Strategies in translating english songs into vietnamese applied by interpreting and translation majored students of felte, ULIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER STRATEGIES IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH SONGS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

STRATEGIES IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH SONGS INTO VIETNAMESE APPLIED BY INTERPRETING AND TRANSLATION MAJORED STUDENTS OF

FELTE, ULIS

Supervisor: Vũ Thị Kim Liên (M.A.)

Student: Cao Thị Sao Mai Course: QH.2017.F1.E22PDCLC

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

CHIẾN LƯỢC DỊCH BÀI HÁT TIẾNG ANH SANG TIẾNG VIỆT ĐƯỢC ÁP DỤNG BỞI SINH VIÊN

CHUYÊN NGÀNH BIÊN PHIÊN DỊCH, KHOA SƯ PHẠM

TIẾNG ANH, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Vũ Thị Kim Liên (ThS) Sinh viên: Cao Thị Sao Mai

Khoá: QH.2017.F1.E22PDCLC

Signature of Approval:

_Supervisor’s Comments & Suggestions

_

_

_

I hereby state that I: Cao Thị Sao Mai, class QH2017.F1.E22, being a

candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honored Program) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper.

Signature

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to mysupervisor and my teacher Ms Vũ Thị Kim Liên (MA) for her explicitinstructions and continuous encouragement during the past 9-month period.Without her thorough orientation and constructive suggestions, I could nothave completed the graduation thesis which is one of the most challengingtasks I have ever experienced Having been supervised by Ms Liên is mygreat honor and I would never regret asking her to be my supervisor

I also would like to show my deep appreciation to 20 translation andinterpreting majored students from FELTE who voluntarily attended my thesisconducting Thanks to your enthusiastic support and response in my lecture,tests and questionnaire, I could continue to go through this task

A special thanks is given to the expert for spending his timeparticipating in my interview, giving me valuable advice and offering specificrecommendations for my research despite his tight schedule

Finally, carrying out this thesis is like a completely new and terrificadventure to me From the bottom of my heart, I feel truly grateful to myfamily, my friends, my former teachers and other close acquaintances forstanding by my side as well as taking care of me all the time Theirtremendous support strengthens my motivation to come to the end of thistough but great journey

The global integration creates favorable conditions for cultureexchanges in over the world In addition to cultural artifacts such as clothes,customs, literature, music is also promoted to connect countries to countries,people to people For that purpose, song translation starts to be studied andsongs begin being translated from a language into many languages InVietnam, though song translation has appeared for a long time, it has not beenpaid significant attention The lack of research and professional translators inthis field has led to the limitation of translated song quality, especially fromEnglish into Vietnamese, despite increasing demand of the public Therefore,the study was conducted to find out strategies appropriate for translatingEnglish songs into Vietnamese by analysing Vietnamese translated versions oftwo songs which were Lemon Tree by Garden Fools and At My Worst by PinkSweat$ 20 translation and interpreting majored students at Faculty of Englishlanguage teacher education (FELTE), University of Languages andInternational Studies (ULIS) were invited to attend a lecture in which sevenstrategies suggested by Lefevere were presented The translations of LemonTree and At My Worst were done by students before and after the lecture werecollected and investigated based on the framework of Trương Vân Ánh (2020).Besides the questionnaire handed out to the participants, an interview with anexpert was held to gather evaluation on the translations as well as strategies Inconclusion, metrical translation was applied in translating songs most by thestudents and target texts 2 (TT2) recognized to convey more musical valuesthan target texts 1 (TT1) However, meaning connotation was seen to still beprioritized than non-linguistic aspects such as rhythms in translated songs

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 The number of words and syllables in the

chorus part of “Lemon Tree”

Table 2 The number of words and syllables in the

chorus part of “At My Worst”

Table 3 Singability comparison between ST and TT2

Figure 4.1 Song translation strategies applied in

translating songs by studentsFigure 4.2 Students’ assessment on the

effectiveness of translation strategies

on their work

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Research aims and research questions 2

1.3 Significance of the study 3

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Structure of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Song 5

2.2 Translation 5

2.2.1 Song translation 7

2.3 Strategies in song translation 8

2.3.1 Translation strategies 8

2.3.2 Song translation strategies 9

2.4 Translation quality assessment 12

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 15

3.1 Selection of subjects 15

3.1.1 Setting 15

3.1.2 Participants 15

3.2 Data collection 16

3.2.1 Testing 16

3.2.2 Questionnaire 17

3.2.3 Semi- structured Interview 18

3.2.4 Data collection procedures 19

3.3 Data analysis procedure 21

3.4 The analysis of the source text in accordance with Truong’s framework 22

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 25

4.1 Comparison of Source Text and Target Texts 25

4.1.1 Song 1 25

4.1.2 Song 2 29

4.2 Result of the questionnaire 34

4.3 Result of the interview 36

4.4 Discussion of the findings 37

4.4.1 Opinions of students on the effects that applied strategies have on translated versions 37

4.4.2 Opinions of the experts on the strategies 38

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 39

5.1 Summary of the findings 39

5.2 Limitation of the study 40

5.3 Suggestion for further research 40

REFERENCES 41

APPENDICES 44

Appendix 1: Online Test 44

Appendix 2: Lecture Plan 45

Appendix 3: Questionnaire 53

Appendix 4: Participants’ translations 55

Appendix 5: Interview 72

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter offers a succinct overview of the whole research by introducing the researcher’s intentions to do the study, the research aim and significance as well as the scope and structure of the study Additionally, two research questions are revealed in order to present a clearer orientation of the research.

