Procedures in translating vietnamese names of famous places in hanoi’s city center into english

It aims at analyzing the procedures applied in translating Vietnamese famous toponyms in Hanoi into English and giving some explanations for the use of these procedures.. In aspect of tr

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

University of Languages and international Studies English

CENTER INTO ENGLISH

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of bachelor of arts (TEFL)

Hanoi, May 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

University of Languages and international Studies ENGLISH

CENTER INTO ENGLISH

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of bachelor of arts (TEFL)

supervisor: NGUYỄN THÀNH VÂN

Hanoi, May 2011

I hereby state that I: Vũ Xuân Trang, K41_E20, 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

Vũ Xuân Trang

Date: May 20th, 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I am heartily thankful to my supervisor, Nguyễn Thành Vân for his suggestion of the research question, supervision, encouragement, and support from the beginning to the end That enables me to develop and complete the thesis

I owe my deepest gratitude to lecturers of fast track program as well as lecturers in Interpretation and Translation Division for their invaluable lessons during the time I have been in the university

I wish to thank all of the authors in the references whose works help me enormously in the completion of the thesis

I am truly indebted and thankful to my family and friends Without their support and care, this thesis would have been impossible to be conducted

ABSTRACT

On its way to bringing its image to the world and attracting more tourists, Vietnam has to complete innumerable work Among these work, translation in general and toponym translation in particular need to be given full attention because a name is always the same as a trademark of a place or even a country Despite its important role, toponym translation is not received worthy attention

The graduation paper is conducted to partly contribute to the fulfillment of this gap It aims at analyzing the procedures applied in translating Vietnamese famous toponyms in Hanoi into English and giving some explanations for the use of these procedures

Hanoi‟s well-known toponyms are collected from three sources: the entrance of the places, Vietnamese websites and foreign websites

Two types of names which have their own strategies of translation have been found For those which contain non proper names, the translation

procedures most applied are transposition and reduction and expansion The

names in the second type, which includes proper geographical elements, are

mostly naturalized and added classifiers

In aspect of translating cultural and historic factors of names, four

strategies, full translation, partial translation, nil translation and naturalization

plus descriptions are mostly applied to deal with them Evidence from the

research suggests that naturalization plus descriptions is the most effective translation strategies for translating cultural factors Meanwhile naturalization or

transference is normally applied for translating names that are hard to

understand

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

LIST OF APPENDICES viii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 2

1.4 Significance of the study 3

1.5 Methodology 3

1.6 Organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Translation 5

2.2 Translation procedures 6

2.3 Culture and Translation 10

2.3.1 Definition of culture 10

2.3.2 Some considerations when dealing with cultural factors 10

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 12

3.1 Samples 12

3.2 Instruments 12

3.3 Process 12

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 14

4.1 The procedures of translation for place names 14

4.1.1 Reasons and statistics for the first division 14

4.1.2 Procedures for the first group 17

4.1.3 Strategies for the second group 20

4.2 Cultural and historic factors inside the names and strategies to deal with them 23

4.2.1 Translatable factors 23

4.2.1.1 Translating Sino Vietnamese names 24

4.2.1.2 Translating Pure Vietnamese names 31

4.2.2 Hard – to - be translated factors 35

CHAPTER 5: CONCULSION 40

5.1 Summary 40

5.2 Limitations of the thesis 41

5.3 Suggestion for further studies 42

APPENDICES 43

REFERENCES 55

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Figure 8: The percentage of strategies applied in group 2 from some foreign

websites 22

Figure 9: The percentage of strategies applied in group 2 from some Vietnamese

websites 22

LIST OF APPENDICES

I Official source

Group 1: Including recognized words with classifiers or non proper names (all words appear in English dictionaries)………49 Group 2: Including proper geographical names……….49

Group 1: Including recognized words with classifiers or non proper names (all words appear in English dictionaries)………50 Group 2: Including proper geographical names……….52

Group 1: Including recognized words with classifiers or non proper names (all words appear in English dictionaries)……….56 Group 2: Including proper geographical names……… 68

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

SL: Source language

TL: Target Language

The foundation of Vietnam Tourism Company in 1960 marked the start

of Vietnam tourism industry Since 1990s the number of visitors coming to Vietnam has increased dramatically In 1993, the number was just over 500,000 and in 2005 it was about 3.5 million In 2007, tourism generates $3 billion in

revenue for Vietnam (Vietnam Tourism Statistics, n.d) From the figures above,

it can be said that Vietnam tourism industry is a profitable and potential sector as the country boasts a wide range of diverse and beautiful natural spots However,

to stimulate and fully exploit this profitable non-smoke industry, a lot of works remains to be fulfilled

