An investigation in translating english passive constructions into vietnamese and teaching implications a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts

2.2.1 English Passive verb forms……… 2.2.2 The use of English passive……… 2.3 Research on Vietnamese passive constructions……… 2.4 Research on translating English passive constructions into

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES

AN INVESTIGATION IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS INTO

VIETNAMESE AND TEACHING

IMPLICATIONS

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR DEGREE

OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL)

Submitted by NGUYỄN THỊ MỸ HÀ

Supervisor

Associate Professor - Dr ĐINH ĐIỀN

HO CHI MINH CITY – 2010

In the term of the statements requirements for thesis in Master’s Programs issued

by the Higher Degree Committee This thesis has not been submitted for the award

of any degree or diploma in any other institution

Ho Chi Minh City, 2010

Nguyễn Thị Mỹ Hà

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Associate Professor - Dr Đinh Điền, Lecturer of the Department of Computing Science – HCMC University of Natural Sciences His helpful guidance, suggestions, comments and support is indispensable for the accomplishment of this study

I would like to send my special thanks to MA Nguyễn Đình Huy, who is a lecturer of English at Binh Duong University and also working part-time as a professional translator and interpreter for his valuable sharing of his translating experience

I am also grateful to Mai Tran Thuc Trinh, an IT specialist of Dan Xuan Education communication equipment joint-stock company, for supporting the author to design two computer programs to elicit the corpus for my research

I am really thankful to all my colleagues for providing their responses to my questionnaire and taking part in my interviews

Last but not least, I would like to send my thanks to my family, especially

my mother, my mother-in-law and my husband, who with care and love encourage

me to follow through with the work

ABSTRACT

The main focus of the thesis is to obtain a corpus of English passive constructions and their Vietnamese translations from professional and reliable sources to figure out how English passive constructions would be most desirably and appropriately rendered into Vietnamese The ultimate aim is to try to make suggestions as to what to focus on when teaching translating English passive structures into Vietnamese in classrooms so as to be both faithful to the message and as natural-sounding as possible

The research is conducted using the qualitative and quantitative methods The author uses computer programs to get the corpus sample including 1642 English passive sentences and Vienamese translations assumed representative enough to investigate how English passive are most frequently translated into Vietnamese In this study, these English passive sentences with agents and ones without agents, causative forms are focused to investigate

Moreover, in order to get an insight into what stakeholders – students and teachers of translation – think of and deal with translating English passive structures, two questionnaires are designed and issued to 10 English-majored classes and 9 teachers who are teaching English Also, the author thinks it advisable

to interview 4 teachers currently in charge of teaching translation at various schools

in Ho Chi Minh City because their comments can undoubtedly reflect best how English passive constructions are handled in translation

Finally, the paper hopes to serve as a reference work for other related studies and makes recommendations for translating English passive structures into Vietnamese both in classrooms and in the larger society as well

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Certificate of originality………

Acknowledgements………

Abstract………

Table of contents………

List of figures ………

List of abbreviation ………

Retention and use of the thesis………

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………

1.1 Background and rationale of the study………

1.2 Significance of the study………

1.3 Purpose of the study………

1.4 Limitations of the study………

1.5 Organization of the remainder of the study………

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW………

2.1 Translation………

2.1.1 Definition and research on translation………

2.1.2 Translation theory and methodology………

2.2 English passive constructions………

2.2.1 English Passive verb forms………

2.2.2 The use of English passive………

2.3 Research on Vietnamese passive constructions………

2.4 Research on translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese………

2.5 Corpus, corpus linguistics, corpus-based research and applications 2.5.1 Corpus………

2.5.2 Corpus linguistics………

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iv viii

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2.5.3 Corpus-based approach ………

2.5.4 Corpus in cross-linguistics research and applications……

2.6 A view of teaching translation………

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ………

3.1 Research questions………

3.2 Research design………

3.2.1 Subjects………

3.2.2 Instruments………

3.2.2.1 The computer program of scanning for EPCs and corresponding Vietnamese sentences………

3.2.2.2 The computer program of joining English files and Vietnamese files………

3.2.2.3 Questionnaires for students………

3.2.2.4 Questionnaire for teachers………

3.2.2.5 Interviews………

3.2.3 Materials………

3.2.4 Data collection procedure………

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALASIS AND FINDINGS………

4.1 Results and Discussion………

4.1.1 The result from the questionnaire for students about the importance and necessity of teaching grammar in general, English passive constructions in particular in translation classes ………

4.1.2 Corpus of English passive Constructions and Vietnamese translation………

4.1.3 The result from the questionnaire for teachers and students about the perception and assessment of corpus of translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese………

4.1.4 The result from teachers’ interviews in teaching translation and accessing their students………

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4.2 Translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese in the

corpus of the study… ………

4.2.1 English passive sentence with agent………

4.2.1.1 Agents of EPCs are themes in Vietnamese sentences………

4.2.1.2 Agents of EPCs are rhemes in Vietnamese sentences………

4.2.2 English passive sentences without agent………

4.2.2.1 Subjects of EPCs are themes in Vietnamese sentence………

4.2.2.2 Subjects of EPCs are rhemes in Vietnamese sentence………

4.3 Passive with have and get ………

4.4 Teaching implications………

CHAPTER 5: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS ………

5.1 Suggestions………

5.1.1Suggestions for further research………

5.1.2 Suggestion for tasks of teaching………

5.2 Conclusions………

BIBLIOGRAPHY………

APPENDICES………

Appendix 1………

Appendix 2………

Appendix 3………

Appendix 4………

Appendix 5………

Appendix 6………

58 58 58 64 69 69 72 74 76 78 78 78 79 80 82 89 89 92 99 106 107 111 Appendix 7……… 121