1.1 Rationale of the study

Since the earliest civilizations came into existence, human beings haveconstantly desired to exchange and spread culture History has witnessed a number

of culture transmission methods employed by groups of people in society andtranslation is always an outstanding way to transmit culture In our commonknowledge, culture is perceived as every value and practice that people havecreated or done in a social environment Due to its importance in shaping our socialrelationships, forming our daily experience, maintaining social orders, and definingthe world, culture has actively been elaborated within sociology Harris (1980)viewed culture as “learned and shared behavior”, something in which feelings areexpressed through many facets encompassing language, religion and art Whilelanguage plays a pivotal role in every aspect of life and religion serves as a prop ofhuman beliefs, art exists as a testament for cultural progress and achievements.Among the art types, the popularity of music can obviously be seen worldwide

In the course of history, music is considered one of the most treasuredcreations of humankind When the first composers realized that music couldcombine with speeches to describe the outside world, songs were created withemotional melodies and meaningful lyrics Through songs, people expressthemselves, discover unexpectedly imaginative ideas in their minds and makefriends with people of different backgrounds Along with the global integration,music has been spreading over the geographic boundaries, from a country to othercountries, from a region to other regions And to deliver hidden connotations ineach piece of music, songs have been translated

However, unlike musicians who write songs by adding melodies andrhythms into verbal sentences, translators have to make every effort to maintain the

musicians’ original intention and create a singable song as well Despite thesignificance of music in our daily lives, song translation did not draw muchattention until recently Although there has been a variety of research concerningapproaches to translate songs (Low, 2005), choices in song translation (Franzon,2008), most of the research focused on song translation within Europe and notmany studies were conducted on strategies that are appropriate for translating songs

of different languages

In Vietnam, due to the invasion of overseas cultures, an increasing number

of people are listening to foreign language songs, especially English ones Thistendency has led to the creation of many Vietnamese translated versions of Englishsongs Though several research has been done, song translation has not been paidgreat attention to by professional translators in general and interpreting andtranslation majored students in particular An enormous demand for Vietnamesetranslation versions of English songs has emerged, leading to the increasingconcern about this field However, songs are still mostly translated by non-professional translators like students

The study is carried out to investigate strategies applied to translate Englishsongs into Vietnamese by students at University of Languages and InternationalStudies, Vietnam National University (ULIS, VNU), specifically translation andinterpreting majored students in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education(FELTE) The purpose of this study is to give the students an overview of songtranslation, thereby, encouraging them to elaborate in this field as well as applyingproper strategies to translate songs successfully Besides, it is anticipated to findout a basic set of strategies used to translate English songs into Vietnamese,contributing to the shortcomings of previous works on this topic

1.2 Research aims and research questions

The research aims at finding out what strategies are adopted in translatingEnglish songs into Vietnamese by FELTE students and the effects of thosestrategies on the translations by comparing the original songs and the translationsaccording to six rules suggested by Trương (2020) which are singability, word and

syllable quantity, rhymes and rhythms, keywords, themes and grammar accuracy.Besides, it is hoped to form a basic foundation of proper strategies in translatingEnglish songs into Vietnamese.

This study is intended to address these two following questions:

Question 1: What strategies are adopted in translating English songs into

Vietnamese by translation and interpreting majored students of FELTE?

Question 2: To what extent do the applied strategies affect the quality of the

translation?

1.3 Significance of the study

Until quite recently, musical materials have traditionally been consideredoutside the borders of translation studies (Franzon, 2008) He added that the lack ofprofessional identity as to the people translating songs might be a reason behindthis neglect In fact, songs are currently being translated mostly by musicenthusiasts Since only a small number of translators are practicing in this area,song translation cannot stimulate great interest among scholars Additionally,concerning the belittlement of song translation, Susam Sarajeva (2008) supposedthat the complexities and challenges viewed from a methodological and a multi-disciplinary viewpoint may also be some of the barriers for research on thetranslation of songs Therefore, this study is conducted with the hope to provide thestudents of FELTE who want to be future translators with insights into the practice

of translating songs in general and English - Vietnamese song translation inparticular

Since songs are one of the most important cultural symbols of humankindand translating songs is reproducing a part of culture, another aim of the study is tobenefit students in studying English and other majoring subjects Besides, it is alsoanticipated that the research will identify the strategies employed by FELTEstudents when dealing with musical unique characteristics, semasiology andaesthetics as well, thereby contributing to the development of theoreticalfoundation of English -Vietnamese song translation and becoming a useful source

of reference for further studies

1.4 Scope of the study

20 third and fourth-year students majoring in English translation andinterpreting in FELTE are chosen to participate in the study Those students notonly have a good command of both English (source language) and Vietnamese(target language) but also are similar with translation theory and basic translationskills These students are assigned to translate two selected songs and do aquestionnaire

Lemon Tree performed by Fool’s Garden and At My Worst by Pink Sweat$.These two are included in the top - listened on online platforms, especially Tiktok,

in Vietnam However, there have been no successful translations that are singableyet

1.5 Structure of the study

The research is divided into five chapters and the content was arranged asfollows:

Chapter 1 – INTRODUCTION – gives an overview of the study In thischapter, the rationale to choose the thesis topic, the aims and research questions arerevealed Besides, the scope and the significance and the structure of the study arealso provided

Chapter 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW – goes through the results of theprevious studies within related field and revises background knowledge in order toform the theoretical frameworks of the research

Chapter 3 – METHODOLOGY – indicates the orientations of the study.This chapter describes the methods and instruments used in doing the researchcontaining data collection and analyzing techniques

Chapter 4 – FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS – presents translated versionsdone by translation and interpreting majored students of FELTE Following that,translated songs are assessed based on Truong’s framework with six aspects andthen the strategies applied in the process of translating songs are pointed out as well

Chapter 5 – CONCLUSION – summarizes what has been found out in thestudy Comments are given and limitations of the research are mentioned so thatfurther studies of the similar topics can take it as potential reference to investigate.

At the end of the study, the list of references is presented

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter establishes a bond for the study by looking over previous studies pertaining definitions of song, translation, song translation, strategies in song translation and translation quality assessment.

