Some problems encountered by the 4th year english students at vinh university when translating vietnamese sales contract into english equivalents

VINH UNIVERSITYFOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT ********** LƯƠNG THỊ HUYỀN TRANG ENGLISH STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY WHEN TRANSLATING VIETNAMESE SALES CONTRACT INTO... VINH UNIVERSITYFOREIGN

VINH UNIVERSITY

FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT

**********

LƯƠNG THỊ HUYỀN TRANG

ENGLISH STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY WHEN TRANSLATING VIETNAMESE SALES CONTRACT INTO

VINH UNIVERSITY

FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT

**********

YEAR ENGLISH STUDENTS AT VINH UNIVERSITY WHEN TRANSLATING VIETNAMESE SALES CONTRACT INTO ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS

(MỘT SỐ KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN TIẾNG ANH NĂM THỨ TƯ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC VINH KHI DỊCH HỢP ĐỒNG THƯƠNG MẠI TIẾNG

VIỆT SANG TIẾNG ANH)

GRADUATION THESIS

Field : Linguistics

Student: Lương Thị Huyền Trang, K48B

Supervisor: Lê Thị Thúy Hà, M.A

Vinh – 2011

Acknowledgements

For the completion of this work, I have been received invaluable contributions from many people First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, M.A Le Thi Thuy Ha for her absolutely indispensable assistance, useful suggestions, and critical comment, step by step guiding me during my study paper Without her help, my work would not have been complete I owned her a debt of gratitude that can not be measured.

My special words of thanks to Dean and Leading Board of Foreign Languages Department, who gave me opportunities to study and do my thesis paper.

I am also grateful to all other teachers at the Foreign Languages Department for all their enthusiasm and suggestions which help me overcome difficulties in the process

of my study.

In addition, I am greatly thanks to the people who work in Department of Planning and Investment and Department of Industry and Commercial for giving me documents and invaluable conditions while the research was being done.

As always I wish to express my special thanks to students from K48B1, K48B2 for their assistance and cooperation.

My warmest thanks to members of my family for their encouragement, support to

me to fulfill this thesis.

Finally, I am aware that without the advice and support, my project is far from complete Thus, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that the thesis may be considered to have.

This study is an investigation into sales contracts translation strategies of students

of Foreign Languages Department in Vinh University It purposes to find out students’ mistakes and difficulties when translating Sales Contracts, then suggest guides and solution for them Thus, I has stimulated the author in doing the study In chapter 1, the author gave the definition, profits, features of translation, Sales Contracts and Discourse analysis In chapter 2, giving the description of the survey, result of the data, analysing students problems, causes of these problems in chapter 2 Suggesting solutions will be presented in chapter 3 Finally, some implications to English teaching and translating are provided in the hope that readers will benenfit from it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Page

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I - INTRODUCTION

1 Justification of the Study

2 Aims and Objective of the Study

3 Methods of the Study

4 Scope of the Study

5 Format of the Study

PART II - CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 Translation

1.1 What is translation?

1.2 Why is Translation?

1.3 Process of translating

1.3.1 The Approach

1.3.2 The unit of translation

1.4 Types of Translation

1.4.1 Form based

1.4.2 Meaning based

1.5 Translation method

1.5.1 Word for word Translation

1.5.2 Literal Translation

1.5.3 Faithful Translation

1.5.4 Semantic Translation

1.5.5 Adaptation

1.5.6 Free Translation

1.5.7 Idiomatic Translation

1.5.8 Communicative Translation

1.6 Translation equivalence

2 Sales Contracts

2.1 What is a Sales Contract?

2.2 Why are Sales Contracts made?

2.3 Register

2.3.1 What is register?

2.3.2 The parameters of register

2.3.3 Use of grammar

2.4.Theme and rheme

3 Discourse Analysis

3.1 Written discourse

3.2 Discourse context

3.3 Cohesive devices

3.3.1 Reference

3.3.2 Ellipsis

3.3.3 Substitution

iii 3.3.4 Conjunction

3.3.5 Lexical cohesion

iii 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 6 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 10 11 11 11 12 12 12 13 13 14 14 14 14 14 14 15