Appendix 8……… 124

Appendix 9……… 134

LIST OF FIGURES

Page Figure 1 Students’ background information (for questionnaire 1)

Figure 2 Teachers’ background information (for teachers’ questionnaire)

Figure 3 Students’ background information (for questionnaire 2)

Figure 4 Teachers’ background information (in teachers’ interview)

Figure 5 Students’ self-assessment of translation

Figure 6 Importance of EPCs in teaching and learning EG

Figure 7 Points of difficulties as translating EPCs into Vietnamese

Figure 8 Percentage of the difficulty as translating EPCs into Vietnamese

Figure 9 Ways for students’ consulting as having problems in translating

Figure 10 Percentage of students’ using EVGB

Figure 11 Percentage of using English and Vietnamese in teaching English

grammar at high schools

Figure 12 Expectation from translation teachers

Figure 13 Necessity of revising ECs in general, EPCs in particular

Figure 14 Number of the English passive sentences in the corpus of the study

Figure 15 Frequency of using bị, được as translating EPCs into Vietnamese

Figure 16 Frequency of changing EPCs into Active as translating into

Vietnamese

Figure 17 Frequency of English passive sentences with agent

Figure 18 Translation ways of EPCs with agent

Figure 19 Frequency of the selected verbs from the corpus of this study

Figure 20 Teachers’ assessment and perception of the selected EPCs and

corresponding Vietnamese sentences

Figure 21 Students’ assessment and perception of the selected EPCs and

corresponding Vietnamese sentences

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EG = English Grammar

EPC = English passive construction

EPCs = English passive constructions

EVC = English – Vietnamese corpus

EVD = English – Vietnamese dictionary

EVGB = English – Vietnamese Grammar Book VED = Vietnamese – English dictionary

VPC = Vietnamese passive construction

VPCs = Vietnamese passive constructions

EVGB = English – Vietnamese Grammar Book DTS = Descriptive translation studies

RETENTION AND USE OF THESES

I hereby state that I, Nguyễn Thị Mỹ Hà, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) accepted the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited

in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan

or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, 2010

Signature………

Nguyễn Thị Mỹ Hà

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This study uses the computer program designed for scanning texts to get corpus which will then be analyzed to investigate the translation of English passive constructions (EPCs) into Vietnamese It hopes to make some contribution to the practice of teaching English translation at colleges and universities as well as EPCs

as a point of grammar in classrooms This chapter provides the background and rationale, significance, limitations of the study and gives an overview of all the chapters

1.1 Background and rationale of the study

Firstly, translation is an activity which has a connection with two languages

or more This activity helps enhance relationship and understanding of human beings in communication and so it has witnessed a rapid growth, “this growth has been accompanied by diverse forms of translation research and commentary, some oriented toward pedagogy” (Venuti, 2000) Moreover, it is related to linguistic fields such as semantics, pragmatics and has link with cultural, economic, and political aspects Therefore, a lot of studies and materials of translation have been done It is easy to find many published books on the theory of translation, which help translators or students have good knowledge about how to produce good renderings With regard to translating, there are also researches and books relevant

to methodologies for discussing These two languages are very different from each other: English is an inflectional language which has words changing form according to grammatical functions, but Vietnamese is an analytic (or isolating) language which lacks morphological markings of case, gender, number, and tense (and, as a result, has no infinite/ nonfinite distinction) Hence, problems arise in translating English into Vietnamese and vice versa Translating English passive

constructions into Vietnamese is a case in point In addition, not much research has been conducted in this area

Secondly, it is still arguable whether Vietnamese passive constructions exist

or not Vietnamese passive constructions, if any, are few and far between, whilst English ones are much more frequent, especially in writing as well as in formal ways of communication The result is that it is awkward to translate the constructions into Vietnamese

In the present context of Vietnam, where translators are much sought after, and with the increased popularity of English, schools are resorting to translation in their English teaching, it is worth giving some thought to aspects of English-Vietnamese translation

Also, one-to-one translation is not acceptable because grammatical structures of source language are not correlative with those of target language Such translation cannot convey adequate messages of the sentences and even leads to be misunderstood Jeremy Munday, who is the most famous of all translators, according to Munday, disparaged the word-for-word approach and states that it produced an absurd translation, cloaking the sense of the original (Munday, 2001:20) In addition, this word-for-word method proved to be unsuccessful and had to be revised using the second, sense for sense method Therefore, to help students make their translation accurate and natural, teachers and researchers have tried to do a lot of studies on translation as well as comparing and contrasting English and Vietnamese At present, there are some research papers on translation

of English constructions into Vietnamese in University, for example, “An analysis

of errors in English-Vietnamese translation of modality “Should” made by English majors at the HCM University of Social Sciences and Humanities: Problems and Solutions” (Lê Công Thiện, 2005)“Existential sentences in English and in Vietnamese” (Hồ Thị Nguyệt Thanh, 2006), “A contrastive analysis between English-Vietnamese nominal groups and some suggestions to teach Vietnamese-English nominal group translation” (Võ Hồng Nhật, 2006), “Some suggestions for

the translation of the dummy-subject “It” into Vietnamese from the view of functional grammar” (Trần Ngọc Mai, 2006)

