Baker’s idiom translation strategies in translating english idioms into vietnamese a case study of to kill a mockingbird

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of Languages and international Studies FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION Graduation paper Baker’s idiom translation strategi

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

University of Languages and international Studies

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

Graduation paper

Baker’s idiom translation strategies in

translating English idioms into

Vietnamese: a case study of

“TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

supervisor: MS NGO HA THU (MCS)

student: VUONG THU HANG year of enrolment: 2009

Hanoi, May 2013

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

CHIẾN LƯỢC DỊCH THÀNH NGỮ THEO BAKER ĐƯỢC ÁP DỤNG TRONG DỊCH ANH-VIỆT

CÁC THÀNH NGỮ TRONG TÁC PHẨM

“GIẾT CON CHIM NHẠI”

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: ThS Ngô Hà Thu Sinh viên: Vương Thu Hằng

Khoá: QH2009

HÀ NỘI – NĂM 2013

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ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I, Vuong Thu Hang, QH.2009.F.1.E.25, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the University 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

Vuong Thu Hang

25th April 2013

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the first place, I would like to express sincere thanks for the Translation and Interpreting Division, Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies for providing me with useful knowledge, instructions and materials about translation studies

Next, I feel profoundly grateful to my supervisor, Ms Ngo Ha Thu, who enthusiastically offered support and encouragement that helped me surmount difficulties Without her valuable contributive advice, this study could not have been completed

Besides, my heartfelt thanks are given to my classmates from class QH.2009.F.1.E.25 for always standing side by side with me and urged me on throughout the research period I genuinely appreciate the support and constant encouragement

Also, I am much obliged to other fellow friends of mine Thanks to their positive suggestions and encouragement, I could possibly gain great inspirations Their provision of rare and precious reference materials was real help to me

Ultimately, I am deeply indebted to my family for their wholehearted spiritual and financial support Thanks to them, I could maintain high motivation and study in favorable conditions

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ABSTRACT

Idioms, complicated linguistic units of a language, often created considerable difficulties for translators The study was undertaken to illuminate this linguistic phenomenon and to explore strategies that were implemented by Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh in their translation of English idioms in the

novel To Kill a Mockingbird The most and least frequently used translation

strategies were ascertained Whereby, suggestions on applicable strategies of translating idioms from English into Vietnamese were provided

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized in this case study The chosen subjects went through the research process including two major procedures, data collection and data analysis First, English idioms and Vietnamese translations were extracted and listed on a table In the procedure of analysis, English idioms‟ type was determined, and translation strategies were identified Next, the strategies were calculated The most and least frequently used ones could

be seen clearly through it

The findings of the study showed that idioms in the novel appear most commonly in the form of a verbal phrase, noun phrase and binomial Most importantly, the study pointed out that among five strategies comprising exact equivalence, reduction, paraphrase and literal, the third one was most preferred by the translators

The study includes a broad theoretical background that can be a good reference for anyone who is interested and for those who find that idioms and idiom translation are complicated and difficult It does not only imply translation strategies to cope with the problems related to idiom translation but also is a source

of inspirations for further research

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACCEPTANCE i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, AND ABBREVIATIONS vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

1.3 Significance of the study 3

1.4 Scope of the study 4

1.5 Organisation 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 English idioms 5

2.1.1 Concept of idiom 5

2.1.2 Classification 7

2.1.3 Characteristics 14

2.2 Translation 16

2.3 Idiom translation 17

2.3.1 Difficulties in translating idioms 17

2.3.2 Idiom translation strategies 19

2.3.3 Review of previous studies 21

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 23

3.1 Research subjects 23

3.2 Procedure of data collection 23

3.3 Procedure of data analysis 24

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CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 26

4.1 Findings 26

4.2 Implications 34

4.3 Application 36

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 38

5.1 Summary of findings 38

5.2 Limitations 39

5.3 Suggestions for further research 40

REFERENCES 41

APPENDIX 43

Table 4.1: Frequency and percentage of English-Vietnamese translation strategies

of idioms in “To kill a mockingbird”