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CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY

1.1 Overview of the Study

1.2 Description of the survey and the test

1.3 Research setting

1.4 Description of Subject

1.5 Data Instrument

1.6 Procedure

2 Analysis of the data

2.1 Result of the survey

2.2.Result of the Translation test

2.2.1 Words using

2.2.2 Language style

2.2.3 Sentence Structures

2.2.4 Grammar choice

CHAPTER 3 - SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TRANSLATING PRACTICE 3.1 Some suggestion for translating Words and Phrases

3.2 Some suggestion for translating Structures and using Grammar

3.2.1 Suggestions for Structures

3.2.2 Suggestions for Grammar

3.3 Some suggestions for using Language style

3.4 Good knowledge of Forms and Characteristics of Sales contract both Source Language and Target Ones

PART III – CONCLUSION 1 Recapitulation and Implications

2 Suggestions for further Studies

REFERENCES APPENDIX

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16 16 17 17 17 17 18 18 22 22 26 28 30

33 35 35 36 37 39

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Part I: introduction

1 Justification of the Study

Legal acts appeared long ago in the history of human beings Modern law code waswritten several recent decades ago Nowadays, more and more law codes have beenpromulgated Thus, research on the language of legal acts is very necessary It is not easy

to understand legal documents structurally and linguistically because its communicativepurposes differ from the ordinary genres

Sales contracts are a form of written documents used as a mean to bind businesspartners to legal obligations It is no exaggeration to say that sales contracts can lead to thesuccess of failure of a company Many bitter lessons have been drawn from the fact that anumber of Vietnamese companies have been driven to unfavorable situations due to poortranslation or inexperienced contract makers’ ignorance Therefore, sales contracttranslation has played an important role in the success of the economy

Translation in general and sales contract translation in particular, in fact, is one ofthe most difficult and challenging jobs It requires a translator not only good knowledge oftopic issue but also other things such as background knowledge, culture of targetcommunity and purposes of translation etc Translations will be considered to fail if thereadership misunderstands, disagrees or feels strange Then it is essential for translatorsand English lecturers to have good knowledge of contract making and translation so that

we can avoid failures and mistakes

The author, herself, a student of foreign languages department found somedifficulties and challenges when dealing with sales contract translation Her ambition inthis study is only to identify some difficulties that students may have and to help themovercome these difficulties Hopefully, the study is a contribution to English teaching andlearning, and a good source of reference for those who are interested in the area

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

2.1 Aims of the Study

Originating from the above reasons, this graduation paper is aimed at:

- Firstly, searching the translation theory and giving clearly the advantages oftranslation

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- Secondly, applying translation methods

- Thirdly, clarifying the special features and languages used in English Salescontracts to students

- Fourthly, analyzing the structure of English Sale Contracts in terms of discourseanalysis

- In addition, investigate the difficulties which the third year student of ForeignLanguages Department in Vinh University face in translating Sales contracts

- Most importantly, identifying some some implications in the hope of helpinglearners of English to improve their competence to analyse a contract and translate goodcontracts

2.2 Objectives of the Study

This study aims at studying:

- The Importance of Sales Contracts in business

- Problems which the students often get in translating Sales Contracts

- Causes of these problems

- Awareness of students in practicing translation

- Ability of the the students in translating Sales Contracts

3 Methods of the Study

First of all, the author makes a detail plan of procedure Then collecting Salescontracts, after that studying materials, documents which related to the topic Next, theauthor classifies grammatical and linguistic materials concerning to discourse features

The next is analyzing all the information selected from English Sales Contractsand Vietnamese Sales Contracts Furthermore, the author gets the contribution from thesupervisor, lecturer and classmates The author makes hypothesis and questions for theproblem, collecting data to answer the hypothesis Then the author defines theparticipants, time and place to do research

Moreover, the author uses both qualitative and quantitative research to solve theproblem Because the topic request opinions and also figures In qualitative, the authoruses open-ended questions, and closed- ended questions for quantitative research Thenthe author makes a survey to get figures and opinions