Moreover, English-Vietnamese translation is easily found on neon signs, films and so on Some of the translated constructions are wrong and unsatisfactory, which loses reader’s or listener’s attention and wastes a lot of money Many films using English are advertised to attract viewers but wrong and unsatisfactory translation causes viewers confused and maybe bored and loses them Therefore, English-Vietnamese translation research is essential to help the situation better

Last but not least, the appearance of studies of translation is also necessary

to translator and trainer these days The more studies are conducted, the more discoveries are done This brings new knowledge to human being

1.2 Significance of the study

Teaching constructions is not only teaching the form but also the meaning beneath the form Therefore, this study contributes partly in the corpus of the English passive constructions and correlative translation into English

Furthermore, translation and teaching and learning translation is complicated Robinson states that “Translation is intelligent activity involving complex processes of conscious and unconscious learning, we all learn in different ways, and institutional learning should therefore be as flexible and as complex and rich as possible, so as to activate the channels through which each student learns best” (Robinson, 1997:49) It means the learner must constantly face and solve new problems in conscious analytical ways Therefore, to translate English passive constructions into Vietnamese, it is crucial to accumulate time and good experience for listing, analyzing and generalizing the methods of translating and teaching constructions In this study, the author attempts to contribute in listing, describing, analyzing, generalizing the English passive constructions and the translation of the construction into Vietnamese, and suggesting some translation tasks of practicing translating English passive sentences into Vietnamese

1.3 Purposes of the study

The goal of this study is to discover a new way of investigating the translation of EPCs into Vietnamese which is conducted following corpus-based approach Moreover, it is to provide the collection of kinds of English passive construction and to correlatively translate into Vietnamese so that it can partly contribute into the study of translation of EPCs into Vietnamese Furthermore, it aims to provide corpus in teaching and learning English translation into Vietnamese and teaching EPCs in classrooms

1.4 Limitations of the study

First, translating English passive constructions much depends on contexts Therefore, one English passive sentence can be translated into many Vietnamese sentences in different contexts This study only tries to investigate some ways of translating EPCs into Vietnamese based the corpus collected from some resources including the bilingual corpus of the Japanese project of machine translation,

“Harry Porter and Half-blood Prince” the modern English novel written by Joanne Kathleen Rowling and translated by Ly Lan & Hương Lan, “Wuthering Heights” The classic English novel written by Emily Brontë and translated by Duong Tuong and two text books of practicing translation translated by Nguyen Thanh Yen

Second, samples of this study are taken from literary works Further research, for the sake of generalization of possibilities for renderings of passive constructions, needs to encompass other types of texts, e.g journalist articles, legal documents

Finally, this study does not discriminate levels of formality in choices of passive or active constructions, while in reality there may be differences in how passive or active voice affects formality between English and Vietnamese

1.5 Organization of the remainder of the study

Chapter 2 presents a review of the literature and research relevant to this study – of (1) translation, (2) English passive constructions, (3) research on Vietnamese constructions, (4) research on translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese, (4) corpus, corpus linguistics, corpus-based research and application (5) a view of teaching translation

Chapter 3 describes the research design and methodology

Chapter 4 analyzes and discusses the research findings

Chapter 5 offers a summary and conclusions of the study with suggestions for tasks of practicing English passive translation into Vietnamese

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter, chapter two is going to present the theoretical framework to the study including the previous researchers’ various viewpoints as well as the author’s viewpoints on the following aspects: (1) translation, (2) English passive constructions, (3) research on Vietnamese constructions, (4) research on translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese, (4) corpus, corpus linguistics, corpus-based research and application (5) a view of teaching translation

2.1 Translation

2.1.1 Definition of translation and research on translation

Translation has been defined in various ways Translation is most simply understood as action of translating from one language to another language

In fact, translation is “the transmittal of written text from one language into

another Although the terms translation and interpretation are often used

interchangeably, by strict definition, translation Refers to the written language, and interpretation to the spoken word Translation is the action of interpretation of the meaning of a text, and subsequent production of an equivalent text, also called a translation, that communicates the same message in another language The text to

be translated is called the source text, and the language it is to be translated into is called the target language; the final product is sometimes called the "target text."” (Retrieved from

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/106777/languages/what_is_translation.html)

Another definition of “translation” from Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics sees translation as “the process of changing speech or writing from one language (the SOURCE LANGUAGE) into another (the TARGET LANGUAGE), or the target-language version that results from this process A translation which reproduces the general meaning and intention of the

original but which does not closely follow the grammar, style, or organization of it

is known as a free translation A translation which approximates to a word representation of the original is known as a literal translation.” (Richards, Platt, J & Platt, H., 1992:389)

word-for-Next, according to Newmark, translation is a craft consisting in the attempt

to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language (Newmark, 1982:7)

