting them to international friends These desires inspired her to conduct the thesis “A Study on The Translation of Vietnamese Folk Games” With an attempt to finger out the most common strategies used in translating culture-specific items related to Vietnamese folk games, the researcher actively sought cultural words on this topic and their translations from available materials The majority of data was exploited from famous works on Vietnamese folk culture by Huu Ngoc, a proficient translator, to guarantee the reliability of results Textual analysis, observation and interview were instruments to collect necessary data Qualitative and quantitative analysis was employed to find answers to research questions Accordingly, paraphrase

by using related words and use loan words or more general concepts are the most common strategies to deal with culture-specific items Not only does this paper determine the most used translation strategies to tackle with cultural words but it also gives practical glossaries for readers who are interested in folk culture The researcher does expect that her work will stimulate further studies on the subject

LIST OF TABLES, FIGRURES AND ABBREVIATIONS

TABLES

Table 1 Types of Translation procedures

Table 2 Baker’s taxonomy of non-equivalence at the word level (1992) Table 3 Common strategies used by professional translators (Baker, 1992) Table 4 The quantities of culture-specific items

Table 5 Typical examples of “social culture”

Table 6 Typical examples of “Organizations, customs, ideas”

Table 7 Frequency and ratio of translation strategies

FIGURES

Figure 1 Ratios of translation strategies

ABBREVIATIONS

TGW Translation by a more general word (superordinate)

MNLE Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word

TCS Translation by cultural substitution

TLW Translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation TRW Translation by paraphrase using a related word

TUW Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words

TO Translation by omission

TI Translation by illustration

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

LISTS OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS iii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 9

1.1 Problem and rationale for the study 9

1.2 Aims of the study 10

1.3 Scope of the study 10

1.4 Significance of the study 10

1.5 Organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 12

2.1 Translation 12

2.1.1 Definition 12

2.1.2 Types of translation strategies 12

2.2 Equivalence in translation 14

2.3 The problem of non-equivalence 17

2.3.1 The nature of non-equivalence 17

2.3.2 Non-equivalence at word level 18

2.4 Translation and culture 19

2.4.1 Culture from translation perspective 19

2.4.2 Culture-specific items 20

2.4.3 Vietnamese folk games 21

2.5 Related studies 23

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 24

3.1 Selection of subjects 24

3.2 Data collection instruments and procedures 24

3.3 Data analysis procedures 26

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27

4.1 Research question 1 27

4.1.2 Strategies to translate the group “social culture” 28

4.1.2 Strategies to translate the group “cultural materials” 30

4.1.3 Strategies to translate the group “organizations, customs and ideas” 32

4.1.4 Strategies to translate the group “ecology” 33

4.2 Research question 2 33

4.3 Inferences from the interview 35

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 37

5.1 Summary of the study 37

5.2 Limitations of the study 37

5.3 Recommendation for further study 38

REFERENCES

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 aims to present the real situation of translating culture –specific items

in Vietnam Moreover, it gives explanation for the rationale as well as objectives, scope and significance of this paper

1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Being an important part of Vietnamese culture, folk games have played a crucial role in people’s lives for centuries They have been considered as unique spiritual dishes passed from generation to generation Vietnam, a country with 54 ethnics, is proud of its diverse collection of folk games However, a number of Vietnamese folk games have gradually fallen into oblivion and been in need of preservation as a result

of globalization As an approach to maintaining and promoting the cultural value of Vietnam, introducing documents of Vietnamese folk games in English to internal and external readers is essential Nonetheless, translating culture-specific items still remains as a challenge, even to experienced translators Some studies were done on translation of culture-specific items in Vietnam, but they only touched on popular subjects such as cuisine, clothing or famous places but folk games In addition, there are just a few English books on Vietnamese culture Therefore, translators often have

difficulty in finding English equivalents of culture-specific items related to folk games