Finally, the information obtained will be dealt with, analyzed in order to reach

Within the scope of this thesis, a full catalogue of Sales Contracts feature,discourse features of English is too broad It seems impossible to go deep into all of themdue to the time limitation, resource constrains Thus, this paper wishes to touch uponsome prominent features of translation, discourse and Sales Contracts with the followingconcerns:

Firstly, the theoretical scope of the Study mainly focuses on Translation, SalesContracts, Discourse analysis, Discourse structure

Secondly, the practical scope of the Study is limited to written Sales contracts andthe focus of data analysis is cohesive devices, coherence and some register characteristics

of Sales Contracts

In short, we present some findings from the Study It is hoped that this study will

be of some use to teaching and learning English process And due to the time limitation,

we only focus on translation Sales Contracts from Vietnamese into English equivalents

5 Format of the Study

The Study includes three main parts

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Contents

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

Chapter 2: An analysis of the structure of English Sales Contracts

Chapter 3: The Study

Part 3: Conclusion

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Part ii: Investigation

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1 Translation

1.1 What is Translation?

It is said that “ Translation is an art and a science” It deals with language in userather than language as a system The term “translation” itself can refer to 2 meanings: it

can be the product (the text that is translated) or the process (the act of producingtranslation, another way to say translating) Traditionally, translation is the phenomenonwhich is considered an “art” However, recently it is accessed from a more technicalpoint of view by a number of linguists.

Cart Ford (1965) defines translation as the replacement of textual material in onelanguage (source language) by equivalent textual material in another language (targetlanguage)

Marlone (1988) claims that “ translation is the expression in another language (ortarget language) of what has been expressed in another source language preservingsemantic and stylistic equivalence”

Whereas Bell (1991) holds that translation is the “tranformation of a text originally

in one language in to an equivalent text is a different language retaining, as far aspossible, the content of the message, and the formal features and the roles of the originaltext”

According to the Merrian Webster dictionary (1974):

“Translation consists of changing from one state or form to another, to turn into oneown or another language”

As mentioned above, translation is basically a change of form The form of alanguage refers to the actual words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc The forms arereferred to as the “surface structure” of a language Translators replace the form of thesource language by the form of the target language

Translation, aims at equivalence between the source language and the targetlanguage in terms of lexical, grammatical, structure, context of communication and

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structure identity To this end, translator must use the lexicon, grammatical structure of the target language in an appropriate way in respect of communicative and culturalcontext to rebuild the same meaning

According to Wilhelm K Weber in “Training Translators and ConferenceInterpreters”: Translation is the transposition of a text written in a source language into atarget language The translated version must be absolutely accurate in meaning contain

all nuances of the original and must be written in clear elegant language that can be easilyunderstood by the reader.

Needless to say, punctuation, spelling and grammar must be flawless In addition,translators have at their disposal dictionaries and reference material in both language.However, it must be acknowledged that this definitions is mostly for the sake oftranslation theory only Since in practice, it is very rarely to find translation versions thatcan be “absolutely accurate” in meaning, contain all nuances of the original and be easilyunderstood by readers People are different in all aspects so the message they receivedmay not be identical from each other Therefore, they may not be the same as the writer’smessages

Bui Tien Bao(1999:9) claimed that Translation is rendering a written text into

another language in the way that the author intended the text

Translators are concerned with the written word They render written texts from one

language into another Translators are required to undertake assignments, which rangefrom simple items, such as birth certificates and driving licences, to more complexwritten material, such as articles in specialised professional journals, business contractsand legal documents

It is noticeable that ideas on translation are diversified and the concept andtranslation is complicated indeed However, these definitions, stemming at different timesshare common features: translation is the action of translation from source language totarget language in which meaning is preserved That means has to have equivalentcharacteristic

Since communication within only one speech community is not enough, certainlythere has a great number of times arisen a situation in which some individuals are unable

to understand the words or expressions of some others This phenomenon creates abarrier to understanding whenever man tries to communicate across a great distance ofspace or across a great interval of time Something has to be done to overcome thisrestriction One way to cope with the restriction is for individuals to know the foreignlanguage But this is not the final solution because apparently no individual in the worldcan know all the languages in use The polyglotest so far knows only about twenty fivelanguages, and still people want to read what other people say Translation may beconsidered as the most universally accepted solution for surmounting the obstacle Andthus there is a need for professional translatiors and interpreters.