Table 4.2: Examples of English idioms translated into Vietnamese with the strategy

of paraphrase by Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh

List of figures

Figure 2.1: Seidl and McMordie‟s classification of English idioms

Figure 2.2: Categories of binomial

Figure 2.3: Idioms originating from other languages

Figure 2.4: Translation strategies of idioms

Figure 4: Percentage of each strategy used in translation of idioms appearing in “To kill a mockingbird” from English into Vietnamese

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

In this first chapter, the research statement is made, and simultaneously the rationale for the study is clarified The objectives of finding out the idioms appearing in the research subject and analyzing the most and least frequently used idiom translation strategies are declared Furthermore, the research has great importance, which is proven fully Finally, the scope and the design of the study are shown

1.1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

In the present era of globalization and integration, translation has become increasingly significant in various areas in countries across the world because it is necessary for people to cross the language barrier in order to successfully communicate with one another That task of translation has never been easy due to many factors including complicated linguistic patterns among which are idioms, which are words or phrases whose meaning cannot be referred from their constituents Langlotz said: “Idioms are peculiar linguistic constructions that have raised many eyebrows in linguistics and often confuse newcomers to a language” (2006, p 1) Therefore, idioms and the translation strategies of them should be studied so that translators can produce a prime translation

It is exactly the case of English language, which contains thousands of idioms (Wright, 2002, p 3) Michael Swan (2005, p 232) says: “Idioms […] are common in all kinds of English, formal and informal, spoken and written.” It is claimed by O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) that it is necessary for one to be able to understand a variety of idioms if s/he wishes to read English materials such as newspapers and to comprehend shows and films on TV (p 6) They also emphasize that we “will see and hear idioms in all sorts of speaking and writing” and that

“idioms are also used in more formal contexts” (p 8) To correctly understand and render English, translators should never ignore idioms but pay attention to this area carefully, especially the techniques to deal with it

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However, it is not simple to tackle English idioms in translation To be able

to recognize and then to translate them are normally difficult to translators for their usually fixed form and their meaning which cannot be referred from the components of the whole idioms themselves This obstacle is more challenging to students majoring in translation due to the fact that they do not have many opportunities to translate, which leads to that they less regularly face idioms When encountering unfamiliar idioms, students may interpret them on their own view and translate them in their own way

Given that English idioms are important part of English language, and translators, especially students majoring in translation may face difficulties in idiom translation as well as that the researcher is personally interested in the field and would like to boost my translation skills, the researcher has decided to carry

out the research Baker’s Idiom Translation Strategies in Translating English

Idioms into Vietnamese: a Case Study of “To Kill a Mockingbird” focusing on

finding out the strategies used by the two translators, Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh, who translated the book into Vietnamese, when they deal with English idioms to contribute to eventually suggesting strategies to cope with the English-Vietnamese idiom translation for any translators and people in needs

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

Regarding the research objectives, this study has been set out to investigate what Baker‟s translation strategies of English idioms that were employed by the translators when translating the Pulitzer-winning book “To kill a mockingbird”, which is bound with idioms, so as to know which translation strategies were applied the most and least frequently Whether the motif of idiom translation strategies offered by Mona Baker (1992) work with the English-Vietnamese translation of idioms appearing in the novel is another objective of the research Whereby, suggestions on the strategies to translate English idioms into Vietnamese are offered

To accomplish the above aims, the study tried to address the following research questions:

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1 What are English idioms in the novel “To kill a mockingbird”?

2 What strategies have translators Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh adopted to translate English idioms in the book “To kill a mockingbird” into Vietnamese? Which one is the most and which one is least frequently used by the translators of the Vietnamese translation of

“To kill a mockingbird”?

3 To what extent are Baker‟s idiom translation strategies applicable in Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh‟s translation of English idioms in “To kill a mockingbird” into Vietnamese?