Among these tasks, translation plays an important role The work of spreading the images of Vietnam must start with toponym translation because when talking about anything, its name must be introduced first Besides, toponym translation is so important It is the first impression on readership in the world and also the thing attracting them first The translated toponyms appeared

in every brochure, tourism website as well as some traffic signs However, toponym translation has not been given adequate treatment As a matter of fact, sometimes the name of one and the same place has up to three translations That really confuses the visitors For example,

1.2 Aims of the study

The graduation paper aims at analyzing the procedures applied in translating Vietnamese famous toponyms in Hanoi into English At the same times, the challenges of translating toponyms as well as the way that translators deal with them will be identified Specifically, the thesis is carried out to find answers for the following questions:

1 What are procedures applied in translating Vietnamese famous toponyms

in Hanoi into English?

2 What are the challenges when translating these toponyms?

3 How do translators deal with these challenges?

1.3 Scope of the study

Each toponym translation has its own challenges that need to be dealt with and many solutions were offered However, because of limited time and capacity, the thesis only focuses on collecting and analyzing translated names of famous tourist attractions in Hanoi‟s city center Moreover, though many obstacles concerned with name analysis such as translation equivalence or translation

methods, the thesis just pays attention to translation procedures which are

applied in those collected names

1.4 Significance of the study

Through the analysis and explanations of procedures applied in toponym translation, translation learners can understand more about procedures used in cultural translations and choose their best procedures to deal with similar toponym translations, especially with cultural and historical factors inside toponyms

1.5 Methodology

The paper will be conducted through analyzing Hanoi well-known toponyms which are collected from three sources The first source is the entrances of the places or the traffic direction boards in which translated names are written The second source is a number of Vietnamese tourist websites which advertise Hanoi attractions The third source is selected foreign websites such as lonelyplanet.com, travelerhubs.com

In the first source the names are collected by taking photos while in both Vietnamese and foreign tourist websites data are collected by searching

After collecting data, the author will categorize and analyze the procedures

applied for the translations of Hanoi toponyms

1.6 Organization of the study

The thesis includes five chapters

Chapter 1 Introduction provides the background, the research area, the research

aims as well as research questions, the methods and an overview for the rest of the thesis

Chapter 2 Literature Review introduces key theories and definition related to the

research area

Chapter 3 Methodology demonstrates methods applied in the research and states

the samples, instruments as well as approaches to conduct the thesis

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion presents findings of the thesis, comments on

the trends of translation procedures and provides some analysis and explanations

Chapter 5 Conclusion sums up the findings and states limitations of the thesis as

well as the suggestions for further research

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The thesis focuses on the analysis of procedures used in translating

place names in Hanoi Therefore, in this chapter definitions of

translation, procedures in translation will be provided

2.1 Translation

In general, translation can be understood as a process of rewriting texts from one language into other languages However, this concept does not convey fully the characteristics and features of translation Three definitions of translation are given as below for comparing and choosing the most appropriate definition for the research

According to Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (7th edition), translation is the process of changing written or spoken things into another language

Meanwhile, Peter Newmark (1988: 5) stated that translation is a meaning of a text which is presented in another language “in the way that the author intended the text”

Mildred L Larson (1998: 3) proved that translation is the transference of meaning of one language into another language The meaning is transferred and held constant while the forms will change

The similarity between definitions is that all of them include the transference or the representation of the meaning of a text from one language in another language In his definition, Newmark emphasized on the intention of the author

in source language while Larson believed that the accuracy of the meaning should be given due attention and cannot be changed

Among three stated definitions, the translation definition of Peter Newmark is probably the most suitable definition to the thesis In the data collected, many names are kept during the process of translation, i.e the meanings are not conveyed This fact cannot be explained by the definition of Larson because translation is not just about meaning transference Therefore, Newmark‟s definition is based on during the process of conducting the thesis