1.3 Process of Translating

1.3.1 The Approach

There are two approaches of translating:

- Starting translating sentence by sentence, for say the first paragraph or chapter, toget the feel and the feeling tone of the text, and then deliberately sit back, review theposition, and read the rest of the SL text;

- Read the whole text two or three times, and find the intention, register; tone,mark the difficult words and passagea and start translating only when have taken thebearings

Translating process begins with choosing a method of approach When

translating, we translate with four levels in mind: the SL text level, the referential level,

the cohesive level, and the level of naturalness.

1.3.2 The unit of translation

The unit of translation can vary It is what you are translating at that moment Itcan range from a word, a sentence to a paragraph or whole passage

However, normally you translate sentence by sentence, running the risk of not

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paying enough attention to the sentences joins If the translation of a sentence has noproblem, it is based firmly on literal translation Since the sentence is the basic unit ofthought, presenting an object and what it does, is, or is affected by, so the sentence isyour common unit of translation In each sentence, you go to clause, both finite and non-finite Within the clause, you may take next the two obviously cohesive types ofcollocations, adjective-plus-noun or verb-plus-object, or the various groups that are less

1.4 Types of translation

As presented earlier, translation in the change of form while the meaning isremained Accordingly, there are two main types of translation basing on form andmeaning; the form based one and the meaning based one (Larson, 1984)

1.4.1 Form based

Form based translation is known as literal translation It attempts to follow theform of the source language text When translating, translators must use lexicon,grammatical structure of the target language to replace those of the source language(Larson, 1984)

1.4.2 Meaning based

Brian G Rucheck in ten Concepts Students Should Understood Prior to Enrolling

in a University Translation or Interpretation Class said, “One of the main goals fortranslators is to accurately communicative meaning”

He quoted massoud’s recommendation (1988) that translators should ask and keep

in mind two basic questions about the source language message:

1 What does it mean?

2 How should it be said in the new (other) language?

Good translators do not try to reproduce the formal order of words and phrases nor

do they try to find one sets of verbal correspondence What they do aim at is a faithfulreproduction of the original so that the meaning of the message and its spirit may besatisfactorily communicated Lason (1984) claimed, “Meaning based translations oridiomatic translations make every effort to communicate to text receivers, the meaning ofthe source language text in the natural forms of the target language”

In fact, to have a good translation version, a translator should combine both of meaning

of translation, the nature of treadership, the type of text was not discussed Too often,

write, translator and reader were implicilty identified with each other Now the contexthas changed and he provides it in the form of a flatterned V- diagram like below

SL emphasis TL emphasis

Word for word translation Adaptation

Literal translation Free translation

Faithful translation Idiomatic translation

Semantic translation Communicative translation

(Newmark 1988)

1.5.1 Word for word translation

This is often demonstrated as interlinear translation, with the target languageimmediately below the source language words The source language word-order ispreserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings out of context.Cultural words translated literally The main use of word-for-word translation is either tounderstand the mechanics of the source language or to construe a difficult text as pre-translation process

(deviation from source language norms) in the translation It attempts to be completely

8faithful to the intentions and the text-realization of the source language writer

translate less important culturally neutral third of functional terms but not by culturalequivalents and it may make other small concessions to the readerships.

1.5.5 Adaptation

This is the “freest” form of translation It is used mainly for plays (comedies) andpoetry; the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the source language cultureconverted to the target language culture and the text rewritten The deplorable practice ofhaving a play or poem literally translated and then rewritten by an established dramatist

or poet has produced many poor adaptations, but other adaptations have “ rescued periodplays”

obtained on the readership of the original theory” However, it is still a controversial oneand acquires a lot of attempts There are a lot of approaches to this problem and it differsordinarily.