2.1 Song

Franzon (2008), in an article written about the choices in song translation,

described ‘song’ as “a piece of music and lyrics – in which one has been adapted tothe other, or both to one another – designed for a singing performance” Amongthree aforementioned features, Franzon suggested that the third one was the mostcrucial Similarly, Gorlée (2002) proposed that “a song in a printed score wouldstill indicate a singing performance as its full or final realization” In summary, theterm ‘song’ refers to the combination of music and verbal language created to servesinging performance

2.2 Translation

The twenty-first century has witnessed the unprecedented development oftranslation Millions of people are moving around the world to find out newopportunities and better lives Translation has become a separate study concerned

by a number of theorists Because of its complexity, a variety of explanations forthis concept have been given

Oxford learner’s dictionary defines ‘translation’ as either “the process ofchanging something that is written or spoken into another language” or “the process

of changing something into different form” In the eyes of laymen, ‘translation’ ismerely a linguistic process in which a translator needs to be fluent in bothlanguages to transfer a source text into a competent target text The fact that therole of the translators has been depreciated is shown with this assumption.Although realizing the importance of the translator in the translation process,Catfold (1965, p.1) put emphasis on linguistic aspects of translation and evolves histranslation theory by examining linguistic characteristics including extent, meaning,level of languages, phonological and graphological translation The distinguishedScottish linguist and phonecian wrote down in his research that translation was the

process of rendering a text from one language into another language but thesemantic relations between two languages were paid little attention to Similarly,Newmark (1988) also mentioned the term ‘translation’ as the practice of depicting asource language text into a target language without changing the author’s originalintention He defined semantic translation as the practice focusing on sourcelanguage (SL) and to be used to transfer expressive texts while communicativetranslation was inclined to target language (TL) and convey informative texts.Newmark held the belief that there was no extremism in translation due to thedifference between linguistic aspects The developments in Newmark’s theory can

be obviously seen, however, his understanding of translation is still confined tolinguistic level

In a broader perspective, Nida (1964, p.12) stated that translation conveyedthe closest lexical and stylistic equivalence of the source language text In his view,translation was regarded as an art and the perfect translation was the one viewed asthe original version, not a translated version Different from Newmark (1988), Nida(1964, p.4) believed “each language has its own genius, and anything that can besaid in one language can be said in another” By focusing on “the closest naturalequivalence” of the source language message, one could find out the way to get anideal translation Also widening the concept of translation, Bassnett (1988), cited

by Jixing (2013) in the article named Translation Definitions in DifferentParadigms, “translation is not only a kind of pure lingual activity but also a kind ofcommunication intra-culture and inter-culture.” Although sharing the same thoughtwith Newmark that no languages had structures, syntax, and vocabulary in commonand there was no translation identical to the original, she opined that translatorscould make adjustments to fill in the blanks created by the lack of equivalents inthe target text Translation, in Bassnett’s view, is not just a straightforward processbut it has become a form of rewriting The status of translators regains its worthyappreciation

2.2.1 Song translation

For a long time, the translation of songs has been a controversial issue thatprovokes a lot of discussions among scholars within the field The term ‘songtranslation’ was regarded as a type of constrained translation introduced by Titfold(1982) in a research on the restriction of verbal text as a consequence of space,synchronicity and visual scenes in subtitling Agreeing on this definition, Mayoral,Kelly and Gallardo (1988) in their research suggested that all types of translationthat not only involve written texts but also the influence of media – related aspectssuch as images or music could be counted in constrained translation and all kinds ofconstrained translation require a semiological approach taking the presence off non-linguistic codes into consideration, not linguistic factors alone

In a completely different opinion, other scholars considered song translation

as poetry translation As noted by Franzon (2008), the way in which song lyricswere shaped the same as the way a poem is organized Both songs and poems have

a certain level of complexity due to their textual structure According to Jakobson(1960), rhyme, metre, rhythm and parallelism could be included in a collection ofcommon principle variations in poetry and the experience of verbal flow produced

by the interplay of sounds is equal to that of musical tempo Jakobson supposedthat it was impossible to translate poetry except for using transposition due to itsown linguistic form and aesthetics it had to hold Lê (2010) regarded song andpoem translation as a special kind of translation called normal translation combinedwith partial phonological translation Normal translation was to deliver threeaspects including vocabulary- grammar, semantics (content) and pragmatics (theimpact of the text on the reader) from ST into TL However, for several types oftexts such as poems and songs which contained special factors, the translator had

to put one out of three in priority Contrary to those viewpoints, Low (2005)indicated the difference between song translation and poem translation andsuggested that song translation should focus on five features: singability, sense,naturalness, rhythm and rhyme

Though there were various connotations for the concept of ‘song translation’,

to be a translated version of a song, a second version of a source song had tomaintain important musical values and/ or lyrics and/ or sung performance to bereplicated in a TL (Frazon, 2008)

2.3 Strategies in song translation

2.3.1 Translation strategies

The term ‘strategy’ was hardly investigated in translation studies and needsmore precise definitions (Lörscher, 1991) Lörscher conceptualized a translationstrategy as “a potentially conscious procedure for the solution of a problem which

an individual is faced with when translating a text segment from one language intoanother language” and divided strategies of translation into ‘global’ and ‘local’strategies As cited by Plonska (2014), the aim of global strategies was to respondthe question “how to translate this text or this kind of text”, while local strategiesput emphasis on the question “how to translate this structure/ this idea/ this item”

Newmark (1988) contributed to the theory of translation and gave the classicconcept of translation methods and translation procedures Although the names aredifferent, translation methods and procedures are obviously indicated to be equal toglobal and local strategies respectively Newmark also mentioned the distinctionbetween translation methods and translation procedures in his study stating that

“while translation methods relate to the whole texts, translation procedures are usedfor sentences and smaller units of language” He classified translation procedures asfollows

- Transference: is a process of transferring a SL word to a TL text

- Naturalisation: adapts the SL word first to the normal pronunciation, then

to the normal morphology (word-forms) of the TL

- Through translation: is the literal translation of the SL text

- Shift or Transposition: involves a change in the grammar from SL to TL

- Modulation: involves a change of viewpoint, perspective and thought

- Cultural equivalent: A SL cultural word is translated by a TL cultural word

- Functional equivalent: is the use of a cultural free word to neutralize orgeneralize the SL word.