Born in a peaceful countryside of Vietnam, the researcher has chances to get access to folk games and nurture a love for the unique form of culture Witnessing the fact that many Vietnamese folk games have become strange to Vietnamese and been under threat of disappearance, the researcher finds herself in charge of contributing to preserving and promoting the traditional kind of entertainment Furthermore, being a future bachelor majoring in translating and interpreting, the researcher has a desire to cope with translating cultural words in general and culture-specific items related to Vietnamese folk games in particular All the above reasons have encouraged the researcher to carry out this paper “A Study on the Translation of Vietnamese Folk

Games”

1.2 Aims of the study

The research was carried out to reach two main objectives Firstly, it aimed to find out common strategies employed in translating culture-specific items related to Vietnamese folk games and suggest implications for translating cultural words Afterwards, a Vietnamese - English glossary of folk games would be given to help translators to look up equivalents of cultural words about the subject Therefore, it was

to answer the two following questions:

 What have the strategies been applied to translate culture-specific items related

to Vietnamese folk games?

 What are the most common strategies to translate culture-specific items related

to Vietnamese folk games?

1.3 Scope of the study

Within the limitation of time and reference materials, the study addressed common strategies to translate culture-specific items related to Vietnamese folk games In addition, the researcher only focused on cultural words associated with typical Vietnamese folk games The chosen games for analysis satisfied two criteria including cultural values and popularity With these requirements, “chọi gà”, “cờ tướng”, and

“bịp mắt bắt dê” were some of the selected games

1.4 Significance of the study

The study is conducted to serve students majoring in translation and interpretation

in University of Languages and International Studies and anyone who share the same interest in Vietnamese folk games Once having been completed, this paper will be as one of the first documents on translating culture-specific items related to Vietnamese folk games First, it will supply readers with the knowledge of translation, equivalence

as well as strategies to deal with translating culture-specific items in general and those related to Vietnamese folk games in particular Then the findings of this paper may inspire other researchers to study further on the problems of translating cultural words Finally, a Vietnamese - English glossary of folk games will be a useful source for those who are interested in Vietnamese folk games and expect to introduce them to international friends

1.5 Organization of the study

The paper includes four chapters as follows:

 Chapter 1: A brief introduction of the rationale, aims, scope, significance and organization of the paper

 Chapter 2: Review of the related research and literature

 Chapter 3: Research methodology

 Chapter 4: Findings and discussion

 Chapter 5: Conclusion

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

The chapter is an overview of translation, translation equivalence and culture

translation as well as related studies At first, it offers definitions of key concepts Then, a general summary of related studies is supplied to give readers an insight of the research subject

2.1 Translation

2.1.1 Definition

Playing a crucial role in interhuman communication throughout history, translation has attracted linguistic researchers’ great attention As a consequence, views on translation have been diverse through times

One of the first definitions of translation was supposed by Catford (1965) According to the linguist, translation is “the replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent textual material in another language” The term “equivalent” was alluded to, but what kind of equivalents he aimed at was not concretized Later, Nida and Taber (1982) state that “translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message” This definition clearly shows that translation is related to the problems of equivalence in languages

From both linguistic and cultural perspectives, Nida (1964: 167) says that "no translation that attempts to bridge a wide cultural gap can hope to eliminate all traces

of the foreign setting" and "it is inevitable that when source and receptor languages represent very different cultures there should be many basic themes and accounts which cannot be ‘naturalized’ by the process of translating" In other words, cultural difference is a great hindrance to translating right from the start No matter how translators try to render the source text, a perfect linguistic and cultural equivalent will never be achieved It is necessary for translators to take cultural factors into consideration in their works

2 1.2 Translation Strategies

There is no universal definition of “translation strategy” Nevertheless,

“strategy” in “translation strategy” is generally synonymous with terms like

“method” or “procedure” For example, Loescher (1991) defines translation

strategy as "a potentially conscious procedure for solving a problem faced in translating a text, or any segment of it” As the study focuses on identifying strategies to translate culture-specific items, the concept “translation strategy” in this paper means “translation procedure” Hence, the researcher studied translation procedures to serve the subject she was exploring