Nida (1964) distinguishes two primary types of equivalence

- Formal equivalence: pays attention to the message itself, in both form andcontent This orientation focuses on the message being in conceptor language shouldmatch as closely as possible the different elements in the source language

- Dynamic equivalence: aims at complete naturalness of expression and tries to

relate the receptor relevant within the context of his own culture According to thisorientation, translation is based upon the principle of equivalence effect

Whereas Koller (1979) describes five different types of equivalence

- Denotative equivalence: is related to equivalence of extralingguistic content of

a text

- Connotative equivalence: is related to lexical choices, especially between near

synonym This type of equivalence is refered to as “stylistic equivalence”

- Text-normative equivalnece (communicative equivalence) is related towards the

receiver of the text or message This is completely coincided with nida’s dynamicequivalence

- Formal equivalence: is related to the form and aesthetic of the text, includes

word plays and the individual stylistic features of the source text It is in some sourcesreferred to as “ expressive equivalence”

Baker (1992) also provides an interesting point of view when discussing the notion

of equivalence specifically as follows:

- Grammatical equivalence: refers to the diversity of grammatical categories

across languages She notes that grammatical rules may vary across language and thismay pose some problems when finding a direct equivalence in the target language

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Especially, problems concentrate on number, tense, aspect, voice, person and gender

- Textual equivalence: refer to equivalence between a source language text and a

target language text in terms of information and cohesion Texture is very important as itprovides useful guidelines for the comprehension and analysis of the source text which

can help translator in his/her attempt to produce a cohesive and coherent text for thetarget audience.

- Pragmatic equivalence: refers to implicatures and strategies of avoidance

during the translation process Translator’s duty in this field is to work out impliedmeanings in order to get source text message across

To sum up, the notion of equivalence is still a problematic and controversial area

in the aspect of translation theory It is helpful to think that among patterns ofequivalence, some are practical and can be applied to certain kind of texts, these arepractical and can also be applied to other ones

2 Sales Contracts

2.1 What is a contract?

A contract is a legally enforceable promise or set of promise However, not allpromises are contracts Over the years, the law courts developed a number ofrequirements that a promise had to meet before it would be considered a contract.According to James Barnes (2000:58) “ A contract is an agreement (an offer and anacceptance) voluntarily entered into by parties having capacity to contract to do a legalact or acts” In addition to these elements, the courts required written evidence of somekinds of contracts

2.2 Why are contracts made?

Contracts are probably a necessary device in many kinds of market economywhere goods and services are exchanged by people acting in their own interest Peoplemight not enter into agreements that call for some future performance unless they knowsome means exist (the law) to force either people to honor their promises

For example, a small business might be afraid to supply its goods to a largecorporation in exchange for the corporations promise to pay for them next month unlessthe business knows it could have outside help to force the corporation to pay Similarly, aweak person might not be willing to pay a strong person today for goods to be delivered

11next week unless the weak person knows there is outside help available to enforce thereturn of the money if the goods are not delivered, or of the goods delivered are not whatwas agreed to

It is also true that it would probably be impossible to have an industrialized marketeconomy without contracts A manufacturer would be unable to do the kind of planning

necessary to run a business if it could not rely on agreements with suppliers to furnish theraw materials needed to make its products Similarly, a manufacturer might not be willing

to commit itself to buy raw materials or hire employees it could not rely on buyers’promises to buy its products

For Hudson (1980) the term “register” is widely used in socio-linguistics to refer

to “varieties according to use” or in other words, register shows what you are doing

In short, register is linguistic varieties that are closed linked to occupation,profession, topics, etc It is tied to the selection of words in discourse

2.3.2 The parameters of register.

There are three parameters of register They are: Field, Mode, and Tenor

* Field: refers to the purpose and subject matter of the discourse, which is what the

speaker talks about

* Mode: is about the channels or the ways by which discourse is conducted Mode is

concerned with what part of language is playing, what it is that the participants areexpecting the language to do for them in that situation, the symbolic organization of thetext, the status that is has, and its function in the context

