College of Foreign Languages (VHUN)

Postgraduate Studies

BẠCH ÁNH HỒNG

EQUIVALENCE IN THE TRANSLATION OF VIETNAMESE CULTURAL WORDS IN THE BOOK

“WANDERING THROUGH VIETNAMESE CULTURE” BY HUU NGOC

(TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG CÁCH DỊCH CÁC TỪ CÓ YẾU TỔ VĂN HÓA TRONG CUỐN SÁCH “WANDERING THROUGH

VIETNAMESE CULTURE” CỦA HỮU NGỌC)

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 602215

Course: K13

M.A. Minor Thesis

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến

- Hanoi, July 2007 -

Abstract

This paper is a linguistic study on equivalences and the translation methods rendered to

achieve the equivalent effects in a book written by the writer and translator, Huu Ngoc.

More specifically, the chosen subject of investigation is the translation of Vietnamese

cultural words in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”. The reasons for this

choice are both linguistic and practical.

Linguistically, the translation of culture-related words has never been seen as an easy task,

especially between such two distant cultures as Vietnam and English. The challenges may

originate from cultural differences, the cultural knowledge of the translator etc. However,

the hardest problems may be attached to non- equivalence which consists of the concepts

unknown to target language readers, the non-lexicalization of the concepts, the lack of

super ordinates of hyponyms etc. The main contribution of this paper is to draw out the

main ways of dealing with the hurdles by investigating how an experienced translator and a

famous Vietnamese cultural expert overcome the difficulty in his book.

Practically, I hope that the lessons drawn from the study of his work could effectively

assist me in my practical job at my university, where a Vietnamese Studies Department is

to be opened with an aim to train new generation of youngsters who will narrow down the

culture gaps between Vietnam and other countries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On the completion of this thesis, I am indebted to many people.

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc.

Prof. Dr. Le Hung Tien for his valuable and prompt advice and helps, without which, this

thesis could not come into being.

My thanks also go to all my lecturers and officers from Post Graduate Department,

College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, who have facilitated me with

the best possible conditions during my whole course of studying.

Last but not least, let my gratitude go to my family and friends, whose encouragement and

assistance are of extreme importance during the course of my writing this thesis.

Hanoi, July 2007

Bach Anh Hong

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION..................................................................11. Rationale............................................................................................12. Scope of the study...............................................................................13. Aims of the study................................................................................24. Methodology.......................................................................................25. Design of the study.............................................................................3Chapter 1: Theoretical background......................................................41.1. Translation theory............................................................................41.1.1. Definition of translation................................................................41.1.2. Translation equivalence................................................................41.1.2.1. The nature of equivalence in translation.................................51.1.2.2. Types of equivalence in translation..........................................51.1.3. Common problems of non-equivalence.......................................71.2. Notion of culture in translation.......................................................91.3. Cultural categories.........................................................................101.4. Translation methods......................................................................111.5. Conclusion......................................................................................13Chapter 2: Vietnamese cultural words and their equivalences........142.1. The most common types of cultural words..................................142.2. The most common types of equivalence.......................................142.2.1. Nil equivalence:...........................................................................162.2.2 Other types of equivalence..........................................................252.2.2.1 One-to-part-of one equivalence................................................252.2.2.3 One-to-one equivalence.............................................................31PART C: CONCLUSION.....................................................................33REFERENCES........................................................................................38

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale

Translating from one language into another has never been an easy job even for the most

experienced translators. Translation, involving the transposition of thoughts expressed in

one language by one social group into the appropriate expression of another group, entails

a process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding. However, the process of

transmitting cultural elements is a complicated and vital task. Culture is a complex

collection of experiences which condition daily life; it includes history, social structure,

religion, traditional customs and everyday usage. This is difficult to comprehend

completely. The more disparities that exist between any two languages, the greater the

meaning loss in the translation is. As hard as it may seem, the translation of Vietnamese

cultural words is now an inevitable part in our integrating life since we have become a

member of WTO. Thang Long University is one of those where the Department of

Vietnam Study is going to be opened with an aims of training Vietnamese students into

those who can introduce Vietnamese culture to the world. This sooner or later will pose

teachers of English at Thang Long University a problem of matching cultural equivalence

between English and Vietnamese. However, not many empirical studies have been

conducted so far on the issue of translation of Vietnamese cultural words into English.

Those reasons may explain how this study came into being. The study investigates how a

very famous and experienced translator, Huu Ngoc, dealt with all the Vietnamese cultural

words his whole-hearted work “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”. It also raised the

need for translators of Vietnamese-English texts, especially in treating cultural terms, to

pay close attention to the linguistic and cultural elements of the source texts.