- Descriptive equivalent: is that the meaning of the SL word is explained inseveral words

- Couplets: combine two, three or four of the above-mentioned proceduresrespectively for dealing with a single problem

- Reduction and expansion: is rather imprecise translation procedures,sometimes practised intuitively by the translator

- Paraphrase: is an amplification or explanation of the meaning of a segment

a highly individual kind, which are applied when a source-language text istransferred into the target-language” and which “can, but need not, result in anoptimal translation” Whereas, translation methods “are supra individual, tried andtested procedures which, when applied systematically by the translator, guarantee ahigh degree of success”

Considering previous theories, Kearn (2009) in Routledge Encyclopedia orTranslation studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, supposed thatstrategies and procedures were substitutable in the field of translation

2.3.2 Song translation strategies

When it comes to song translation, Low (2013) suggested three strategiesused to translate songs which are translation, adaptation and replacement Lowpointed out that translation was a very close rendition of the original lyrics in the

TL without changing the tune Rather similarly, adaptation referred to a moresemantic rendition of the original lyrics in the target language by keeping the tunesame Unlike the two aforementioned strategies, replacement referred to the

rewriting of the original text with many changes in theme, setting and structure butthe tune was maintained Based on Low’s framework, Franzon (2008) widened histheory of song translation and introduced a group of five strategies including: i.Leaving the song untranslated, ii Translating the lyrics without taking the musicinto account, iii Writing new lyrics to the original music with no similarities withthe original lyrics, iv Translating the lyrics and adapting the music by taking theoriginal music into account v Adapting the translation to the original music.

Several well-known authors including Nida (1964), Bassnett (2002), Raffel(1988) and Newmark (1991) shared the same idea on the role of song as a part ofthe literature Accordingly, song lyrics were stated to be a form of poetry thatrequires far more complicated translation Songs were considered a kind of writtentext that could be conceived as “poetry set to music” by Nida (1964) To find outthe solutions for poetry translation, some researchers have formed their own poetrytranslation strategies Rafell (1988) paid attention to audiences and introduced fourways to translate poems, namely formal translations, interpretive translations,expansive translations, and imitative translations Lefevere (1992), who had spentmany years doing research on poetry translation, also supposed that songs held thesame aspects as poetry and offered seven strategies of translation for poetry asfollows

- Phonemic Translation: focuses on the sound in the TL while attemping toparaphrase the meaning The change of words and structures can maintain thesound but reduce the naturalness and the meaning However, the differencebetween the sounds of two languages is usually so wide that the results are rarelyobtained

- Literal Translation: is concerned with translating words singly rather thanmeaning of the whole expression Translators try to be faithful to the content of STand at the same the the parttern and structure of ST tries to be kept However, asthere is no absolute correspondence between languages, this strategy may leads tothe reduction in communicative value of TT which makes the readers hard tounderstand

- Metrical Translation: maintains the rhythms as well as the content of thesource song To retain the rhythms, the source meaning tends to be distorted.

- Verse into Prose Translation: transfers the lyric of the ST into anotherliterary form The meaning is kept smoothly but the sense is lost

- Rhymed Translation: emphasizes the transfer of the rhyme of the originalsong into the translation in the TT It means that the translator has to rhyme thetranslation based on the schemes in TL Therefore, it requires the translator to havenot only a profound understanding of poetry, the author’s artistic creation and theoriginal song’s spirit so that she/ he can reproduce the same effect in the TT

- Blank Verse Translation: attempts to create a translation with the stylisticqualities of the TL culture in the pattern of the source text while trying to save themeaning of the original text There is no need to take formal values such as rhyme,rhythm Level of accuracy and literalness to the source text is higher

- Interpretation: creates a new version based on translators’ interpretation ofthe original song The content of the source lyric is still maintained but the structurecan be changed

It can be obviously seen that Lefevere offered translation strategies meetingthe requirements for translated version of a song which are the maintenance ofmusical values, lyric retainment, and sung performance Among the sevenstrategies, Interpretation is considered the freest method which enables thecreativity of translators in reproducing a new version based on the source song Atthe same time, though Phonemic Translation is such an ideal strategy to apply, it, infact, is impossible for languages with different phonemic systems and there are sofew language share the same phonemic systems in the world

In A Textbook of Translation, Newmark (1988) offered 8 translationmethods in which Adaptation is stated to be suitable for translating literary textssuch as poem and songs In Lefevere’s translation strategies, Blank VerseTranslation bears the similarities to Adaptation The two aforementioned preservesthe themes, characters, plots of source texts and converts SL culture to TL culture

Taking the previous works into consideration, the researcher realized thatthe thorough understanding of poetry translation significantly contributes to songtranslation studies and decided to choose Lefevere’s framework to apply in thisresearch.