* Tenor: is concerned with the interpersonal relations between the participants It refers

to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles

For example: “…The claim for quantity should be put forward within 15days after

commodity’s arrival at port of destination…”

* Use of passive voice and active voice

English contract is rich in passive verbs

Passive : “…quality and quantity certificates must be issued by

SGS/VINACONTROL/COTECNA or other equal organization ”

Active: “…this contract comes into effect from signing date and any amendment and/or

additional clause to these conditions…”

* The clause pattern in English Sale Contract:

Long sentences quickly become confusing in English, especially in theinternational arena, drafter must know, and work within, the limits of basis English clausestructure when combining ideas into longer sentence:

- An oversize vocabulary with blurred distinctions of meaning

- A simplified grammatical structure with usage and idiom replacing ‘logical’rules

+ main clause plus main clause

+ main clause plus 1 subordinate clause

+ the daisy-chain

+ main clause between subordinate clause

* Use of vocabulary

- archaic words : hereafter, hereunder, thereof, therein…

- technical words: contractor, contract, foreigner currency…

2.4 Theme- Rheme

Theme-rheme is a general structure in every language Theme is the usuallyexpressed by the left-most constituent of the sentence, and it is what the speakersnominates as the subject of what he will speak about later in the rheme Rheme is the information about the rheme

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For example: “ In case quality, quantity or specification of the commodity is not

accordance with the stipulation in the contract, except the responsibilities of insurance

company and shipping agency, the SELLER must accept the claim from the BUYER…”

3 Discourse Analysis

3.1 Written discourse

In written language an extensive set of metalingual markers exists to markrelationships between clauses (that clause, when and while, besides, moreover, however).Written language rather heavily premodified noun phrases occur frequently Whereaswritten language sentences are generally structured in subject-predicate form, in spokenlanguage it is quite common to find what Givon (1979) calls topic-comment structure.From all above, we can realized that written language is very specific, exact and coherent.

3.2 Discourse context

Context is an important factor in discourse analysis There is a dialecticalrelationship between discourses as much as the discourse creates the context For somescholars, context seems just to be minimal stretch of language that helps to understandwhat is written or spoken It involves non-linguistics factors that contribute and constrainour interpretation of discourse

3.3 Cohesive devices

There are five major transition devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis,

conjunction and lexical cohesion.

3.3.1 Reference

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are two kinds of reference:exophora and endophora Endophora consists of anaphoric and cataphoric These twotypes of references are performed through instructing readers to consult back to theformer part of the contract (anaphoric reference) or to the latter part of the contract(cataphoric reference)

3.3.2 Ellipsis

Ellipsis can be defined as the omission of certain elements, which have beenmentioned in the preceding sentence Ellipsis can be studied in terms of nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis

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3.3.3 Substitution

Substitution is simply defined as the replacement of an expression by another inthe text It is used to avoid repetition in case the writer or the speaker does not want touse the same word or phrase many times without implication Most of substitutes areproform within sentences

Substitution can also be classified into three: norminal substitution, verbal

substitution, and clausal substitution.

3.3.4 Conjunction

Conjunction is the forth type of cohesive relation that we find in grammarcohesion Conjunction differs from reference, substitution, and ellipsis in that it is not adevice for reminding the reader of previously mentioned entities, actions, and states ofaffairs In other words, it is a cohesive device because it signals relationships that canonly be fully understood through reference to other parts of the text

3.3.5 Lexical cohesion

Lexical cohesion is the choice of lexical items In other words, it is the choice oflexical terms Lexical cohesion comes about through the selection of items that arerelated in some way to those that have gone before Therefore, the cohesive effect isachieved by the selection of vocabulary which involves the employment of repetitions,synonyms or lexical equivalents, antonyms and association

Generally, in this chapter, the author presents specific definitions of translation,sales contract, as well as discourse analysis The author also indicates the roles, types,methods of translation; register and theme-rheme are used in sales contracts; andcohesive devices in discourse analysis