2. Scope of the study

This study sets its boundary in studying cultural words in the book “Wandering through

Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc. It will look into the equivalence and non-equivalence

of Vietnamese cultural words and their translations from the following points:

the most common types of equivalence

the possible reasons for the non-equivalence

their translations

3. Aims of the study

The main aims of the study are:

To find out the most common type of equivalence used in his translation of

Vietnamese cultural words

To draw out the common problems of equivalence seen in the translation of

Vietnamese cultural words into English

To draw out the strategies and procedures that may apply to the translation of

Vietnamese cultural words

To suggest some implications for the translation of the cultural words.

On this ground, the study seeks answer for the retailing research questions:

What are the common types of equivalence used in the translation of cultural

words in the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc?

What are the most common problems in translating Vietnamese cultural words

into English that can be seen in the book?

What are the common methods used in the translation of Vietnamese cultural

words?

4. Methodology

With the hope to go on the right track for the answers, the writer will conduct the study in

following steps:

Building up a theoretical background for the paper.

Collecting and group the Vietnamese cultural words and their English

equivalents for description, analysis, comparison and induction.

Finding out the similarities and differences and draw out the translation used in

the translation of cultural words.

The main method is contrastive analysis.

Data collection: The Vietnamese cultural words and their translations appear in

the book “Wandering through Vietnamese culture” by Huu Ngoc.

5. Design of the study

This study consists of three main parts, a reference, and a number of appendixes.

Part A: Introduction

The introduction gives rationale for the study. It also outlines the aims and the

methods of the study.

Part B: Development

The development comprises two chapters.

Chapter 1, which is named “Theoretical background”, provides the theory of

translation and the translation of cultural words.

Chapter 2 entitled “Cultural words and their equivalences” discusses the most

common types of equivalence in translation of Vietnamese cultural words.

It also studies the translation of Vietnamese cultural words and translation

methods employed in their translation by Huu Ngoc in his book

“Wandering though Vietnamese culture”.

Part C, which is the “Conclusion”, summaries the strategies and procedures and

comments.

Reference includes all the books, articles or website that has been referred to during the

writing of this thesis.

The appendixes list examples of different groups of equivalence in order of the alphabet.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1.1. Translation theory

1.1.1. Definition of translation

Translation has been viewed differently through times and thus defined variously. Larson

(1984: 3) stated “Translation is basically a change of form… In translation the form of the

source language is replaced by the form of the receptor (target) language”. Newmark

(1988:5) did not seem to totally agree with Larson - who considered translation a basic

“change of form”, by emphasizing the “intended in the text” as said “ Translation is

rendering a written text into another language in the way the author intended in the text.”

Hatim & Mason (1990:3), on the other hand, focused more on the communicative purpose

of translation by citing: “Translation is a communicative process which takes place within

a social context”. It is then followed by other linguists, Bell (1991: 5), who thought

“semantic and stylistic equivalences” are crucial for a translation to communicate

successfully: “Translation is the expression in another language (or TL) of what has been

expressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences”

These definitions, in spite of slight differences in the expressions, share common features

that they all emphasize the importance of finding the closest equivalence in meaning by the

choice of appropriate target language’s lexical and grammatical structures, communication

situation, and cultural and the requirement to find equivalents which have similar

characteristics to the original. It is this notion of equivalence, which will be taken into

consideration in the next part.

1.1.2. Translation equivalence

As easily seen, equivalence can be considered a central concept in translation theory.

Therefore, it is not by chance that many theorists define translation in terms of equivalence

relation. Newmark (1988) defines: “The overriding purpose of any translation should be to

achieve ‘equivalence effect’ i.e. to produce the same effect on the readership of translation

as was obtained on the readership of the original”. He also sees equivalence effect as the

desirable result rather than the aim of any translation except for two cases: (a) If the

purpose of the SL text is to affect and the TL translation is to inform or vice versa; (b) If

there is a pronounced cultural gap between the SL and the TL text.

Pym(1992) has even pointed to its circularity: equivalence is supposed to define

translation, in turn, defines equivalence.

1.1.2.1. The nature of equivalence in translation

Equivalence has been considered the unique intertextual relation that only translations are

expected to show: it is defined as the relationship between a source text and a target text

that allows the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place. Nearly all

traditional definitions of translation, whether formal or informal, appeal to some notion of

this: translation means the replacement, or substitution, of an utterance in one language by

a formally or semantically or pragmatically equivalent utterance in another language.