In addition, Jiři Levý states that “from the teleological point of view, translation is a PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION: the objective of translating is

to impart the knowledge of the original to the foreign reader From the point of view of the working situation of the translator at any moment of his work (that is from the pragmatic point of view), translating is a DECISION PROCESS: a series

of a certain number of consecutive situations – moves, as in a game – situations imposing on the translator the necessity of choosing among a certain (and very often exactly definable) number of alternatives.” (Cited in The translation Studies Reader edited by Venuti, 2000:148)

As a researcher on translation, Douglas Robinson states that “translation is always intelligent behavior – even when it seems least conscious or analytical Translation is a highly complicated process requiring rapid multilayered analyses of semantic fields, syntactic structures, the sociology and psychology of reader – or listener – respond, and cultural difference Like all language use, translation is constantly creative, constantly new.” (Robinson, 1997:50)

James S Holmes who is an American translator and poet points out that

“translation studies thus has two main objectives: (1) to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience, and (2) to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted The two branches of pure translation studies concerning themselves with these objectives can be designated descriptive translation studies (DTS) or translation description (TD) and theoretical translation

studies (ThTS) or translation theory (TTh).” (Cited in The translation Studies Reader edited by Venuti, 2000:176)

2.1.2 Translation theory and methodology

According to Newmark, “translation theory… is mainly an aspect of semantics; all questions of semantics relate to translation theory” [1982:5] and

“Translation theory’s main concern is to determine appropriate translation methods for the widest possible range of texts or text-categories Further, it provides a framework of principles, restricted rules and hints for translating texts and criticizing translations, a background for problem-solving…translation theory attempts to give some insight into the relation between thought, meaning and language; the universal, cultural and individual aspects of language and behavior; the understanding of cultures; the interpretation of texts that may be clarified and even supplemented by way of translation.” [1982:19]

Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet points out that “at first the different methods or procedures seem to be countless, but they can be condensed to just seven, each one corresponding to a higher degree of complexity In practice, they may be used either on their own or combined with one or more of the other.” (Venuti, 2000:84) and they present two methods of translating, namely direct, or literal translation and oblique translation There are three direct procedures: Borrowing, calque (loan translation), literal translation and four oblique procedures: Transposition, modulation, equivalence, adaptation

Also according to Newmark, the translation theorist is concerned with every type of translation procedure:

language correctly and obtain the naturalness and smoothness for the translated texts of target language

2.2 English passive constructions

Passive voice Passive voice is a voice that indicates that the subject is the patient or recipient of the action denoted by the verb (Retrieved from

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPassiveVoice htm)

Passive voice constructions are known as a requisite component of English rhetorical construction

2.2.1 Forms of English passive constructions

“In the active sentence, the person doing the action (called the agent) is the subject, and we use an active verb In the passive sentence, the subject is what the action is directed at, and we use a passive verb has a form of the auxiliary verb be and a passive participle.”(Eastwood, 2005:121)

Generally speaking, English passive construction has a form of the verb be (be, am, is, are, was, were, being, been) and a past participle

According to Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrred and Finegan (1999), most

passive constructions are formed with auxiliary be followed by an ed-participle:

Similarly, a polarizer can be shown to act linearly (ACAD)

This dictionary shows that passive verb phrases can also be formed with the verb get in the role of auxiliary:

It’s about these people who got left behind in Vietnam (CONV)

And there are two kinds of passive constructions, including long passive and short passive

Long passive is the passive construction with a by-phrase and short passive, also called agentless passive does not have a by-phrase, in which the noun phrase

is commonly referred to as the agent, for example:

1 [The proposal] was approved by the Project Coordinating Team (ACAD)

2 To do so, [the cooling curves] are plotted for the two pure components (ACAD)

cf Someone plotted [the cooling curves]

Moreover, passive constructions are also commonly found with two-object prepositional verbs:

[Dormancy] is associated with short duration (ACAD)

cf Researchers associate [dormancy] with short duration

[Elements] are usually classified as metals or non-metals (ACAD)

cf Researchers usually classify [elements] as metals or non-metals

(Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrred, Finegan, 1999:475)

By-agent is used in English passive sentences because we want to mention

Anthea cut the grass

The grass was cut by Anthea

Anthea is the agent

The term agent is sometimes used only for the noun or noun phrase which

follows by in passive sentences, even if it does not refer to the performer of an action, e.g everyone in she was admired by everyone

(Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992:11)

The following examples of passive are extracted from Oxford Learner’s Grammar (Eastwood, 2005):

(1) Present simple: Lots of people are killed on the roads

(2) Present continuous: The game is being played

(3) Present perfect: The budget for the project has been cut

(4) Past simple: When was the fax sent?

(5) Past continuous: The game was being played

(6) Past perfect: The game had been played

(7) Future: Drugs will be destroyed

The game is going to be played

(8) Modal verbs: Stamps can be bought at any post office

Animal should really be seen in their natural habitat

Many things that used to be done by hand are now done by machine

Must everything always be done at the last minute?

Do meals have to be prepared every day?

(9) A modal verb with the perfect: I can’t find that leaflet It must have been thrown away

They’ve found a play that might have been written by Shakespeare

This bill ought to have been paid weeks ago

(10) The passive with phrasal and prepositional: The building was knocked down last year

(11) The passive with get: We get paid monthly

(12) The passive with verbs of reporting: It is said that elephants have good memories

Twelve people are believed to have been killed in the accident

The stone houses are thought to be 5,000 years old

(13) The passive: have/get something done: I had/got my car serviced

Where did you have/get your hair cut?