2.4 Translation quality assessment

Translation quality assessment was called the heart of every translationtheory by House (2015) To ensure the optimal quality of the translation, translationquality assessment is applied by the translators Many assessment models havebeen proposed to evaluate a translation

According to Larson (1984), there were six ways to check and evaluate thequality of a translation including comparison with source language, back-translation, comprehension tests, naturalness tests, readability tests and finallyconsistency checks Meanwhile, Farahzad (1992, p.274) suggested another modelcovering five criteria which are accuracy, appropriateness, naturalness, cohesionand style of discourse/word choice

Unlike other types of text, songs are unique due to their complicatedstructure including music and lyrics Therefore, to evaluate a translation of a song,there has to be a specific assessment model In his research, Low (2005) offeredthat the song translation version in TL has to concentrate on five features, namelysingability, sense, naturalness, rhythm and rhyme Low called the collection of fivefeatures as Pentathlon Principle More specifically than Low, Trương (2020)proposed a set of rules for song translation as follows:

- Singability: means that the translated lyrics have to be singable The role ofthe translator is emphasized in this principle as the translator is in charge of puttingverbal words into fixed music The translated version has to match the melody ofthe source song

Singability was regarded as the most important rule in translating songs intoTLs and can be understood as the suitableness in terms of lyrics and melody whichcontained syllables, tones, rhymes and other musical values (Nguyễn, 2014)

- Word and syllable quantity: means that the translated lyrics need to havethe same number of syllables as the original one, which makes the translator add orreduce the number of words to ensure the balance in the syllable number betweensource and target text This can leads to a change in meanings.

According to Đoàn (2019), while English was contributed by multi-syllablewords, Vietnamese contained only one-syllable words; therefore, when translating

a song, an English word had to be sarapated into single syllables to match themusical note while each Vietnamese word fitted one meter

- Rhymes and rhythms: means that the translation must follow the rhythmsand the rhyming scheme of the original song To remain rhymes in the translatedversion is considered the most challenging task in song translation process

According to Low (2005), rhyme and rhythm were among the most difficultfactors to guarantee in translating songs into TLs, especially translations betweenVietnamese and Indo-European languages such as English Sharing the similarview, Lê (2010) supposed that one of three aspects including vocabulary - grammar,semantics (content) and pragmatics could be chosen to prioritize when translatingsongs and rhymes as well as rhythms had to be taken into account by translators Interms of rhythms, the crucial principle in translating songs was that each syllablehad to match a musical note for the song to be singable (Lê, 2010) However, insome cases, several syllables were connected to only one musical note and only asyllable was emphasized The song could be sung but it was technically difficult forthe singer

Regarding rhyme, rhyme in English is divided into various types fordifferent purposes Based on the position of rhyme, Delaney (2003) broke rhymedown into two types including internal rhyme and end rhyme Rhyme was alsodivided into single, double and dactylic in accordance with the number of syllablesmatching in sounds Thompson (2006) considered the possibility of soundmatching to classify rhyme into perfect rhyme and imperfect rhyme In Vietnamese,there are many ways to classify rhyme according to the position of the rhyme andsound matching as well Besides, even and uneven tones are also one of factors to

divide types of rhymes In this research, the researcher chose the classification ofsound matching possibility with perfect and imperfect rhyme to study.

- Keywords: means that the translation must keep the same keywords as theoriginal version by using appropriate equivalents in the TL Translators may changethe order of the words or even sentences; however, metaphor and metonomy ofsource text should be kept in target text

- Themes: have to be recreated in the TL along with the context Besides,emotions and impacts of souce songs on listeners are also delivered to create awhole picture in TL like in source language

- Grammar accuracy: means that the translation must be grammaticallycorrect in TL Nguyen (2014) supposed that translating from Engling intoVietnamese was easier for Vietnamese translators in terms of controlling grammars

as Vietnamese was their mother-tongue However, carelessness in translationprocess may cause annoying mistakes which leads to unclear and hard-to-understand sentences

Realizing that Truong’s framework is suitable for the study, the researcherdecided to use it

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter demonstates how the research is processed by describing the setting and participants of the research Specific instruments including testing, questionnaire and interview and the way they are applied in this study are given detailed description to.

3.1 Selection of subjects

3.1.1 Setting

The research was conducted at the Faculty of English Language and TeacherEducation (FELTE), in University of Languages and International studies (ULIS),Vietnam national university, where translation and interpreting oriented studentshave to attend four translation courses including translation practice, advancedtranslation, specialized translation, specialized translation and translation theory.These courses are designed with the aim of providing students with requiredknowledge and translation skills so that they can work successfully as professionals

in the future

Juniors and seniors are the participants in these courses During each course,they have the opportunities to practise translating texts of various popular themessuch as economics, culture and law The materials for translation activities arecarefully chosen under a different number of forms including official texts, news,poems, etc With the instruction of experienced and highly qualified lecturers,translation students can enhance their skills and knowledge through in-classactivities, group projects as well as personal assignments

2 translation courses offered by FELTE, acquired a profound understanding oftranslation theory and gained translation training through practice assignmentsthose courses provide.

20 selected participants attended a lesson designed by the researcher, inwhich they had to complete a paper test and joined several activities supporting theprocess of leaning new song translation strategies

The students had to do the paper test twice For the first time, they wereasked to translate 2 paragraphs from two songs, namely “Lemon Tree” and “At myworst” after being introduced and listening to the two songs Then, a lesson abouttranslation strategies suggested by Lefevere was delivered to them by theresearcher The participants were required to complete the same task as at thebeginning; however, the newly-learnt strategies had to be applied when translatingsongs this time At the very end of the lesson, copies of questionnaire were handedout to the participants so that the researcher could deepen out their feelings andexperiences when utilizing Lefevere’s translation strategies

To assess the effectiveness of the use of those strategies in translating songsfrom English into Vietnamese, an interview with a highly experienced expert wasconducted The interviewee was an excellent lecturer, researcher as well asprofessional translator from Translation and Interpreting Moreover, he had beenstudying song translation for many years and had articles published in this field.With the expert’s feedbacks on strategies specially applied for song translation, theresearcher hoped to see the strengths as well as limitations of those strategies andreceive some suggestions to apply those strategies efficiently

3.2 Data collection

3.2.1 Testing

It is said that when a study involves measuring performance, a test isneccessary to check the subjects This is an effective instrument to evaluate whatparticipants can remember or do physically or mentally Applying the method oftesting in research also helps to indicate effectiveness of song translation strategiesadoption as well as limitations in theory application

The online test used in this study is composed of two chorus parts takenfrom two famous songs named “Lemon Tree” and “At My Worst” They arepopular among the youth and have become trends in some networking sites inVietnam in 2020, especially Tiktok; therefore, it is not too strange for theparticipants.