Peter Newmark (1988) lists seventeen types of translation procedures in his famous book “A Textbook of Translation” Some popular translation procedures are shown in the following table

Table 1: Types of translation procedures

Translation procedures

1 Transference 5 Descriptive equivalent

2 Naturalization 6 Couplets

3 Cultural equivalent 7 Notes, additions, glosses

4 Functional equivalent 8 Reduction and expansion

Directly taking a source-text word into target language without translating,

transference is often applied to translate proper names or technical terms in order to

create local color, attract the readers, as well as give a sense of intimacy between the source language and the target language readers

Naturalization firstly adapts a word in the source language to the normal

pronunciation, then to the normal word forms For example, the words “Hong Kong” and “Shanghai” in the source text are respectively translated into “Hồng Kông” and

“Thượng Hải” in Vietnamese

Another procedure is cultural equivalent that helps reduce cultural gaps by replacing a source-text cultural word with a target-text cultural one For instance,

“two miles” in English will be rendered into “3, 2 km” in Vietnamese

Besides cultural equivalent, functional equivalent is also employed to convey

cultural words by using a culture-neutral word As said by Newmark (1988), this procedure is “the most accurate way of (…) deculturalizing a cultural word”

Specifically, the phrase “The Blue House” can be translated into “Phủ Tổng Thống Hàn Quốc”, instead of “Nhà Xanh” if translators want to emphasize that it is a state agency with a specific function, not a famous place which only exists in Korea

Combined with other procedures, descriptive equivalent is the strategy explaining

the meaning of a source-text word by several words, which gives readers a clearer image in target language “Ao Dai (a Vietnamese traditional dress)” for “Áo Dài” is

an example

Despite considering reduction and expansion are rather imprecise, Newmark does

not object to applying the two procedures in some special cases Reduction is acceptable when translators want to reduce widely-known information unnecessary, wherever expansion is resorted to providing more information which is not given in the source language but useful for readers in the target one

Couplets, triplets and quadruplets which are combination of two, three or four of

the above-mentioned including transference, functional literal translation, equivalent, descriptive equivalent, etc are stressed by Newmark (1988) because they are particularly common for cultural words

The last procedures are suggested by Newmark (1988) are notes, additions and

glosses that are applied to provide additional information related to culture or

language The additional content can be distributed within the text, at the bottom of pages, at the end of chapter or at the end of book

The procedures mentioned above are widely – recognized and used in some related studies However, the researcher found that these strategies are too general for her paper while those proposed by Baker (1992) directly addresses to solving problems in translating culture-specific items Therefore, she decided to choose the taxonomy of translation strategies as identification base for her thesis It was listed in the section

“Strategies used by professional translators”

2.2 Equivalence in translation

2.2.1 The nature of equivalence

For decades, equivalence has been a controversial central concept in translation theory Catford (1965) says that “A central task of translation theory is therefore that

of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence” Some linguists like

Catford (1965), Nida and Taber (1982) or Koller (1995) uses the notion “equivalence”

to define translation In contrast, other theorists represented by Snell-Hornby (1988) reject identity assumption and considers equivalence as an illusion Baker (1992) seems not to agree with Snell-Hornby’s view on the relation between equivalence and translation and claims that equivalence is “always relative” since “it is influenced by linguistic and cultural factors” It sounds that arguments regarding equivalence probably will not come to the end in the near future However, equivalence is widely accepted as the relationship between a source text and a target text, which is the most

decisive condition to identify whether a text can be a translation of another or not

Nida and Taber (1969) affirm that “translators must strive for equivalence rather than identity” In other words, translators have to achieve equivalence to create a good work Arising from the objective demand, researchers have offered numerous theories

to give a comprehensive view on translation equivalence and problems regarding to this notion

2.2.2 Approaches to Translation Equivalence

Linguists have given birth to various theories of translation equivalence taxonomy Each has his own method of equivalence classification However, the theories bear certain similarities and differences in some ways Generally, they are grouped into quantitative approach and qualitative approach The researcher mentions the two approaches as a basic to enable readers and herself to understand and give evaluations

of the results found in the chapter 4 “ Results and Findings”, particularly of how effective translation strategies employed bring about