2.2 Translation procedures

According to Peter Newmark (1988: 81), while translation methods are applied for whole texts, translation procedures are used for translating smaller units such as sentences, phrases Therefore, translation procedures are employed

to analyze typonyms because most of them include only phrases or groups of words

The translation procedures as suggested by Peter Newmark (1988: 81- 93)

include nearly twenty different procedures, specifically transference,

naturalization, through translation, transposition, modulation, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent descriptive equivalent, synonym, recognized

paraphrases, couplets, notes However, only concepts of some procedures which

are used in the analysis will be provided

Transference

Transference can be understood as a kind of “loan word”, i.e no translation of the word is offered The procedure is often applied to translate brand names,

names of newspapers, toponyms For example,

o The New York Times

o Channel No 5

Naturalization is a succession of transference In this procedure, SL words will

be transferred and adapted to the TL with regard to pronunciation and morphology For example,

International organizations:

Scientific and Cultural Organization

Tổ chức Giáo dục, Khoa học và Văn hóa Liên Hiệp Quốc

o How beautiful the girl is: Con bé đó xinh quá

The third type of shift happens when literal translation is possible but does not seem natural

o The contract will be signed by the manager today: Ông q uản lý sẽ ký hợp

đồng hôm nay

The fourth type is the one in which a grammatical structure will replace a lacuna

o Lên xe hoa: To get married

Functional equivalent

This procedure can also be called the “deculturalising - cultural - word” procedure The name may reveal the characteristic of the procedure which is to translate a cultural word of SL into a non – cultural word of TL

(Though it should be more exactly translated as Temple of Literature and National University)

 Reduction or expansion

These imprecise procedures can be applied to translate poorly written texts

o Việt Nam có rất nhiều danh lam thắng cảnh đẹp: There are many beauty

spots in Vietnam

 Couplets

Couplet is the procedure in which two translation procedures are combined Similarly, triplets combine three procedures, quadruplets combine four

o What do you want for breakfast, hotdog or hamburger: Bữa sáng bạn

muốn ăn gì? Hotdog (bánh mì kẹp xúc xích) hay hamburger (bánh mì kẹp thịt)

2.3 Culture and Translation

Most of toponyms in Hanoi contain cultural and historical factors Some of them are translatable and some are not This will be discussed in later parts of the thesis

2.3.1 Definition of culture

Peter Newmark (1988) defined culture as the lifestyles and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community whose language is its own means of expression

2.3.2 Some considerations when dealing with cultural factors

Peter Newmark (1988: 94 - 103) listed numerous considerations to deal with cultural factors However, the thesis only mentions some considerations related

to translate cultural factors of typonyms

 Historical terms

In Hanoi famous typonyms, a number of historical words are found The names

of a temple can bear the name of a king or a deity A bridge or a square can be named after battlefields For examples,

o Hai Ba Trung Temple (worshipping Trung sisters)

o Ba Dinh Square (named after Ba Dinh battlefield)

According to Newmark (1988: 101), “In the case of historical institutional terms (…) the first principle is not to translate them, whether the translation makes sense (is 'transparent”) or not (is “opaque”), unless they have generally accepted translations.” In academic texts, these terms are often transferred, and if appropriate with a functional or descriptive terms

 Religious terms

Newmark (1988: 102) stated that “the language of the other world religions tends

to be transferred when it becomes of TL interest” and the commonest words being naturalized”

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, methods employed in the research will be outlined and demonstrated In more details, the participants, instruments and each phase will

be clearly provided

3.1 Samples

Three different sources are exploited for the answer of research questions The first source includes translated names which are engraved in the entrances of the places or on the traffic signs The 32 translations collected from the source are hereafter called the „official translations‟ The 81translations collected from the second source This source includes five Vietnamese tourist websites which are recommended in website of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism Only some tourist websites are chosen because a number of other Vietnamese websites offering translations for famous place names in Hanoi are blogs or forums which include a large number of subjective translations and most of them are personal descriptions of bloggers or members of forums The third source is five foreign websites such as lonelyplanet.com 62 translation versions are collected from this source Two later sources create the diversity of the translated versions and facilitate the analysis of the translation procedures

3.2 Instruments

Two instruments for collecting data were employed, namely taking photos

of translated names in these places and searching designations in both Vietnamese and foreign tourist websites

3.3 Process

The process to collect data includes the following phases

Phase one: From the website of Vietnam National Administration of

Tourism, some tourist websites were chosen After that the English names offered in these websites were collected At the same time, the translated names

in the articles introducing Hanoi from some foreign websites were gathered Finally, the photos of English names of some famous places were taken