(14) Active forms with a passive meaning:

Gerund: The room needed decorating (= The room needed to be decorated)

Infinitive: The homework is to be done by tomorrow

The piano is too heavy to be moved by one person

(=The piano is too heavy for one person to move)

Also, Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English notes that the passive agent is often the agent of the verbal action in the semantic sense, though it may fulfill other semantic roles such as experience The availability of the passive option is subject to a number of constraints, chiefly connected with the nature of the verb (1999:935)

Among EPCs, the author identifies the EPCs to investigate in the study as follows: be + past participle and causative verbs

2.2.2 The use of the passive:

“The passive is traditionally described as a formal and impersonal choice The formality is consistent with the distribution among registers, with high frequencies in academic prose and with conversation at the opposite extreme” (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrred, Finegan, 1999:943)

According to Oxford Learner’s Grammar, the passive is sometimes used in speech, but more common in writing, especially in the impersonal style of text books and factual information The passive is also sometimes used in rules and to describe procedures, also in news reports

It is clear that passive is used in formal or written context Therefore, it is easy to find out passive in technical, economic, political papers

More is to realize that “The passive is frequently used in English to express ideas that require a reflexive or impersonal construction in other languages, and in many cases is also used where other languages use the active…the passive is far

commoner in English than in some other language” (Graver, 1986:105) Moreover, Graver finds out five useful notes of the English passive construction:

(1) When the active form would involve the use of an indefinite or vague pronoun or noun as subject, we generally prefer to use the passive (the agent with

‘by’ is not expressed):

a I’ve been robbed! (Someone has robbed me!) (2) The passive provides a means of avoiding an awkward change of subject

in the middle of a sentence:

The Prime Minister arrived back in London last night, and was immediately besieged by reporters

(3) The passive may be used when we wish to make a statement sound impersonal (perhaps out of modesty, or when we have some unpleasant statement

to make) The management of a company might be quite happy to announce:

The new working methods we have introduced will result in higher earnings for all workers

(4) The passive is not, therefore, simply an equivalent alternative to the active While both forms of expressing an idea may be syntactically possible, we tend to choose the passive for one of the reasons described above, or if we are interested in what happened to ‘X’ rather than in what ‘Y’ did:

a The escaped convince was arrested two days later

(5) Some ideas, however, may be expressed naturally and effectively in either the active or the passive form:

a France beat England in yesterday’s ruby international

In such cases, our choice will depend on what we regard as the ‘focus of interest’ in the sentence (1986:105-106)

Also, Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English carefully discuss passive constructions shows that primarily the passive serves the discourse functions of:

ordering of information omission of information (especially short passive)

 weight management (especially long passive)

(Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrred, Finegan, 1999:935)

From the website http://www.teslcafe.com/active-and-passive-voice, passive voice is also understood to use an indirect expression which is rhetorically effective

in a given situation Authors in the sciences conventionally use passive more often than writer in other discourses, passive voice makes sense when the agent performing the action is obvious, unimportant, or unknown or when a writer wishes

to postpone mentioning the agent until the last part of the sentence or to avoid mentioning the agent at all The passive voice is effective in such circumstances because it highlights the action and what is acted upon rather than the agent performing the action

2.3 Research on Vietnamese Passive Constructions (VPCs)

In Vietnamese language, whether there are passive constructions or not is a controversial matter Basing on the achievements of Vietnamese linguistics, there are two points of views about VPCs

The first view that Vietnamese has passive constructions is from Vũ Đức Nghiệu, Diệp Quang Ban, Nguyễn Thị Thuận and Bùi Thị Diên

They agree that bị, được are often in front of predicate to identify VPCs In Vietnamese, bị and được are understood as follows:

According to Bùi Phụng (2002), bị means suffer or experience something unpleasant or disastrous, for example bị bóc lột be exploited; bị tù be in jail được

has four explanation such as acquire, gain, win, succeed (+Subject+in+ ger.), manage (+subject+to inf.), very well! All right! Agreed! Okay; O.K., –able; -idle, Equal, come up to

Trần Quang Mân & Trần Quang Diệu (2001) explain in Essential Vietnamese-English translating Glossary Dictionary (Based on Tool-Words) that

bị is accompanied with the verbs to indicate the unfortunate, with the idea of

passive mood (2001:30)

được is explained that it is originally a dependent verb, usually

accompanying before or after main verbs to express the meaning of lucky

acceptance, shows ability, means as “can”, but placed after verbs or at the end of

sentence, expresses the passive meaning of the verbs or the results, used after the verbs to show the emphasing idea on the chance, convenience, used right after a negative adverb to diminish the negation, shows the meaning of situation In this

case, “được” can be used independently for forming the sentence or alone, before

the comma of it (only used in the case of the inferior or of the same rank) It means

“nhiều”, “tốt” (2001: 131)

Vũ Đức Nghiệu (2002) approves the existence of được, bị in Vietnamese

sentences expressing passive

These are some examples he suggests:

(1) Anh ấy được ông chủ tịch khen

(2) Được giải thưởng

(3) Anh ấy bị Polpot giết

(4) Được hút thuốc

(5) Phải đòn

(6) Bị nó đánh

According to Diệp Quang Ban, bị, được are at the head of predicate of

Vietnamese passive sentences and a lot of words and group of words are put behind

bị, được

In contrast, Cao Xuân Hạo and Nguyễn Thị Ảnh argue that Vietnamese has

no passive constructions Cao Xuân Hạo who presents theory of the theme and the rheme to explain Vietnamese constructions points out that the theme and the rheme are two distinguished parts in a sentence, and subjects are not mainly focused on analyzing English is a subject-prominent language, so subject of sentence is an important part to decide the meaning of the sentence He suggests a lot of examples and analysis of Vietnamese sentences basing on the theme and rheme

Nguyễn Thị Ảnh has a point of view that Vietnamese has no passive constructions She states that any languages can express passive meaning However, in a subject-prominent language, passive is grammaticalized as the category to express a compulsively particular morphology, whereas Vietnamese, a

topic-prominent language does not have such “bị”, “ được” are considered

transitive verbs in any constructions, not form words (or auxiliary verbs), and the

presence of “bị”, “được” does not make the sentence passive (2002:154-161)

a Nam bị một con hai

b Nam bị sốt

c Nam bị thua Bình 2/0

d Nam bị Bình ăn 2/0

e Nam được giải nhì

f Nam được đi chơi

g Nam được giúp Bình

h Nam được Bình giúp

Generally speaking, identifying and explaining VPCs by basing on the argument of the first views is difficult because there are a lot of sentences including

bị, được but they are not passive constructions From that, finding ways to explain

sentences are not passive is complicated The second view may be suitable to analyze all kinds of the sentences, so the author analyzes Vietnamese translated sentences basing on the second view

2.4 Research on translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese:

Using the passive constructions in English is different from Vietnamese Hence, translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese cannot be word for word (Nguyễn Quốc Hùng, 2007:89)

Vương Đằng also analyzes the English passive constructions and translating some English passive constructions into Vietnamsese (2005:152-156) It is that despite the different points of view of passive constructions, translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese cannot keep the same constructions to English passive constructions And the author considers that Vietnamese has no passive constructions but has passive modality

Trương Quang Phú (2001) explains the English passive translation into Vietnamese under these sentences:

(1) English: He was shot in the chest five times (He was given 5 shots in the chest.)

Vietnamese: Ông ấy bị bắn năm phát vào ngực

(2) English: He was promoted twice over the past three years

Vietnamese: Ba năm vừa rồi anh ấy được thăng chức hai lần

(3) English: He was stabbed three times in the belly

Vietnamese: Anh ấy bị đâm ba nhát vô bụng

(4) English: He was slapped in the face three times

Vietnamese: Anh ấy bị tát vào mặt ba tát

Trương Quang Phú (2001:54-56) lists the translations of the following constructions into Vietnamese:

(1) English: It’s widely rumored that………

Vietnamese: Người ta đồn khắp nơi là/ có nhiều tin đồn là…

English: It’s generally thought that…

Vietnamese: Người ta thường nghĩ rằng…

English: It’s widely believed that…

Vietnamese: Người ta thường tin rằng/ nghĩ rằng/ nhiều người tin rằng…

English: It’s generally assumed that…

Vietnamese: Người ta thường cho rằng…

Ex: English: It’s generally believed/ assumed/ thought in the west that Asian women are treated like slaves by their husbands

Vietnamese: Ở phương Tây người ta thường tin rằng/ cho rằng/ nghĩ rằng phụ nữ châu Á bị chống đối xử như nô lệ

(2) English: He is rumoured to

Ex: English: The leader is rumoured to be in critical condition

Vietnamese: Người ta đồn vị lãnh đạo đang ở trong tình trạng nguy kịch English: He is said/ alleged/ rumoured to

Ex: English: This high-ranking official is said/ alleged/ rumoured to have taken bribes

Vietnamese: Người ta nói/ tố giác là/ đồn là viên chức cấp cao này đã nhận hối lộ

(3) English construction: Someone/ something is (not) to be + past participle English: He is to be pitied

Vietnamese: Ông ấy cần được thương hại

English: He is not to be blamed

Vietnamese: Ông ấy không đáng trách

English: It’s an opportunity not to be missed

Vietnamese: Đó là một cơ hôi không thể/ không nên bỏ qua

(4) English: Great importance is attached to + noun

More attention needs to paid to + noun More emphasis should be made on + noun Care must be taken to + verb

Vietnamese: Cần phải/ Nên/ phải…/Người ta cần phải/ nên/…

Nguyễn Thị Ảnh conducted a PhD thesis in which English passive constructions and views of Vietnamese passive are discussed In her thesis, she

claims that identifying English passive completely bases on subject of sentence She also presents some English passive sentences and correlatively Vietnamese translated sentences

a The man was paid 800$ to do the job

“Ông ấy được trả 800 đô la để làm việc ấy.”

b I was given two hours to make my decision

“Tôi có 2 tiếng đồng hồ để quyết định việc ấy”

c I was offered the book for my birthday by my friend

“Tôi được người bạn tặng cuốn sách ấy nhân ngày sinh nhật.”

d I have been shown the new machine

“Tôi được xem cái máy mới.”

(2002:150-153)

In reality, translating English passive constructions into Vietnamese cannot

always use “bị”, “được” The ways of translating use “bị”, “được” can cause an

unnaturalessness in Vietnamese Moreover, it is not able to assert that English passive constructions are equivalently Vietnamese passive constructions Translation of English passive into Vietnamese is more complex

Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1978) gives some examples using bị, được but all of them

are not considered as passive constructions and all of them cannot be similar to English passive constructions

Tôi được khen (I am appraised.)