2.2.2.1 Quantitative Approach

In terms of equivalence at the level of word or phrase, Kade (1968) divides equivalence into four types The first category is one-to-one equivalence, in which there is the only target-language item equal to one source-language item Secondly, it

is one-to-several or several-to-one when there are several items in target language corresponding to one item in source language For example, the word “bamboo” can

be translated into “tre, nứa, mai, vầu” The third type is one-to-part when available equivalents express just a part of meaning of the source -language items Finally, one-

to-none equivalence means that there is no equivalent in the target language corresponding to a source-text item

2.2.2.2 Qualitative Approach

Despite many papers on this approach, the researcher mentions two remarkable studies

by the excellent scholars, namely Eugene A Nida and Koller to avoid confusions for

readers

 Function-based Equivalence

Nida (1964) supposes that there are two kinds of equivalence consisting of formal

equivalence or formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence Whilst formal

correspondence, which has similarities with “semantic translation” proposed by

Newmark (1981), “ focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content ”

to create the closet equivalents, dynamic equivalence resembling Newmark’s

communicative translation is “ the principle of equivalent effect”, where translation produces the same impact on the target readers like the source text does on its audience

 Meaning-based Equivalence

In his famous paper “Readings in Translation theory” (1979), Koller suggests five types of meaning-based equivalence, namely denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic and formal equivalence in an attempt to answer the question “To what

exactly has to be equivalent?”

- Denotative equivalence is the case in which the target text has the same denotations

that convey the same extralinguistic content with the source text

- Connotative equivalence, also called stylistic equivalence, refers to the lexical

choices, especially between near-synonyms to produce the same communicative values (additional values) Admittedly, achieving connotative equivalence is one of the hardest problems of translation and seldom absolute

- Text normative equivalence is related to the source text and the target one using the

similar or same text types in their respective language This type of equivalence is applied in translating legal documents such as labor contracts, scientific texts or banking forms

- Pragmatic equivalence is oriented towards the receiver of the text It is achieved

when the source-language and target-language items have the same effect on readers

To be successful, translators may sometimes exchange text-normative, connotative equivalence because each readership has different demands For example, children enjoy a world of simple, vivid, and descriptive language while experts require concise translations of terms

- Formal equivalence or “expressive equivalence” refers to the form and aesthetics

involving word plays and individual stylistic features of the source text This type is

different from formal equivalence suggested by Nida (1964)

In short, equivalence is a major concern in translation There are two main approaches to equivalence including quantitative equivalence and qualitative equivalence In this paper, the researcher mentions them as criteria which translators can follow to create and evaluate their works Based on these approaches, the researcher will give her own comments on the quality of translations of the culture-specific items provided

2.3 The problem of non-equivalence

2.3.1 The nature of non-equivalence

Regarding equivalence in meaning between words in different languages, in his paper “On linguistic aspects of translation” (1959/2000), Jakobson points out “there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units” Then cross-linguistic differences

in structure, terminology, grammar and lexical forms are identified as the main reasons for non-equivalence Nida (1964) says that achieving equivalence is dependent on linguistic and cultural factors The finding set a light in studying translation equivalence from linguistic and cultural approaches However, there are some objections to this result House (1977) suggests that situational factor should be taken into account during translation process Having the same opinion with House, Snell-Hornby (1988) claims that equivalence is illusive because there are many aspects affecting translation equivalence such as language, culture, or situation Moreover, Newmark (1988) argues that “equivalent effect” is only achieved when common ideas are shared cross cultures Therefore, it is not unusual when non-

equivalence exists in translation

2.3.2 Non-equivalence at word level

2.3.2.1 Definition

Non-equivalence is first existent at word level, “the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself” (Bolinger and Sears, 1968) As stated by Baker (1992), non-equivalence at word level means that there is no “direct equivalent” in the target text for a source-text word