That the translator was capable of singing a song meant to be translated isone of the pivotal factors in translating a song (Truong, 2020) In order to motivatethe translation process, two aforementioned songs were briefly introduced to theparticipants and played so that they could get familiar with the songs and knew how

to sing them at the beginning of the lesson After that, they were assigned to do atranslation task in which they had to translate 2 paragraphs which were chorus parts

of “Lemon Tree” and “At My Worst” including five to seven sentences for eachsong The test was done personally from their own knowledge in 20 minutes Oncethe task was finished, the researcher continued to give a lecture of Lefevere’stranslation strategies containing Phonemic Translation, Literal Translation,Metrical Translation, Verse into Prose Translation, Rhymed Translation, BlankVerse Translation, and Interpretation to the participants Following each strategies,relevant samples were given and explained to the participants so that they couldcomprehend the strategies as clearly as possible For checking the students’perception of newly-learnt strategies, 20 copies of the same task as they had done atthe beginning of the lesson were given out The students had to apply novelstrategies to the had learned to translate them again in about 20 minutes

The materials and samples for the lesson were designed and prepared by theresearcher

3.2.2 Questionnaire

According to Brown (2001), “questionnaires are any written instruments thatpresent respondents with a series of questions or statements to which they are reacteither by writing out their answers or selecting from among existing answers.”When the researcher needs to deal with a large amount of information from anumber of respondents, questionnaire is the most practical means

The questionnaire used in this study covered both open- and closed- formitems While it was easier to collect and analyze data from responses to closedquestions, open questions were better at reflecting accurately what the attendantswants to say (Nunan, 1992) Therefore, by applying a mixture of closed and openquestions, the conductor could obtain not only quanlitative but quantitative data aswell.

20 copies of questionnaire were handed out to the students at the end of thelesson with the purpose of looking into their comments on the new strategiesapplied for song translation they had learned to highlight the effectiveness thosestrategies brought about compared to general strategies in translating songs.Besides, it is anticipated that demerits of this famework could be indicated thanks

to the annalysis of difficulties faced by students when they applied those strategies

to do song translation task

There were 5 questions in the questionnaire For close-ended questions, theparticipants answered by choosing from ready-made response options designed bythe researcher The respondents also decided what and how to answer openquestions

The first question was about the translation strategies chosen to apply intranslating songs by FELTE students and the reasons why they had chosen thosestrategies

The reflection on the new song translation strategies was expressed in thequestion 2 and 3 The researcher hoped to realize their difficulities when applyingthe strategies and their comparison between before and after learning the newstrategies

Based on 6 criteria suggested by Truong (2020), question 4 was designed todiscover the effects the strategies had on translations And the final question was tolook for some reccommendations to enhance the strategies from the respondents

3.2.3 Semi- structured Interview

The research interview was defined as “a two-person conversation initiated

by the interviewer for the specific purpose of obtaining research – relevant

information, and focused by him on content specified by research objectives ofsystematic description, prediction, or explanation.”(Cannel & Kahn, 1986) Thistype of instrument enabled the researcher to collate and deepen into the qualitativedata from the respondents through predetermined questions.

A semi-structured interview was conducted in this study with the aim toverifying the effectiveness of translation strategies applied for song translationintroduced by the researcher Moreover, limitations in theory application andreccommendations for enhancement from experts in the field were hoped to beelaborated in

An expert in translation and translation teaching was invited to a privateinterview The interview was held online for the convenience of the interviewee.The interviewee was sent the content of thesis beforehand via gmail Scanned oftranslation works done by FELTE students both before and after they learned songtranslation strategies were received by the interviewee at the beginning of theinterview Singability, content, rhymes and rhythms should be focused on to verifythe success of the translation The interviewee was expected to give comments onthe differences between 2 versions and reccommendations for applying thosestrategies in song translation to take the best advantage of them The interview wasrecorded for analysis process

3.2.4 Data collection procedures

Step 1: Contact participants

Invitations including the summary of the thesis and the purposes of theresearcher were sent to the participants who are 20 FELTE students and the expertvia gmail Data collection activities containing paper test, questionnaire andinterviews were conducted only when the participants gave the permissions Placeand time had been announced at least one week before the activities took place anddetailed plan of each activities were clearly provided for participants Participants’personal information was kept completely confidential

Step 2: Deliver a lesson, conduct paper test and collect questionnaire

20 students were invited to attend the lesson which happened at a lectureroom in ULIS so that it could be convenient for the participants.

Though the overview of the thesis was given to the participants beforehand, theresearcher’s information, a brief summary and the purposes of the activities thestudents joined were introduced again in order that they gained an understanding ofwhat they had to do

The students had to do the test twice - at the beginning and the end of thelesson After each draft, the researcher collected the handouts which werequanlitative data20 copies of questionnaire regarding their experiences with thenew song translation strategies were distributed to the students after the second test.Once those copies were finished, they were kept by the researcher for quantitativedata

At the very end of the lesson, the researcher expressed gratitude to theattendants for supporting Requirements and questions from the participants werealso listened to and given answers

Step 3: Initiate interviews

Online and offline interviews were carried out with an expert who wasexperienced in studying song translation The place and time were informed at least

1 week in advance The researcher gave a short introduction of herself and thethesis before starting to interview During the interview, 2 versions of translationworks done by FELTE students were given to the interviewees The intervieweelooked at the handouts and gave comments on the differences between two versions,the limitations of the new strategies and suggestions to use them the mosteffectively Ready-made questions were asked by the researcher to lead theinterview on the right track All the contents in the interviews were recorded tocollect data, which was already revealed to the interviewees

At the end of the interview, sincere gratitude was expressed Allrequirements and questions from the participants were also listened and givenanswers