1.3 Significance of the study

In general, the research contributes to the translation studies with its implications of frequently-used translation strategies to resolve difficulties in English-Vietnamese translation of idioms Therefore, it would be of great usefulness for anyone who is engaged in this ground

In particular, it is students who are going to be translators or to do jobs involving translation in the future that will enjoy the practical benefits of the study

in the first place Being well-aware of the obstacles that can possibly be encountered during the process of translating English idioms into Vietnamese thanks to the study, students could overcome them more easily Furthermore, the research also provides them with handy suggestions on translation strategies that they can implement to surmount the difficulties

Next, teachers working in the field of translation can refer to what is studied

in the research to adjust their teaching programs to help students enhance their translation competence and whereby make the training more effective

Last but not least, the study is a fertile and reliable source of knowledge about translation of idioms for other researchers and anyone who would like to research more deeply into the problem and other related issues The research has a lot to be adopted, and even its limitations could be valuable implications and true inspirations for others to conduct their own studies on

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1.4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the field of idioms and their translation strategies based on the frame built up by Mona Baker (1992) Its major aims to discover the techniques that translators Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh used to tackle idioms in English-Vietnamese translation The results can be useful to overcome possible idiom translation difficulties encountered by translators, especially students lacking experience

The subjects that are used in the research are the whole book “To kill a mockingbird” and their Vietnamese version translated by Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh The idiom translation strategies applied in the translated version

by prestigious translators Pham Viem Phuong and Huynh Kim Oanh will be intensively considered to draw the conclusion on the most and least commonly used strategies

1.5 Organisation

The study is organized into 5 chapters as following:

Chapter 1 - Introduction consists of the statement of the research problem, the rationale of the study, the aims and objectives of the study, its significance and organisation

Chapter 2 - Literature review presents the theoretical background of the study, including the theory about definition, types and characteristics of English idioms and the translational theory which focuses on translation definition, idiom translation difficulties and strategies

Chapter 3 - Methodology shows and justifies the research methods, specifically research sampling, data collection and analysis procedures

Chapter 4 - Results and Discussion presents the research findings which respectively answer to the research questions Besides, the implications and the application of the findings are shown as well

Chapter 5 - Conclusion summarizes the key results of the study, points out its limitations and eventually offers suggestions for further research

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter offers key concepts and definitions that the study will use frequently The concepts of translation, idiom and idiom translation strategies according to Mona Baker‟s motif are stated clearly Besides, it reviews the previous research related to the current problem of the study

2.1 English idioms

2.1.1 Concept of idiom

The concept of English idioms has been defined by a wide variety of linguistic scholars Most of the concepts that have ever been offered share a common core idea that idioms are normally fixed in terms of its form and that their meaning cannot be drawn by combining the meaning of each constituent of the whole idioms

In detail, the very early view point has been given out by Baker (1992) She has pointed out that idioms do not have “flexibility of patterning and transparency

of meaning” and come to a conclusion that idioms “are frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and often carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components” (p 63) In addition, she has gone into detail about how inflexible idioms are According to her, it is impossible to change the word order of idioms What‟s more, it is unlikely to eliminate a word from an idiom or add one to it, and no word replacement is allowed Last but not least, the grammatical structures of idioms cannot be modified (p 63)

Several years later, some other scholars have framed the concept of idioms, which, in nature, made no difference According to Seidl and McMordie (1988),

“idioms are not only colloquial expressions, as many people believe They appear

in formal style and in slang, in poetry, in the language of Shakespeare and the Bible” (pp 12-13) They have defined an idiom as “a number of words which, when taken together, have a different meaning from the individual meanings of each word” (Seidl & McMordie, 1988, pp 12-13) It can be seen that the concept of idioms do not change much as time goes by

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Until the beginning of the 21st century, the concept of idioms has continued

to be discussed They has been considered as “a group of words which has a different meaning from the sum of its parts” (Cullen, Hands, McGovern & Wright,