Cháu bị sốt (I have got a high temperature.)

Nó bị rắn cắn (He was bitten by a snake.)

Tôi mua được một cuốn sách quý (I have bought a precious book.)

(1978:19)

In addition, Vũ Đức Nghiệu also presents some examples using bị, được

‘Được’: được của rơi, được giải thưởng, được ăn, được nói được gói mang

về, em được về nhà, lấy được chồng tốt, hòa một trận, được hai trận, may được hai cái áo rồi, anh làm thế nào cũng được, người không được khỏe, món này ăn cũng

được (chất lượng khá tốt/ đạt yêu cầu…), cháu được hai mươi tháng tuổi rồi…(2002:13-14)

‘Bị’: bị bắt, bị trói, bị tiêu diệt, bị phát hiện, bị gãy tay, bị rạch túi, bị mất

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, corpus is defined as

“a collection of written of spoken texts”

Sinclair (1991) also states that a corpus is “a collection of naturally occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a language”

Moreover, from Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics corpus is clearly explained as “a collection of material that has been made for a particular purpose, such as a set of textbooks which are being analyzed and compared or a sample of sentences or UTTERANCES which are being analyzed for their linguistic features.”

McEnery and Wilson claim that the notion of a corpus as the basis for a form of empirical linguistics differs in several fundamental ways from the examination of particular texts In principle, any collection of more than one text can be called a corpus; the term ‘corpus’ is simply the Latin for ‘body’, hence a corpus may be defined as anybody of text It needs imply nothing more But the term ‘corpus’ when used in the context of modern linguistics tends most frequently

to have more specific connotations than this simple definition provides for These may be considered under four main headings:

sampling and representativeness

To be clearer, Salsbury and Crummer point out that a corpus is a body of written and spoken language that teachers and researchers collect and analyze From the corpus analysis of a text, researchers, teachers, and students are able to obtain word frequency counts as well as valuable information about how various words function and form patterns in the text in relation to other words These linguistic associations (i.e., the patterns among words) fall into two categories:

lexical and grammatical, which are referred to as collocations and colligations,

particular language varieties or registers (e.g., conversation or university

textbooks) As a corpus is compiled, design is considered important: texts must be sampled from particular target registers and size is also equally important: Some language features are rare but still have systematic patterns of use

“Corpora” is the plural form of corpus There are two main types of corpora for use in cross-linguistics research: corpora of comparable original texts in two or more languages (sometimes referred to by the terms comparable corpora), corpora

of original texts and their translations (referred to by translation corpora

Comparable corpora consist of original texts in each language, matched by such criteria as time of composition, domain, genre, intended audience, etc They

represent natural language use in each language and should allow safe conclusions

to be drawn on similarities and differences between the languages compared

Translation corpora contain texts which are intended to express the same meanings and have the same discourse functions in the relevant languages (Stig, 1998:4-5)

Corpora play an important role in researching on language, comparing and translating two and more three languages, teaching and learning languages

2.5.2 Corpus linguistics

Although corpus linguistics is studied in the world from the 1960s, it may be strange to Vietnamese researchers, teachers and learners

Corpus linguistics is also defined as ‘the study of language as expressed in

samples (corpora) or "real world" text’ This method represents a digestive

approach to deriving a set of abstract rules by which a natural language is governed

or else relates to another language Originally done by hand, corpora are largely derived by an automated process, which is corrected

According to John Sinclair, corpus linguistics is simply the study of language through corpus-based research, but it differs from traditional linguistics in its insistence on the systematic study of authentic examples of language in use (Sinclair, 1991:31)

Moreover, McEnery and Wilson (1996) confine that corpus linguistics is not

a branch of linguistics in the same sense as syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics and

so on… Corpus linguistics in contrast is a methodology rather an aspect of language requiring explanation or description as well as a methodology that may be used in almost area of linguistics, but it does not truly delimit an area of linguistics itself It is a new branch of linguistics Đinh Điền also states:

“Ngôn ngữ học – ngữ liệu chuyên nghiên cứu về việc thu thập ngữ liệu, các tiêu chí chọn lựa ngữ liệu, cách thức chuẩn hóa, xử lý ngữ liệu (gán nhãn ngôn ngữ) and khai thác kho ngữ liệu đó để phục vụ các bài toán có liên quan đến ngôn ngữ.” (2004:17)

It can be understood that corpus linguistics is the study of data collection, criteria of corpus selection, ways of standardizing and handling corpus (language labeling) and exploration of the corpus to solve the matter related to language

The term ‘corpus’ could be used only in reference of printed text in the past Corpus is nowadays mentioned to refer computer-readable texts or machine-readable texts due to the bloom of information technology, and widely used computers which can analyze corpus quickly and effectively

2.5.3 Corpus-based approach

When discussing corpus-based approach, Biber, Conrad and Reppen begin by identifying the essential characteristics of corpus-based analyses presented as following:

- it is empirical, analyzing the actual patterns of use in natural texts;

- it utilizes a large and principled collection of natural texts, know as a

“corpus,” as the basis for analysis;

- it makes extensive use of computers for analysis, using both automatic and interactive techniques;