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Chapter 2 : The study

There have been many researches relating to the topic issue: “Translating formaltext” Some of them gave some techniques for translating correspondence Others gavethe cultural interference to business letter, etc This research only investigates some ofstudents’ difficulties in translating sales contract and gives some suggestions for theseproblems There may be some other aspects relating to sales contract, not mentioned here

1 Overview of the Study

1.1 Aims

The study aims to investigate problems which the fourth year students often get in

translating, especially translating Sales contract, then find out the reasons why they facethese problems, justify their awareness and ability in translation, and collect theiropinions to develop translating Sales contract skill and suggest solutions.

1.2 Description of the survey and the test

This survey and translation test are carried out with the help of students fromcourse 48B1 and 48B2 of English major First of all, the students translate two pageVietnamese sales contract into English then complete ten questions of the survey aboutSales contract translating problems

The translation test is a sales contract which is about selling and buyingconstruction material (cement, iron and steel) between a company of Vietnam and aGroup of Laos PDR

The sales contracts includes many parts: the first part is about name of contract,the general laws Then the name of buyer and seller (company name, address, telephonenumber, account number, representative…)

This sales contract contained seven articles The first article is about quantity The next is delivery mode The third is price and payment mode, and the article

commodity-of responsibilities commodity-of parties The fifth is force majeure and arbitration And the lastarticle is general terms and conditions The last part of the contract is the name ofrepresentatives of parties and their signs

After finishing translation test, the students answer questions from thequestionnaires The survey includes ten questions (five closed-ended questions and five

1.4 Description of Subjects

The participants of the research were 52 students from 48B1 and 48B2 English,who have studied translation for a long time and at the moment they have studiedtranslation for graduation examination

1.5 Data instrument

To collect data, this research is conducted in form of a translation test, designed to

be at average degree of length and difficulty Besides the questionnaires is also employed

to support the quantitative data Students’ opinions and thoughts about translation of salescontract and their perceived difficulties in this field will help the process of analyzingdata

1.6 Procedure

The research was carried out in 4 steps:

In the first step, the author reviewed some theories of translation and relatedaspects in contracts and sales contracts

The next step is data collection First, the 80-minute test is carried out with theobservation of the lecturer Then, the survey is given out for students

The third step, a careful and thorough analysis are conducted to identify students’difficulties and find out their reasons

In the last step, some suggestions are offered so that students difficulties can beease in their future translations

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2 Analysis of data

2.1 Result of the survey

Figure 1: Years of learning English

According to the figure about years of learning English of 48B1 and 48B2 Englishstudents of FLD in Vinh University above, there are 26% of students who have studiedEnglish for 10 years, over 10 years is 56%, over 6 years is 16% , less than or equal 6years is 2%

week, and 16% a little of them say sometimes The large amount of students practicetranslation frequently, about 40%

me

Cl s+ot

her placesot

r places

ever

ywhere

Series1

Figure 3: Sales contract translation

The survey shows that almost students often practice translation when they studytranslation at class, many of them practice both at class and at home Some otherspractice wherever they can In addition, a few of them practice outside their class andtheir home (at home 14%, in class 36%, class and home 28%, other places 4%,everywhere 12%)

survey, about 64% students do not often translate sales contract There are 34% oftentranslate it And some students do not often translate this type of text, (2%).

Figure 5: The roles of sales contract in business

As shown by the data, only 2% of students affirmed that sales contract is ratherimportant to business and economy Meanwhile, 98% agreed that sales contract hasimportant roles to business and economy

According to the questionnaires result, the students confirmed that sales contractmakes buyer and seller follow the contract rules effectively It makes activities betweenseller and buyer happens in the right way and avoids the misunderstanding It is veryessential for the two sides to carry out the rules of the contract Sales contract plays avery important part in business, especially; it contributes effectively in the success ofinternational commerce Therefore, it must be accurate It is an evidence when disputeshappen, it is very necessary for business activities which related to the foreigncompanies It binds the duties and responsibilities, the rights and liability of the towparties

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