Phase two: The procedures applied for the translations of Hanoi typonyms

were categorized, calculated and described through charts

Phase three: All information from the data collection were analyzed and

relevant explanations were provided

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

First in this chapter, statistics on translation procedures of the official names of places, on translation procedures in some Vietnamese websites and in some foreign websites are shown Then, some explanations for these ways of translation will be offered Finally, challenges that the names created during the process of translation and the way to deal with them will be researched and explained

4.1 The procedures of translation for place names

4.1.1 Reasons and statistics for the name category

Besides the official names, place names offered by some tourism websites are collected to compare with the official translation and supporting the work of explaining some possible reasons for this trend of translation As the names of places offered in the websites target foreigners, no Vietnamese version is provided Hence, the Vietnamese official names will be used as SL text In data collected, numerous translations are offered for one place That reveals the fact

of translation, no translated version is standard

For example, for the name “Bảo Tàng Lịch Sử Quân Sự Việt Nam”, four English versions are given

1 Army Museum

2 History of Military Museum

3 Military History museum

4 Military Museum

The name “Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám” has even more translated versions

1 Temple of Literature

2 Temple of Literature & National University

3 Quốc Tử Giám (or National University)

4 Quoc Tu Giam ("National University")

5 Quoc Tu Giam or School for the Sons of the Nation

6 Van Mieu, Hanoi

Except for some globally recognized translation such as Vietnam (Việt Nam) Hanoi (Hà Nội) Ho Chi Minh (Hồ Chí Minh), which are explained by some up – to – date dictionaries like Longman, most famous toponyms in Hanoi contain unrecognized proper names for example Bà Đá, Quán Sứ, Trấn Quốc Cultural factors of these proper names are under the question whether should be translated or not Therefore, translation names will be divided into two groups, one group, hereafter called the first group or group 1 including recognized words with classifiers or non proper names (all words appear in dictionaries), and the other, hereafter called the second group or group 2 including proper geographical names (which could not be found in some English dictionaries) The purpose of this division is to facilitate the latter explanations

The first group often includes all words appearing or being explained by English dictionary Therefore, it can be said that the trouble or challenge is hardly found in translating the first group In the contrary, translating the second

groups is much harder as these proper names not only contain historical and cultural elements but also not be explained by dictionaries

From the above category, the number of names belonging to each group will be calculated and revealed by pie charts

<Table 1>: The percentage of names belonging to each group from three sources

Table 1 reveals the percentages of names in each group which are describe through three pie charts In chart 1, the first group has a nearly equal number with the second groups Similarly to the first chart, data collected from foreign

websites contains equal number of names in each group Different from the official translation and from foreign websites, in some tourism websites Group 2 contains nearly half more than group 1 does

4.1.2 Procedures for the first group

The first group applies through translation, reduction and expansion,

transposition and functional equivalence combining with recognized names such

as Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi

To express the procedures applied in translated names, the data are calculated and shown through the table below

Chart 4: 1st group of official translation

Chart 4 reveals the procedures of the first group of official translation Through

translation is a mostly employed and accounts for nearly half of the translated

names Right after through translation, transposition makes up 40% of the total names Only one name is translated with functional equivalence and one with

reduction, each of them occupies 7%

Chart 5 expresses the procedures used in group 1 from data collected in foreign

websites Functional equivalent just occupies a minor potion, 3% of numbers of names Through translation is at the second place in comparison with the smallest figures, makes up for 17% Reduction and transposition accounts for an

In general, functional equivalence always accounts for the smallest percentage of every chart Meanwhile, Transposition is often at large number Different from

official translation, some Vietnamese and foreign websites own many translations which are omitted or added some words at the largest number of the totals Without these words, the names are still acknowledged and easier to remember as they are shorter Therefore, translated names in websites tend to

apply the reduction and expansion procedure Perhaps official translation focuses more on accuracy; hence official translation applies through translation much more than reduction and expansion

Through translation is a simple way to reveal the meaning of the name

accurately For example:

- The Hanoi Flag Tribune: Kỳ đài Hà Nội

- Vietnam Fine Arts museum: Bảo Tàng Mỹ Thuật Việt Nam

As you see above, the names are translated word by word without any difficulties

Sometimes in order to achieve the naturalness, the translated names have some changes in grammar in comparison with the originals For example,

