Procedures in the english translation of stylistic devices commonly used in lục xì by vũ trọng phụng

UNIVERSITY OF FORERGN LANGUAGE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THU NGA PROCEDURES IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF STYLISTIC DEVICES COMMONLY USED... CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I carry out this thesis with th

UNIVERSITY OF FORERGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ THU NGA

PROCEDURES IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

OF STYLISTIC DEVICES COMMONLY USED

This thesis has been completed at University of

Foreign Language Studies, The University of Da Nang

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Phan Văn Hòa

Examiner 1: Assoc Prof Dr Lâm Quang Đông Examiner 2: Lê Thị Giao Chi, PhD

The thesis was be orally defended at the Examining Committee Time: September, 9th 2017

Venue: University of Foreign Language Studies

The University of Da Nang

This thesis is available for the purpose of reference at:

- Library of University of Foreign Language Studies,

The University of Da Nang

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

I carry out this thesis with the purpose of investigation of commonly-used stylistic devices in both “Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng and English version to consider the translation procedures used to convert these stylistic devices into English Furthermore, the thesis would be significant to help the Vietnamese readers and learners perceive and understand stylistic devices easily and profoundly, then understand thoroughly a literary work Thus, it would partly contribute

to teaching and learning stylistic devices as well as translating them

From the above analysis, we decided to choose

“PROCEDURES IN THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF STYLISTIC DEVICES COMMONLY USED IN “LỤC XÌ” BY VŨ TRỌNG PHỤNG” as our research topic

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aims

The study is aimed at examining stylistic devices in “Lục Xì”

by Vũ Trọng Phụng and their English translational equivalents in “Luc Xi: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi” by Shaun Kingsley Malarney in order to discover the translation procedures in translating these Vietnamese stylistic devices into English version

1.2.2 Objectives

- To collect and analyze stylistic devices commonly used in both “Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng and their English translational

version

- To investigate procedures used for translating stylistic

devices in “Lục Xì” via their English translational equivalents

- To suggest some implications for teaching, learning and

translating stylistic devices

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study is executed on the work “Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng and its English version “Luc Xi: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi” translated by Shaun Kingsley Malarney

In fact, the thesis is of great success if it deals with all stylistic devices used in the work However, due to the time, resource

constraints and ability of my own, the thesis just investigates some stylistic devices used in highest frequency in “Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng its English version, including simile, irony and metaphor Moreover, the thesis focuses on translation procedures which are used

to translate those stylistic devices from Vietnamese into English

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The researcher hopes that this study will contribute a source of stylistic devices to who may concern Particularly, the researcher thinks that the readers and learners can get the higher awareness and understanding of translational procedures that are efficiently to translate a stylistic device from English into Vietnamese and versus With a high recognition of stylistic devices and translation procedures,

it is likely to be useful for students in learning English effectively as well as improving their language competence

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

There are five chapters included in the thesis:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature review and theoretical background Chapter 3: Research methods

Chapter 4: Findings and discussions

Chapter 5: Conclusions and implications

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND 2.1 PREVIOUS RESEARCHES RELATED TO THE STUDY

The study of stylistic devices and translation of stylistic devices always get the researchers interested Up to now, there has been a

variety of English and Vietnamese writers investigating stylistic devices

We can mention some popular studies written by both famous foreign and Vietnamese researchers such as Galperin (1977), Peter Verdonk (2003), Peter Newmark (1981; 1988), Catford (1965), Đinh Trọng Lạc (1996), Cù Đình Tú (1983), Hoàng Văn Vân (2005) and so on

In terms of translation, it appears many authors whose great works focus on theory of translation or translation methods such as Newmark (1981) in “Approach to Translation”; Munday (2001) in

“Introducing Translation Studies”; Catford (1965) in “A Linguistic Theory of Translation” In addition, Newmark (1988) also proposed seven concrete procedures for translating in his book “A Text book of translation”

In Vietnamese, studies on translation are also carried out by Hoàng Văn Vân “2005) in “Nghiên cứu dịch thuật”, Nguyễn Thượng Hùng (2005) in “Lý thuyết dịch”