2000, p iii) This definition seems to be simpler since it mentions nothing about idioms‟ formal fixedness always stated in the previous concepts

Recently, Swan (2005) has used the example of “break even” whose meaning is to “make neither a profit nor a loss” to illustrate the concept of idioms (p 231) He has elucidated that knowing the meaning of “break” and “even” is not sufficient to be able to understand the sense of the whole phrase, and then he has defined expressions like that as idioms (Swan, 2005, p 231) The way Swan has presented the concept of idioms resembles the way Cullen et al (2000) has done previously In other words, Swan (2005) has paid more attention to the semantic aspect of idioms rather than to their grammatical feature

The missing part about idioms in the concept offered by Swan (2005) as mentioned above has re-appeared in the one produced by Langlotz (2006) then He has defined idioms as “conventional multi-word units that are semantically opaque and structurally fixed” (Langlotz, 2006, p 4) At this point, semantic opaqueness means the difficulty that idioms can cause readers in understanding them However that the meaning of idioms cannot be referred from the sum of their words is not bold enough

Being able to avoid the limitations of lacking either the formal inflexibility

or semantic non-compositionality of idioms, the definition provided in the third edition of Cambridge Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2008) that an idiom is “a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own” seems to reflex more sufficient parts of the definition of idioms in comparison to the previous ones It also provides the instance of “To have bitten off more than you can chew", which is an idiom that means someone has strived to do something too difficult

Lately, among the popular “In Use” series, English Idioms in Use by O‟Dell

and McCarthy (2010) has discussed more deeply into the definition of idioms As

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stated by O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010), idioms should be considered as linguistic units and consequently should be interpreted as units (p 6) The scholars have provided the definition of idioms which are “fixed combination of words whose meaning is often difficult to guess from the meaning of each individual word” (p 6) Furthermore, they have especially emphasized that “the words and word order

of idioms are usually fixed, and we cannot change them in anyway” (O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 6) The definition adequately states and highlights different aspects of idioms It concludes the formal fixedness of idioms, the non-compositionality of idioms‟ meaning and also expresses the opaqueness of idioms‟ meaning

In all, the linguistic phenomenon called idioms has captured the interest of various researchers up to now After the period of changing in its definition, an idiom can be understood basically as a linguistic unit with opaque meaning that cannot be guessed from its constituents but just from itself as a whole and with strict form

2.1.2 Classification

Andreas Langlotz (2006) has said: “The colourful linguistic spectrum of expressions called „idioms‟ directly reflects the considerable difficulties linguists face in finding an appropriate definition and classification of these linguistic phenomenon” (p 2) Building up, either simplifying or enriching, the definition of idioms is a process that has been taking place for ages, so is their classification

Concerning English idioms, there are two aspects commonly considered as main criteria to classify them: form and meaning On those bases, Seidl and McMordie (1988) have recognized three different types of idioms as follows:

Idioms having irregular form with clear meaning

Such idioms are not grammatically proper; however, their individual words are easy to understand in the semantic term Some examples are “to give someone

to understand, to do someone proud, to do the dirty on someone” (Seidl & McMordie, 1988, p 13) and so on

Idioms having regular form with unclear meaning

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As for this group of idioms, they have a correct grammatical structure Nevertheless, there is likely no way to be able to decipher their meaning Those simple-looking idioms are actually puzzling For example, “John brought the house down during his performance” actually means that John made the audience laugh excitedly during his performance The meaning of the idiom “to bring the house down” turns out to be unrelated to the sense that can be obtained by combing the meaning of the constituents Despite the unpredictable meaning, the form of the idiom appears to be plain with familiar parts in it The two researchers have also discovered that the majority of English idioms join this group (Seidl & McMordie,

1988, p 13)