- Vietnamese Women’s museum: Bảo tàng phụ nữ Việt Nam

- The Catholic Cathedral of Hanoi: Nhà thờ chính tòa Hà Nội

- Vietnam museum of ethnology: Bảo tàng dân tộc học Việt Nam

Most of the changes in TL names are to add the possessives

One official name translated with functional equivalent:

- Traditional House of the Hanoi ancient quarter: Ngôi nhà 87 Mã Mây

While the Vietnamese may be aware that the house at No 87 Ma May Street is

an ancient house, foreigners are not Hence, to help the foreigners acknowledge the place easily, the name is translated functionally because the house at 87 Ma May is equivalent with an old traditional house in Hanoi ancient quarter

Names translated with reduction and expansion procedure:

- Hanoi Opera House: Nhà Hát Lớn Hà Nội

In the TL version, the word “Lớn” in SL text is missing The SL name can be fully translated as “Hanoi Grand Opera House” Maybe the adjective “Lớn” is unnecessary here so it is omitted

- Army museum

In Hanoi, if the name Army museum is mentioned, Hanoians will think of

“Vietnam military history museum” Though the translated version “army museum” is not precise, it still conveys the function and attraction of this place

4.1.3 Strategies for the second group

Four strategies of translating names in the group 2 are found, which are

full translation, partial translation, nil translation and naturalization added descriptions When the names are fully translated, they are often translated with

through translation procedures For example,

- One–pillar Pagoda: Chùa Một Cột

- West Lake: Hồ Tây

Similarly, partly translated names often employ the couplet procedures including

naturalization and classifiers

The classifiers like pagoda, relic, and palace relic are added to clarify the names

of places to foreigners Naturalized proper names in these examples are Ba Da, Bac Mon and Kinh Thien

Not translated names can apply either transference or naturalization In the data collected, only naturalization is found

- Thap Rua

- Van Mieu, Hanoi

- Chua Mot Cot, Hanoi

The last strategy is to keep the proper names which have been naturalized and give descriptions This strategy is equivalent to a couplet procedure, naturalization combining with descriptive equivalence In the data collected, this strategy sometimes is equivalent to triplet procedure as it includes naturalization combining with descriptive equivalence and classifiers

1 Dac Nguyet (Moon Comtemplation) Pavilion: Lầu Đắc Nguyệt

2 Dai Nghien (Ink-slab): Đài Nghiên

3 Dinh Tran Ba (Pavilion against Waves): Đình Trấn Ba

In sum, the procedures applied are through translation, pure naturalization, naturalization combining with classifiers and naturalization with descriptive equivalences

To illustrate the quantity of names translated with each strategy, the table is drawn as below to shows detail percentage of each strategy

Chart 7: Group 2 from official

<Table 3>: Strategies applied in the second group of each source

Pie chart 7 reveals the procedures applied for group 2 in official translation The

most used strategy is partly translated which accounts for 43% of total translated names After that, naturalization combining with descriptive equivalence is employed to translate 38% of the collected names The names fully translated

make up only 19%

Chart 8 shows procedures of the second group in foreign websites 77% of

names are partly translated Names that are naturalized and added descriptions account for 13% Pure naturalization and fully translation ocuppy 3% and 7% of

the total respectively

The last chart displays the procedures applied for translating place names in

group 2 of Vietnamese websites Half of numbers of TL names are partly

translated while only 8% are just naturalized, not translated Nearly a quarter of

TL names are naturalized and provided descriptions The only left is fully

translation with 18% of the total number

As displayed in Table 3, partly translated names are the most common in three sources Following partial translation is naturalization and added descriptions From websites, both Vietnamese and foreigners, nil translation (pure naturalization) exits while from official it does not The reason is the name engraved in the entrance of every place always either at least gives a classifier or offers no translation

4.2 Cultural and historic factors inside the names and strategies to deal with them

In order to deal with cultural and historic factors of the names, translators mostly apply four ways to translate such as full translation, partial translation, nil translation and naturalization plus descriptions As names in group 2 contain cultural elements which create variety of difficulties, they will be closely examined in this part

4.2.1 Translatable factors

Most of these names are partly translated, though many of these partly translated names are translatable Among the names, many names contain Sino – Vietnamese terms while many are not Sino Vietnamese names and Pure Vietnamese names will be studied separately as these two types of vocabularies have their own rhetorical aspects