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.2.1 Theory of Stylistic Devices

When studying this area, it is necessary to take some concepts related to stylistics devices into consideration

2.2.1.1 Definition of Stylistic Devices

2.2.1.2 Functions of Stylistic Devices

2.2.1.3 Classification of Stylistic Devices

2.2.2 Lexical Stylistic Devices

2.2.3.2 Translation methods

2.2.3.3 Translation procedures

Literal translation: This is the basic translation

procedure, both in communicative and semantic translation Literal translation ranges from word to word; group to group; collocation to

collocation; clause to clause; sentence to sentence

Transference: It is a process of transferring of a source

language word to a target text following a set of translation procedures Then the word becomes a loan word

Naturalization: This procedure succeeds transference and

adapts the source language word first to the normal pronunciation of the target language, then to its normal morphology (word-forms) of the

target language

Cultural equivalent: This is an approximate translation

where a source language cultural word is translated by a target

language cultural word

Functional equivalent: This is also a common procedure,

applied to cultural words, requires the use of a culture-free word, sometimes with a new specific term, so it neutralizes or generalizes the

source language word

Descriptive equivalent

In translation, description has to be weighed sometimes against function When we combine the description and function we get the sense “saw”

Synonymy: This procedure is used for a source language

word where there is no clear one-to-one equivalent, and the word is not important in the text, in particular for adjectives or adverbs of

quality

Through-translation: It is the literal translation of

common collocations, names of organizations and components of

compounds It can also be called: calque or loan translation

Shifts or transpositions: It involves replacing a

grammatical structure in the source language with one of the different grammatical type in the target language in order to achieve the same effect

Componential analysis: In translation, this basic

procedure is used to compare a source language word with target language word which has a similar meaning but is not an obvious one-to-one equivalent

Reduction and expansion: Using fewer or more words in

the target language in order to re-express an idea or to weaken or reinforce the sense of a source language word because its correspondence in the target language cannot be expressed as concisely

Paraphrase: This is an application or explanation of the

meaning of a segment of a text It is used in an “anonymous” text when it is poorly written or when it had important implications and omissions

Couplets: Couplets, triplets, quadruplets combine two,

three or four of the above-mentioned procedures respectively for

dealing with a single problem

2.2.4 The author Vũ Trọng Phụng (1912-1939)

2.2.5 An overview of “Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng

“Lục Xì” is a remarkable reportage by Vũ Trọng Phụng

published in eleven installments in the Hanoi newspaper, Future, from

January to April 1937, and then as a book

In the late 1930s, there was a mushroom growth of commercial sex industry in Hanoi that involved thousands of people and hundreds

of businesses About a hundred women worked legally as prostitutes, and female sex workers with venereal disease were held at the medical facility called the Dispensary (Nhà Lục Xì) It is the place to examine prostitutes for venereal diseases and hold them for treatment The term

“Lục Xì” seems to come from the English expression “look see”, means to check for diseases

2.2.6 English version “Luc Xi: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi”

“Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng was translated into English with the title “Luc Xi: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi” by Shaun Kingsley Malarney This English version was published in 2011 by University of Hawai’i Press

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODS 3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

This study is a descriptive analysis in which both qualitative and quantitative methods are used

- The quantitative method is used for calculating and choosing the three highest occurrences of stylistic devices

- The descriptive and analytical method is used for describing the features of commonly-used stylistic devices in “Lục Xì” and giving

a detailed description of the samples

- The contrastive method and qualitative method is used for identifying the translation procedures for translating commonly-used stylistic devices from Vietnamese into English

- The quantitative method in the study is used for calculating the concrete percentage of each procedure of translating simile, metaphor and irony from Vietnamese into English and arranges these procedures in the order of frequency

3.2 DATA COLLECTION

3.2.1 Sampling

3.2.2 Instrument

3.2.3 Research Procedure

The study procedure took the following steps:

- Collecting the samples of stylistic devices in “Lục Xì” and their English translational equivalents

- Classifying stylistic devices in “Lục Xì” by Vũ Trọng Phụng and choosing three stylistic devices with the highest frequency