Non-equivalence is a hard-to-solve issue when translating cultural words As this study is on strategies to render culture-specific items, the researcher wants to focus on the problem so that she can find out reasons why translators applied translation strategies

2.3.2.2 Types of non-equivalence at the word level

In her famous work “In other words” (1992), Baker proposes some common types

of non-equivalence at the word level All are listed in the following table

Table 2: Baker’s taxonomy of non-equivalence at the word level (1992)

Non-Equivalence at the word level

1.Culture-Specific Concepts 7.Differences in physical and

interpersonal perspective 2.The source language concept is not

lexicalized in the target language

8.Differences in expressive meaning

3.The source language is semantically

complex

9 Differences in form

4.The source and target languages make

different distinctions in meaning

10.Differences in frequency and purpose

of using specific forms 5.The target language lacks a

2.3.2.3 Strategies used by professional translators

To handle with non-equivalence in translating culture-specific items, various translation strategies were suggested by different scholars The clearest taxonomy of

translation strategies was offered by Baker (1992) In the paper, the researcher used this taxonomy to identify strategies which were applied to translate culture-specific items They were abbreviated as in the following table to facilitate illustrating information by charts later

2 Translation by a more neutral/less

expressive word ( MNLE )

6.Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words ( TUW)

3 Translation by cultural substitution

(TCS) 7 Translation by omission (TO)

4 Translation using a loan word or loan

word plus explanation ( TLW ) 8 Translation by illustration (TI)

Table 3: Common strategies used by professional translators (Baker, 1992)

The clear taxonomy of translation strategies was offered by Baker (1992) Since these strategies are most applicable, the researcher used this taxonomy to identify strategies which were applied to translate culture-specific items They were abbreviated as in the table above to facilitate illustrating by charts later

2.4 Translation and culture

2.4.1 Culture from translation perspective

“Culture” is an abstract concept with different definitions through times According to an Indonesian research, there are more than 160 definitions of culture in the world Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (2005) generally defines culture

as “the arts and manifestations of human intellectual achievement collectively” Huu Ngoc, in his well-known book “ Wandering through Vietnamese culture” gives a more specific definition of culture that it is “ a set of symbolic systems … determined by a

set of values which regulate the behaviors and enable the mutual communication of a plurality of people, thus establishing them into particular and distinct community” The latter not only shows the impact culture has on people but also puts an emphasis

on its peculiarity Having the same idea of culture’s peculiarity, Newmark (1988) says that culture is “the ways of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language its means of expression" He also classifies culture into five groups:

(1) Ecology: plants, animals, wind, mountains, etc

(2) Culture material: food, clothes, transport

(3) Social culture: work and leisure

(4) Organizations, customs, ideas: religious, political, legal

(5) Gestures and habits

Nida (1964) claims that no translation can hope to eliminate all traces of cultural gaps It means that no matter how translators try to render the source text, a perfect equivalent will never be achieved because of cultural differences Thus, it is very important for translators to take cultural factors into consideration in their works

2.4.2 Culture-specific items

2.4.2.1 Definition

While Newmark defines cultural entities as “cultural words”, Baker employs

“culture-specific concepts” in order to refer to them Nevertheless, “culture-specific items” is the most widely-accepted term (Davis, 2003) Hence, the researcher decides

to use “culture-specific items” in this thesis

According to Baker (1992), “the source- language word can express a concept which is totally unknown in the target culture The concept in question may be abstract or concrete, it may relate to a religious belief, a social custom or even a type

of food Such concepts are often referred as “culture-specific

Because of culture-specific concepts being “totally unknown in the target culture”, translators obviously have difficulty in finding an equivalent for a source-language cultural word in the target language Thus, culture-specific items are a common type

of non-equivalence (Baker, 1992)

2.4.2.2 Types of culture – specific items

Aixela (1996) proposes two types of culture-specific items including proper names and common expression

(1)Proper names include both conventional names i.e names that do not have any meaning in themselves and name that are loaded with certain historical and cultural associations (Aixela, 1997)