Idioms having irregular form with unclear meaning

The last category of idioms according to Seidl and McMordie‟s classification of idioms (1988) comprises idioms that are unusual and incorrect in terms of both their form and meaning Seidl and McMordie (1988) have taken the idiom “go great guns” as an instance for this group (p 13)

Besides, in the work “English idioms” (1988), Seidl and McMordie have organized idioms into separate chapters, through which another way in which they have clustered English idioms is shown Details can be seen clearly on the following figure:

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Figure 2.1: Seidl and McMordie’s classification of English idioms

Approximately two decades later, also concerning about the issue of classification of English idioms, O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) have categorized English idioms into the main groups as follows:

Verb + Object/Complement (and/or Adverbial)

Example: “Tim took a shine to [immediately linked] his teacher.” (O‟Dell &

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Example: “The band‟s number one hit was just like a flash in the pan

[Something that happens only once].” (O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 6)

Similes

Similes are explicit comparison, which means they always contain comparing words such as “as” and “like” It is recommended to learn similes as whole units like the way idioms in general should be leant It is due to that the constituents of similes are unlikely to be changed as usual If it is possible, the meaning of the similes often alters accordingly (O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 22) Example:

My mouth was as dry as a bone (extremely dry or thirsty)

His lecture was as dry as dust (extremely boring)

(O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 22)

Binomials

O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) have defined this type of idiom as units comprising two words that are joined by a conjunction, normally “and” One thing should be noted is that the two words are normally in the fixed order (p 24) Binomials are sorted out into sub-groups as follows:

Example: I‟ve looked here, there and everywhere for my glasses but can‟t find

them (everywhere) (p.24)

Proverbs

Proverbs have been considered as type of idioms by O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) They have been defined as short sentences, which aim to give advice or warnings based on the experiences gained by the majority of people, and they can

be used to express either positive or negative situations

Examples:

Positive: Where there is a will, there is a way

Negative: All’s fair in love and war!

(O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 26)

Euphemisms

This type of idioms is used to avoid using offensive or unpleasant expressions

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Examples:

We‟ll all be six feet under (die)

I have got a bun in the oven (pregnant)

(O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 28)

Cliches and fixed statements

O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) have termed a cliché as a comment so frequently used

in daily situations that they become familiar but not original (p 30)

Examples:

Get your skates on! (Hurry up)

So far, so good (Things are going well up to this point.)

Give me a break! (Stop criticizing me!)

(O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p 30)

Other languages

In English, there are some words that do not originate from English itself but are borrowings from other foreign languages, mainly from French and Latin languages The two researchers group these borrowings into a category of idioms

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Figure 2.3: Idioms originating from other languages

It can be seen that Seidl and McMordie‟s first major classification of English idioms (1988) has been established based on the two primary criteria, which are English idioms‟ form and meaning However, when centering on a different property of idioms which is their composition or their constituents to be more exact, they have discovered another way to organize idioms As a result of this approach to explore idioms, the latter classification system has been produced Idioms are categorized into more groups as can be seen above In nature, this classification resembles the way O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) have sorted idioms out to some extent It is factual that the categories of idioms offered by Seidl and McMordie (1988) are included in the classification of Seidl and McCarthy (2010)

In detail, the groups of idioms with nouns and adjectives, idiomatic pairs, idioms with prepositions, verbal idioms and idioms with comparison in Seidl and

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McMordie‟s categorization (1988) respectively coincide with the groups of compound or noun phrase, binomials, prepositional phrase, idioms containing a verb followed by an object and similes in O‟Dell and McCarthy‟s grouping (2010) O‟Dell and McCarthy (2010) have taken into account of the origin, the length, the aim, and the usage frequency of idioms when organizing English idioms Accordingly, the others categories such as other languages, proverbs, euphemisms and clichés have been set up Therefore, their classification system is more detailed