3.3 Data analysis procedure

Data analysis process was conducted after the data collection process hadbeen completed

Research question 1

After collecting copies of paper test and questionnaire from the participants,the researcher started to analyze data to find out what strategies were applied intranslating songs by interpreting and translation majored FELTE students Thesecond versions of the test were looked into twice so that the reseacher did not missany strategy used in the translation Strategies applied were listed and a table inwhich the frequency of each strategy and examples were noted down was drawn sothat the researcher can know which strategies were used the most and the least

Question 1 in the Questionnaire was investigated to find out their selectedstrategies and the reason for chosing them to translate songs Their difficulties theyhad to face in translation process when applying those strategies were also found inthe question 2 of the questionnaire The researcher noted them down to concludethe result for Research Question 1

Research question 2

To help the researcher come to a conclusion about the effectiveness of theapplication of translation strategies, the data from question 3 and 4 was collected Achart interpreting the opinions of the respondents towards each aspect regardingsingability, melody matching, rhythms and rhymes, keyword retaining, themes andgrammar was created Recommendations from the respondents were read twice andrearranged

The interview recordings were listened several times and turned into script

in letter for easier analysis The researcher collated the comments on FELTEstudents’ works and strategies from the experts by underlying and circling mainideas in the script The data was separated into three table column includingstrengths, limitations and recommendations Examples were taken from the papertest and attached to give evidence

3.4 The analysis of the source text in accordance with Truong’s framework

Song 1

+ Words and syllables

words

The number of syllables

I’m/ turn/ing/ turn/ing/ turn/ing/ turn/ing/

Table 1 The number of words and syllables in chorus part of “Lemon Tree”

+ Rhymes and rhythms

In this part, there is a couple of imperfect rhyme in the first two sentence

“how- why” with the same vowel /a:/ Besides, the composer rhymes in 2 sentences

by utilizing perfect rhyme with “see” and “tree” In the fourth sentence “And allthat I can see is just a yellow lemon tree”, “see” is put in the middle of the sentenceand tree is placed at the end of the sentence There are five words which areequivalent to seven syllables between “see” and “tree” Similarly, in the lastsentence “And all that I can see is just another lemon tree”, there are four wordsrelevant to seven syllables between “see” and “tree” The scheme of rhyming isalso applied in the couple of sentences “I’m turning my head up and down” and

“I’m turning turning turning turning turning around” by using the words “down”and “around” at the end of each sentence respectively

Considering the rhythms, most of the words are divided into separatesyllables so that each syllable could match a meter Some words are used in shortform such as “bout” (about) so that it can fit the meter.

The broad theme of the song is about love in general, and the pains as well

as disappointment of a boy in love in particular

Song 2

+ Words and syllables

Sentences The number of words The number of syllables

I/ need/ some/bo/dy/ who/

can/ love/ me/ at/ my/

worst

Know/ I’m/ not/ per/fect/

but/ I/ hope/ you/ see/ my/

worth

‘Cause/ it’s/ on/ly/ you/,

no/bo/dy/ new/, I/ put/

you/ first

And/ for/ you/, girl/, I/

swear/ I’ll/ do/ the/ worst

Table 2 The number of words and syllables in the chorus part of “At My Worst”

+Rhymes and rhymths

In this part, the rhyme scheme is applied by putting the words containingsimilar sounds at the end of each sentence There are two couples of imperfectrhyme are discovered in this song which are “worst – worth” and “first – worst”

Like the first song, each word in the second song are also separated intosyllables to fit the meters Short form of the word “because” which is “cause” isalso used to make it one-syllable word to match a note

+ Key words

The content of the song could be expressed through some key words;therefore, the composer always has to put emphasis on some certain words Thekey words and key phrases in this part include “love”, “at my worst”, “my worth”,

“only you”, “do the worst”

+ Theme:

Love is the broad theme that covered the song, in which the boy wants todiscover a true love for himself

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the results of the data analysis are demonstrated following with a discussion of the results First, the comparison of Source Text and Target Text 2 as well as that of Target Text 1 and Target Text 2 are investigated based on Truong’s framework (2020) to feature the effectiveness of the application of translation strategies The second section reveals the quantitative findings on students’ feelings of the translation strategies they have learnt Besides, experts’ viewpoints on the effectiveness, pros and cons of the translation strategies along with recommendations for improvements are presented Last but not least, the effects of using strategies in translating songs from English into Vietnamese are mentioned.

4.1 Comparison of Source Text and Target Texts

The two target texts produced by students before (Target text 1) and after(Target Text 2) they were taught the translation strategies were put under analysis.The comparison of Source Text and Target Texts were implemented based onTruong’s framework (2020), with which the source text had been scrunized inadvance

4.1.1 Song 1

Singability

For each line, nearly a half of Target Texts 2 met at least one of therequirements of singability including syllables, tone and other musical values whilethere was no Target Text 1 reaching those standards The number of syllables inmost Target Text 1 was far more than that in the source lyrics Some sentenceswere too long to fit the music while other were too short to be singable with themelody of the song Tone and other musical values were rarely found out in thesetranslations Meaning was paid far more attention than performance

In many translations of TT2, the length of each sentence was quite relevant

to that of each sentence in ST Some translated sentences covered one or two wordsless or more than that of each original line Tones were considered in sometranslations by choosing Vietnamese words containing the tone that was suitable

for the note in SL That means acute accent words go with high notes while graveaccent, underdot, match low notes An example is shown below.