- it depends on both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques

(Biber, Conrad and Reppen, 1998:4)

2.5.4 Corpus in cross-linguistics research and applications

The role of corpus linguistics is important to study and teach languages More and more researches are based on corpus That is due to the benefits of corpora Corpus-based resources can show us: How grammatical structures in academic registers pattern differently from other registers such as conversation, how structures within a system are used to accomplish discourse functions (e.g., how a variety of reference forms are used for cohesion at different points in developing a text), how the types of vocabulary that “go with” (collocate with)

grammar structures in academic registers differ from vocabulary used with these structures in other registers such as journalism, fiction, or conversation

In studying language and translation, Granger, Beheydt and Colson (1999) contribute researches based on corpus linguistics such as “The corpus approach: a common way forward for Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies.” She admits the contribution of corpus-based CL and TS research in the teaching of foreign languages and translation and examines the practical issues of corpus exploitation, with a review of corpus analysis tools of particular value for CL and

TS

In teaching and learning grammars, it is no doubt that corpora are very useful Mindt points out that from a real language; a corpus of language data is compiled Then, this corpus is used to construct a didactic grammar from which pedagogical grammars are derived (Wichmann, Fligelstone, McEnery and Knowles, 1997: 42)

Baker (1993) suggests that certain features which have been noticed in translated texts might be observed more systematically by using corpora Original texts would never include this extra information, so not only lexical but also grammatical features would change and its study with corpora would also be helpful

In the early half of the twentieth century, with vocabulary lists for foreign learners often being derived from corpora, Kennedy (1992) conducted research in which the corpus and second language pedagogy had a strong link Moreover, one great publishing of Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a proof based on studying corpora assists English users in teaching English as well as learning English as a foreign language The Survey of English Usage Corpus was used in the development of one of the most important Corpus-based Grammars, the

Comprehensive Grammar of English Sylviane studies and draws the findings on

corpora of English and French passive constructions

Moreover, a corpus-based study can investigate almost any language patterns lexical, structural, lexico-grammatical, discourse, phonological, morphological often with very specific agendas such as discovering male versus female usage of tag questions, children's acquisition of irregular past participles

General speaking, corpus linguistics helps researchers conduct a lot of studies with the corpus-based approach which are effective and practical There are many computerized corpora of written texts as follows:

The LOB Corpus (British English) with 1,000,000 words and the Lancaster Corpus: about 3,000,000 words each of academic prose (including books and articles from a variety of disciplines) and fiction (including novels and short stories) (according to Biber, Conrad & Reppen, 1998)

Longman-The Hensinki Corpus (historical and dialectal English), and the Surrey Corpus (Australian English)

Melbourne-Although corpus linguistics is quite strange to some Vietnamese researchers and teachers, there are many linguists and teachers who spend their precious time

on exploiting corpus linguistics and corpus-based analysis tools in teaching English for English majors and non-English majors, such as Vũ Thị Phương Anh with corpus use for purpose of teaching ESP for Environment (2000), Đinh Điền with

“Building and exploiting an Electronic English-Vietnamese corpus (2004)

2.6 A view of teaching translation

Translation has developed as international trade, migration, globalization is increased and the mass media and technology is expanded Teaching translation

nowadays is to meet the need of society The question arisen is that how to teach translation effectively According to Robinson, the study of translation and the training of professional translators is without question an integral part of the explosion of both intercultural relations and the transmission of scientific and technological knowledge He also asserts that at the present the prevailing pedagogical assumptions in translator training programs are (1) that there is no substitute for practical experience – to learn how to translate one must translate, translate, translation – and (2) there is no way to accelerate that process without damaging students’ ability to detect errors in their own work (Robinson, 1997:2)

Whether there is the best methodology of teaching translation to make students become good translators or interpreters is not real In reality, translation depends on the ability of learners a lot Teachers have responsibility to provide good lessons, but making their translation rapid and effective or not also depending

on their own awareness of learning and searching

Prof Constanza Gerding-Salas gives a research on teaching translation: Problems and Solution on http://accurapid.com/Journal/13educ.htm She states that the quality of translation will depend on the quality of the translator, i.e on her/his knowledge, skills, training, cultural background, expertise, and even mood Some essential characteristics of any good translators Newmark distinguishes also are presented such as reading comprehension ability in a foreign language, knowledge

of the subject, sensitivity to language (both mother tongue and foreign language) and competence to write the target language dexterously, clearly, economically and resourcefully

Vietnamese student translators also cope with a lot of difficulties, and translation is one of the subjects in their training program Therefore, teaching them translation is done in short time in a week and they have to study by themselves outside classes This leads to the necessity of teaching them how to enrich the knowledge of translation so that they can produce good translation with smoothness and naturalness

1 How are English passive constructions translated into Vietnamese?

2 How would English passive constructions be taught in translation classes?

3.2 Research design:

3.2.1 Subjects:

The rationale for and aims of the research inspire the design of the survey

As translation study is a compulsory subject in English-majored classes, such a survey should necessarily involve students, to elicit their perception, attitude and assessment related to the research topic

Therefore, the first survey are for investigating students’ thought, attitude and assessment as learning translation relating to the constructions in the study Participants in the survey (who answer the questionnaire) include 242 students from six English classes including three classes in Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages – Information technology, two classes in University of Social Sciences and Humanities, one class in Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy (See Figure 1)