(2)Common expressions cover the world of objects, institutions, habits and opinions restricted to each culture, which cannot be included in the field of proper names (Aixela, 1997)

Later, Newmark (1988) categorizes them into five divisions including ecology; culture material; social culture; organization, ideas and customs; gestures and habits His taxonomy of culture – specific items was applied in this thesis

2.4.3 Vietnamese folk games

2.4.3.1 Definition of Vietnamese folk games

Bruvand (1998) defines folk games as a form of structured play which has certain objectives as well as rules and generally requires no special equipment or specific playing area In Vietnam, folk games which are traditionally accompanied by chanting songs appeared and developed in the process of building up and protecting the country For many Vietnamese generations, folk games are an indispensable part in their spiritual life, connecting people with their hometown Folk games are highly entertaining and educational, helping strengthening health and developing mental power as well as training skillful behaviors They are closely tied to traditional customs consisting of festival rituals and leisure activities, contributing to preserving the national character

2.4.3.2 Culture – specific items related to Vietnamese folk games

Each Vietnamese folk game is a cultural product created by people living in the over 4000-year country Culture – specific items attached to these games comprises names of these games ( Ô ăn quan; Bịp mắt bắt dê ), tools ( niêu; thuyền; kiềng; cầu ), clothing ( áo the; khăn xếp), food ( xôi; chè ), work ( Hịch tướng sĩ; thầy mo ) as well

as organizations, customs, ideas ( giáp, sự trinh trắng; thờ cúng) In the thesis, they were classified into four different categories according to Newmark’s taxonomy

mentioned above Their translations were gathered to determine strategies employed

to convey such items

2.5 Related studies

Translating culture-specific items has long been a central issue attracting a lot of attention from linguistic researchers In Vietnam, some papers were conducted in an

attempt to find solutions to dealing problems arisen from culture translation

Vu (2011) did the paper “Procedures to translate names of famous places in Hanoi’s city centre into English” In this study, the main subjects are translations such as

“Temple for Literature” for “Văn Miếu”, “Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum” for “Lăng chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh”, “Hanoi Citadel” for “Thành cổ Hà nội” or “One Pillar Pagoda” for

“Chùa Một Cột” and the best procedure is couplets of naturalization and descriptive equivalent With the same concern, Pham (2011) focused on analyzing strategies to deal with non-equivalence in translating Vietnamese traditional costumes In her finding, she affirmed that paraphrase by using a related word, using a loan plus explanation and employing a more general word are most widely used by experienced translators Later, Ngo (2012) conducted the paper “Procedures and strategies in translation of culture-specific items” with hope of finding procedures and strategies to translate culture-specific items However, these works are on popular topics such as costumes or places and their results are not comprehensive enough to apply in other studies owing to data limitation

In attempt to facilitate people who are interested in Vietnamese folk games and desire to translate materials on the subject into English, the researcher addresses strategies applied to translate culture-specific words related to this topic collected from dependable data sources in order to increase accuracy Unlike the previous

studies, this thesis will try to provide clear explanation of culture-specific items in

Vietnamese for readers, helping them to have a two-side view on suggested translations

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the researcher presents methods and steps which she conducted to generate this thesis specifically It comprises three parts: Selection of subjects; Data collection instruments and procedures; Data analysis procedures

3.1 Selection of subjects

The subjects of this study are 136 cultural words related to typical Vietnamese folk games and their English equivalents from remarkable works on Vietnamese culture