I'm turning my head up and down

I'm turning turning turning turning

Nhưng tất cả gì anh thấy chỉ là một câychanh khác nữa thôi

Table 3 Singability comparison between ST and TT2 of “Lemon Tree”

Word and syllables

Comparing the number of words between the source text and two target texts,the word number of both Vietnamese versions each dominated that of the sourcelyrics Several English words had to be expressed with several Vietnamese words,which created the difference in the number of words between source text and targettexts: “wonder” – “tự hỏi”, “how” – “như thế nào”, “why” – “tại sao”, “all” – “tấtcả”, “yesterday” – “ngày hôm qua”, “around” – “xung quanh”

As English is a multisyllablic language while Vietnamese is monosyllablic,the variations between the syllable of them were inevitable For the first two lines

“I/ won/der/ how” , “I/ won/der/ why” , there were more syllables in target text 1than in source text The first two sentences each contained four syllables but therewere about 5 or 6 syllables for each in the target text 1 and this case happened withsome translations of target text 2 Only three target texts 1 had the same number ofsyllables as the original lyrics However, more than a half of the translations for the

two lines of target text 2 maintain the similar syllable number to the target text 1.For the third line with eleven syllables in source text “Yes/ter/day/ you/ told/ me/

‘bout/ the/ blue/ blue/ sky”, the number of syllables in target text 1 fluctuated fromnine to thirteen while it was from eleven to thirteen for the target text 2 Thesyllable number of the fourth sentence “And/ all/ that/ I/ can/ see/ is/ just/ a/ye/llow/ le/mon/ tree” was fourteen In the target text 1, the number of syllablesvaried from six to sixteen while the smallest number of syllables was nine and thelargest is fourteen, which matched the syllable number of the original version Forthe two next sentences “I’m/ turn/ing/ my/ head/ up/ and/ down” and “ I’m/turn/ing/ turn/ing/ turn/ing/ turn/ing/ turn/ing/ a/round”, the syllable number oftarget text 1 tended to be smaller than of that of the original song There were sometranslations in which two above sentences are combined into one, which led to thereduction in the number of syllables in target text 1 In target text 2, most of thetranslations had the same number of syllables as the source song Several translatedversions had more syllables, especially in the sixth sentence; however, thedistinction was not too large The last sentence “And/ all/ that/ I/ can/ see/ is/ just/an/o/ther/ le/mon/ tree” consisted of fourteen syllables While the number ofsyllables in the first target texts were variable from nine to nineteen, the number ofsyllables in the second target text were in the scale of eleven to seventeen Thedifference between target text 2 and the source text was significantly less than thatbetween target text 1 and the source text

Rhymes and rhymths

After analyzing the source text, three couples of rhymed words including

“how – why”, “see – tree”, “down –round” As aforementioned, rhyme was themost challenging factor in translating songs (Low, 2005) In the target text 1, only afew translations can convey one couple of imperfect rhyme which was “how-why”from English into Vietnamese by using two words sharing the same vowels at theend of the first two sentences

Source Text Target Text 1 Target Tex 2

I wonder how Anh tự hỏi tại sao Tự hỏi thế nào

I wonder why Anh băn khoăn làm như

thế nào

Tự hỏi tại sao

Table 4 Rhyme comparison between ST and TTs of “Lemon Tree”

Similarly, there were not many translated versions could deliver rhymes inthe target text 2 However, in addition to “nào – sao”, several translationssucceeded in delivering “see – tree” into TLs with couples of rhymed words such as

“anh-chanh”, “thấy – đây”

And all that I can see is just a yellow

lemon tree

Sample 1: Và ở trước đôi mắt anh chỉ

có sắc vàng của cây chanh.

Sample 2: Mà hết tất cả anh thấy chỉ là

một cây chanh vàng nơi đây

Table 5 Rhyme comparison between ST and TT2 of “Lemon Tree”

Neither of the target texts could manage to transfer the couple of rhymedwords “down-around”, which showed the high level of difficulty in maintainingrhymes of the songs

The maintenance of the song’s rhythms depended on the retainment of thesyllable number Comparing the number of syllable among the source text and twotarget texts, it can be seen that the difference in the syllable number of source textand translations of target text 1 were much wider than that of source text and targettext 2 That the number of syllables in each sentence in target texts 2 wererelatively equivalent to that in source text enable translations of target texts 2 tofollow the musical notes appropriately

Key words

In terms of key words, both target texts could retain primary words andphrases of the source text The word “wonder” was translated in many ways such asbăn khoăn, suy nghĩ, tự hỏi The most significant phrase of the song, “lemon tree”,was delivered as “cây chanh” in almost all of the translations but in sometranslations, it was analysed and translated in its hidden meaning “nỗi đắng cay”,

“xót xa” The word “turn” was also kept in TL with some equivalents such as

“quay”, “xoay”

Themes

Both of the target texts succeeded in preserving the theme of the source song.Love, disillusion as well as disappoinment of boys in love were expressed asprecisely as the original song

Grammar accuracy

All the translation of target text 1 and target text 2 were carried out byVietnamese people, so there were almost no serious grammatical mistakes made.The order of a sentence followed the rule of Vietnamese grammar – Subject VerbObject However, some expression-related mistakes have happened, which couldlead to disturbance for singers and listeners In target texts, the third sentence “I’mturning my head up and down” was not managed to transfer into Vietnamese insome translated versions of target text 2 It became “ngẩng lên ngầng xuống” or

“đưa đầu lên xuống” “Ngẩng ” is the action of turning head up but there ismeaningless when using “ngẩng xuống” Similarly, “đưa đầu lên xuống” hasunclear and dark meaning Creating a sentence without a subject can be seenpopular in both target text 1 and 2 “I wonder how” was translated into “Tự hỏi làmsao” “I wonder why” is transferred into “Tự hỏi vì sao”

4.1.2 Song 2

Singability

Regarding the melody retainment of the two target texts, there was morelikelihood that translations of the second target text could match the melody of theoriginal song than target text 1 Nearly a half of translations could meet therequirement on the number of syllables Though the sentences in the othertranslations were longer or shorter than those of the source text, they were managed

to be sung for the length of those sentences was one or two longer than that of thesource lyrics Although tones and other factors were put into account, thoserequirements have not been expressed obviously in the translations The song could

be sung but in a very hard way