2.1.3 Characteristics

Looking at English idioms from different perspectives, researchers have devised a number of ways to name the typical characteristics of idioms even though

in the essence they represent identical properties Each of a “pure idiom”, according

to Moon (1988), has two prominent properties, which are formal fixedness and semantic opaqueness (p 3) She has explained in other words that almost all English idioms‟ grammatical structure is static and the meaning of complete idioms

is normally metaphorical and cannot be inferred from the combination of the meaning of each word contained in them (p 3)

Meanwhile, Gill Phillip (2007) has named the features of idioms as compositionality which is equivalent to the above quality of formal fixedness, and semantic unmotivatedness which tallies with the quality of semantic opaqueness

non-He has made it clear that “an idiom is not built up word by word, according to the grammar of the language, but […] is learned, stored and recycled as a single chunk” (p 1)

Langlotz (2006) has researched the features of idioms and come up with their four characteristics, namely institutionalization, compositeness, frozenness and non-compositionality Institutionalization represents the “degree of conventionalization or familiarity” of idioms while compositeness shows that they are made up from different constituents (Langlotz, 2006, p 3) As for the third property, frozenness indicates their restrictedness in syntactic and lexical variability Finally, non-compositionality means that their meaning is figurative, or their meaning cannot be derived from their constituent parts in other words It can

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be seen that Langlotz has distinguished more sharply the attributes of idioms in comparison to Moon (1988) and Phillip (2007) Both Moon (1988) and Pillip (2007) have combined the features of compositeness and non-compositionality into the semantic opaqueness or semantic unmotivatedness of idioms The institutionalization of idioms has not been paid attention to by them

Besides, Khosravi and Khatib (2012) have done research on idiom translation strategies from English into Persian In their research, a list of English idioms‟ characteristics collected and synthesized from many idiom-related materials has been provided It examines the properties of idioms on six scales as follows (p 1855):

Lexical and syntactic flexibility degree

Most idioms are lexically fixed or nonproductive Words appearing in idioms cannot be substituted by another lexical item, and the syntax of idioms cannot be varied in anyway

Level of transparency

The level of transparency means the degree of the closeness between the literal meaning and the metaphoric or symbolic meaning of idioms Normally, the nonliteral meaning of idioms cannot be inferred from the literal one

Idiom familiarity

This property refers to the occurrence frequency of an idiom in a language Normally the idioms that regularly transpire become more familiar As a result, it is easier to decipher their meaning than the peculiar idioms that do not often occur

After that, according to Dubois (1973 – Cited in Le & Nguyen, 2008, p 3), translation was defined as “the expression in another language (or target language)

of what has been expressed in another (source language), preserving semantic and stylistic equivalence”, which means that translation has to maintain the precise meaning and the stylistic beauty of the original translation unit

Larson, as cited in Le & Nguyen (2008, p 4), also provided a definition of translation which contained three distinguish steps of learning every factors of the

SL text, getting its meaning then and reconstructing it using the TL words suitable

to the TL cultural context with the meaning being preserved In the essence, Larson‟s definition of translation resembles Dubois‟s one at the point that both of the definitions emphasize meaning maintenance Nonetheless, Duboi (1973) has offered a SL-oriented translation approach whilst Larson has paid a particular regard on the naturalness of translation, or Larson‟s approach is more TL-oriented

Also deliberating on translation, Munday (2001) has defined the term as either “the general subject field, the product (the text that has been translated) or the process (the act of producing the translation, otherwise known as translating)” (pp 4-5) He has not forgotten to clarify the concept of translation process, which engages the translator in “changing an original written text in the original verbal language into a written text in a different verbal language” (p 5) Munday‟s

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approach to exploring the concept “translation” focuses more on the symbolization

of the concept and less on the requirements laid down for translation in comparison with the above definitions of translation

Overall, there have been a myriad number of definitions of translation, and each definition touches on different issues in translation The common thing of them lies at the point that the meaning of the SL translation unit should be preserve

as precisely as possible Besides, there have been many doubts about issues such as whether translation should be SL-oriented or TL-oriented, whether the translator‟s personal style should be visible or not and so forth Despite conflicting ideas over those problems, it is indisputable that the efforts to find equivalent in any way have been constantly made in translation