136 is a suitable number to this paper’s scope

The main sources are the books by Huu Ngoc, an excellent Vietnamese linguist

Of them, “Lãng du trong văn hóa Việt Nam” and its translation “Wandering through Vietnamese Culture” were the most important documents Remarkably, its English translation is an encyclopedia of Vietnamese culture gained a lot of praises from local and international scholars and readers with Vietnamese gold prize 2006 and GADIF Prize 2008 In addition, three bilingual books of Vietnamese culture by Huu Ngoc and Lady Borton, namely “Tết Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn festival)”, “Tết Nguyên Đán (Vietnamese Lunar New Year)” and “Lễ Hội Mùa Xuân Ở Miền Bắc Việt Nam (Spring Festival in Northern Vietnam) were employed as useful materials as well Furthermore, “Dictionary for Vietnamese Traditional Culture” was utilized to look up Vietnamese culture-specific items which were not translated Owing to being widely-recognized, these works are apparently reliable information source for this study Moreover, the researcher gathered data from Vietnamese documents on folk games, such as “Trò chơi dân gian Việt Nam” by Vu Ngoc Khanh To guarantee accuracy of the results, the chosen materials were collected from National Library of Vietnam and official organizational websites on culture like www.vietnamtourism.com

3.2 Data collection instruments and procedures

In this paper, three major instruments for data collections were employed, including textual analysis, observation and interview

Textual analysis: After finding the necessary documents mentioned above, the

researcher read them twice For the first time, she got common knowledge of Vietnamese folk games and used the marker to highlight important information and special concepts, which helped to identify typical games studied in this paper The

criteria were their popularity and meaning When finishing choosing the games, she read these materials for the second time to collect culture-specific items and their translations She underlined these words and wrote them down to a notebook prepared beforehand according to their classification Some culture-specific terms left out in their translations were looked up in dependable dictionaries to provide more data for this research Later, all the data were analyzed to determine strategies applied to translate cultural words and the most common ones

Observation: In addition to reading available documents on Vietnamese folk

games, the researcher watched videos about this subject on the Internet and directly observed these games held in Lim and Phat Tich festivals to understand their features

as forms or procedures and social values, which also facilitated selecting suitable games based on the norms set up in advance During observation, she took notes of concepts and details that she didn’t know and understand for further study

Interview: Having primary findings, the researcher set up some general questions

on top factors which need considering when opting translation strategies and acceptability of these results To answer them, she carried out a semi-structured interview with a lecturer majoring in translation at University of Languages and International Studies The interviewee is not only an experienced translator but also a proficient scholar in this field He provided dependable information enough to answer all her unclear problems, so the researcher did not have another interviews to avoid confusions Three specific steps of this procedure are presented below

Step 1: Preparing for the interview included three small tasks, namely contacting

the interviewee, designing questions and preparing tools for this interview

 Contacting the interviewee: As soon as gaining initial results, the researcher called this lecturer to ask him for an interview and received his help At first, the interview was planned on March 26th, 2015 Nonetheless, it was held on April 6th,

2015 because of his business

 Designing interview questions: Based on unclear problems in this thesis, the researcher designed three main questions

- Which factors do translators have to consider when opting for translation

strategies?

- How can translators ensure accuracy and local colors when translating

culture specific items?

- Are the initial findings of this paper appropriate?

 Preparing interview tools: To enable information copy, the researcher used a smart phone with good recording ability to record this interview A small notebook and a pen were also utilized to note key information and arising problems

Step 2: Conducting the interview

The researcher conducted an interview with this lecturer on April 6th, 2015 The interview was carried out at his office in University of Languages and International Studies on April 6th, 2015 It was recorded in Vietnamese

Step 3: Analyzing the transcript of this interview

The researcher listened to this recording to type the transcript Later, qualitative analysis was used to gain necessary information Then, the data was compared with these primary results to draw out inferences about unclear issues in this paper

3.3 Data analysis procedures

Stage 1: Qualitative analysis

After finishing data classification, the researcher started analyzing translated versions of these cultural words to identify strategies applied to render them In the same original category, these items continued to be grouped based on translation strategies for easier observation The answer to research question 1 was based on these reflections

Stage 2: Quantitative analysis

Later, quantitative analysis was used to identify frequency of translation strategies The results were summarized and presented in a table and a pie chart The initial conclusions about which strategies were most applied to translate culture-specific terms related to Vietnamese folk games were referred from these logical statistics Finally, these findings were verified and modified according to the experienced interviewee’ suggestions