- Describing and analyzing each group

- Sorting out and analyzing the translation procedures methods of three commonly-used stylistic devices from Vietnamese into English version

- Giving some recommendations concerning Vietnamese- English translation of three commonly-used stylistic devices and suggesting application in teaching, learning and translating

3.3 DATA ANALYSIS

The followings are procedure for the data analysis

- The samples were described to find out how these stylistic devices were translated into English in terms of translation procedures

- The frequency of each translation procedure was shown in the tables Statistical number and percentage highlighted which of those were dominant and which were at low frequency

- Basing on the data analysis, the conclusion and implications

of applying them in translating and learning were stated

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 4.1 THE FREQUENCY OF OCCURRENCE OF SIMILE, IRONY AND METAPHOR IN “LỤC XÌ” BY VŨ TRỌNG PHỤNG

4.1.1 The Frequency of Simile

The three stylistic devices Metaphor, Simile, and Irony are condensedly used in “Lục Xì” The study of 1,823 sentences arranged

on 179 pages of the reportage “Lục Xì” shows that there are 51 metaphoric, 60 simile, and 69 ironic cases

Among 60 similes in “Lục Xì”, Vũ Trọng Phụng used a clause, a noun, a noun phrase and a verb, a verb phrase to compare and describe objects Out of total 60 similes, 36 are nouns and noun phrases, accouting for approximately 60%, whereas the number of clauses is lower, with 13 samples, followed by the figure for verbs and verb phrases, with 11 samples (making up 21.7% and 18.3% respectively)

4.1.2 The Frequency of Irony

The interpretation of the irony mainly depends on the context

It is the context that advises us whether the words aim at ironical effect

or not Therefore, in term of ironical effect, the irony in “Lục Xì” may consist of Irony, Sarcasm, Hyperbole, Understatement and Ironic Situation However, only Irony is dealt herein in compliance with Galperin’s theory

Among 69 samples collected in the work “Lục Xì”, there are

33 nouns and noun phrases (47.8%), 19 verbs and verb phrases (27.5%), and 17 adjectives and adverbs (24.7%)

4.1.2 The Frequency of Metaphor

Among 51 metaphors, 29 are nouns and noun phrases, accounting for 56.9%; verbs and verbs phrases with a smaller number

of 16 cases (31.4%) and 6 cases are adjectives and adverbs accounting for 11.7% Only the main part of speech (the lexical vocabulary) are taken into considerations, as they play the important role in any senses and expressions Others (the grammatical class) such as prepositions, articles, or conjunctions are not mentioned in this study

4.2 SIMILE IN “LỤC XÌ” AND THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN ENGLISH VERSION

(4.2b) The compartmentalized room was also divided

in two with iron bars like a tiger cage (p.72)

In (4.2), literal translation is utilized to translate simile “như

chuồng hổ” from Vietnamese into English as “like a tiger cage” The

image “a tiger cage” is quite popular in the Western culture, so

foreign readers can understand the bad living conditions of prostitutes infected with venereal disease

4.2.2.2 Expansion

In this research, there are 12 occurrences of expansion accounting for 20% of procedures which are used for translation of simile from Vietnamese into English

Original

sentence

(4.14a) Bà giáo tức thì nắm lấy tay học trò, ẻo lả đập

mấy cái vào vai, như trò đùa, với một nét mặt hết

against her shoulder, as if she were joking, with a

face full of rage (p.103)

Expansion she

In this case, Vũ Trọng Phụng used a noun “trò đùa” to

compare with a compared object, whereas the translator employed a

clause “she were joking” He expanded the meaning of the original sentence by adding the subject “she” Obviously, the readers can

perceive correctly the meaning in English equivalent

(4.16a) Tại những trường dạy nhảy, học trò đổ xô

đến như nước chảy chỗ trũng (p.126)

Translated

sentence

(4.16b) At the dance schools the students flood in

Ø (p.116)

Reduction như nước chảy chỗ trũng

In the example above, the whole phrase “như nước chảy chỗ trũng” is not translated into English It seems that the image “nước chảy chỗ trũng” is not popular to English readers, thus the translator

deletes this phrase in his English translational version