2.3 Idiom translation

2.3.1 Difficulties in translating idioms

Idioms have never stopped puzzling translators With their own properties, they pose considerable challenges for translators who need to identify, interpret and ultimately translate them properly

Wright (2002) has raised a question on whether idioms could be translated

or not, and he has also given out the answer which is simply that it is just impossible In his viewpoint, “sometimes you can translate an idiom from one language to another, but most often this is not possible” (p 10) He has also added that translators should pay attention when translating idioms so that they never translate them word for word, but they have to translate the whole idioms He has reasoned that there may be no equivalent idioms in the target language, which results in that translators will have to explain the meaning of the source language idioms It is on account of cultural discrepancy according to him

Standing on the same ground, Swan (2005) has said: “Idioms are usually special to one language and cannot be translated word for word” (p 231) An idiom, a unique linguistic phenomenon, is a linguistic unit itself though it is formed

by the combination of different words Consequently, the meaning of an idiom

as articles, prepositions and word order when dealing with idioms in their viewpoint They have asserted that “translating idioms word for word can cause problems” (O‟Dell & McCarthy, 2010, p.14) It is the same conclusion as the one Swan has come to before

While the above justifications for difficulties with idioms appear to mainly concern about the linguistic aspects related to idioms Baker (1992) has expressed her clarification of the matter in question in the way of regarding more on translation Idioms with their major characteristics of non-compositionality and semantic opaqueness pose a myriad of obstacles for translators Prior to translating them, translators have to manage to recognize them and comprehend them soundly After that, many barriers appear to challenge translators to complete the task of translating idioms

Four hindrances to translators in performing their task of translating idioms have been indicated as follows:

(a) An idiom or fixed expression may have no equivalent in the TL

(b) An idiom or fixed expression may have a similar counterpart in the TL, but its context of use may be different; the two expressions may have different connotations or they may not be pragmatically transferable

(c) An idiom may be used in the ST in both its literal and idiomatic senses at the same time Unless the TL idiom corresponds to the SL idiom both in form and in meaning, the play on idiom cannot be successfully reproduced in the TT

(d) The very convention of using idioms in written discourse, the contexts in which they can be used and their frequency of use may be different in the source and target languages

(Baker, 1992, pp 68-71)

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Not just basically claiming that it is unlikely to translate idioms word for word, Baker (1992) has exposed possible challenges translators may face in the process of translating idioms

2.3.2 Idiom translation strategies

As clearly pointed out above, translation of idioms becomes difficult because of some affecting drivers First and foremost, it is due to the characteristics

of idioms themselves as their meaning cannot be inferred from the constituents building them; therefore, they can mislead translators Besides, to translate idioms, cultural discrepancy causing the lack of linguistic equivalents in the target language and the disparity in pragmatic functions between the idioms and their equivalent in the target language if available should be taken into account as well Under the circumstance, it can be seen that suitable translation strategies are necessary to manage to translate idioms

Newmark (1998) has ever offered suggestions of possible ways to translate idioms as below:

 Finding another metaphor

 Reducing to sense

 Translating occasionally literally

Besides, Baker (1992) has also developed a system of translation strategies

of idioms According to Mona Baker (1992), translating idioms does not merely mean striving to find out a similar idiomatic equivalent in the TL, but this process requires translators to take many other factors into consideration (pp 71-78) For example, the matter of register and readership should be taken into account, whether the equivalent idiomatic expressions are suitable for the target language readers or not Furthermore, the constituents of idioms need paying attention to as well There may be certain links between one or more parts of idioms with the other part of the whole source text, and those links may be broken if the translators cannot detect and render them appropriately Being well-aware of those factors that cause difficulties for translators, Mona Baker has offered different strategies to