Therefore, it is no surprise that equivalence is always taken for granted as a prescriptive

criterion, as Koller (1995:196) says:

“Translation can be understood as the result of a text-reprocessing activity, by means of

which a source-language text is transposed into a target-language text. Between the

resulting text in L2 (the target-language text) and the source text in L1 (the source-

language text) there exists a relationship which can be designated as a translational, or

equivalence relation.”

Then the question to be asked is not whether the two texts are equivalent, but what type

and degree of translation equivalence they reveal. Therefore, it is possible to say that

equivalence is “Any relation characterizing translation under a specified set of

circumstances.” And “Equivalence was a relationship between two texts in two languages,

rather than between the languages themselves” (Dr. Tien’s lectures- 2007).

1.1.2.2. Types of equivalence in translation

Translation theorists tend to classify equivalence in accordance with different criteria and

approach. Some out standings are quantitative, meaning based, form-based and function

based.

a. Quantitative approach:

Munday (2001) seems to stick to numeracy and suggests:

One-to-one equivalence: A single expression in TL is equivalent to a single

expression in SL.

One-to-many equivalence: More than one TL expressions are equivalent to a

single SL expression.

Many- to-one equivalence: there is more than one expression in the source

language but there is a single expression in target language which is

equivalence to them.

One-to-part-of-one equivalence: A TL expression covers part of a concept

designated by a single SL expression.

Nil equivalence: no TL expression is equivalent to a single SL expression ->

loaned/borrowed equivalents should be used.

b. Meaning-based equivalence

Koller (1979) considers five types of equivalence:

Denotative equivalence: the SL and the TL words refer to the same thing in the

real world.

Connotative equivalence: this type of equivalence provides additional values

besides denotative value and is achieved by the translator’s choice of

synonymous words or expressions.

Text-normative equivalence: The SL and the TL words are used in the same or

similar context in their respective languages.

Pragmatic equivalence: With readership orientation, the SL and TL words have

the same effect on their respective readers.

Formal equivalence: This type of equivalence produces an analogy of form in

the translation by their exploiting formal possibilities of TL, or creating new

forms in TL.

c. Form-based equivalence:

An extremely interesting discussion of the notion of equivalence can be found in Baker

(1992) who seems to offer a more detailed list of conditions upon which the concept of

equivalence can be defined. She distinguishes between:

Equivalence that can appear at word level and above word level, when

translating from one language into another. This means that the translator

should pay attention to a number of factors when considering a single word,

such as number, gender and tense (1992:11-12).

Textual equivalence, when referring to the equivalence between a SL text and a

TL text in terms of information and cohesion. It is up to the translator to decide

whether or not to maintain the cohesive ties as well as the coherence of the SL

text. His or her decision will be guided by three main factors, that is, the target

audience, the purpose of the translation and the text type.

d. Function-based equivalence:

Nida (1964) distinguishes formal equivalence and dynamic translation as basic orientations

rather than as a binary choice:

Formal equivalence is achieved when the SL and TL words have the closest

possible match of form and content.

Dynamic equivalence is achieved when the SL and TL words have the same

effect on their effective readers.

1.1.3. Common problems of non-equivalence

As we all share the view that equivalence is the vital part of translation, we may easily

agree that the problem of non-equivalence is the hardest hurdles of translation. Many

theorists has showed their concerns in the issue of “untranslatability”. The following are

some common types of non-equivalence at word level suggested by Barker (1994: 72):

a. Culture-specific concepts

The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the target

culture. The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to a religious

belief, a social custom, or even a type of food.

b. The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language

The source-language word may express a concept which is known in the target culture but

simply not lexicalized, that is not ‘allocated’ a target-language word to express it.

c. The source-language word is semantically complex

The source-language word may be semantically complex. This is a fairly common problem

in translation. Words do not have to be morphologically complex to be semantically

complex (Bolinger and Sears, 1968). In other words, a single word which consists of a

single morpheme can sometimes express a more complex set of meanings than a whole

sentence.

d. The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning

The target language may make more or fewer distinctions in meaning than the source

language. What one language regards as an important distinction in meaning another

language may not perceive as relevant.

e. The target language lacks a superordinate

The target language may have specific words (hyponyms) but no general word

(superordinate) to head the semantic field. Russian has no ready equivalent for facilities,

meaning ‘any equipment, building, services, etc. that are provided for a particular activity

or purpose’

f. The target language lacks a specific term (hyponym)

More commonly, languages tend to have general words (superordinates) but lack specific

ones (hyponyms), since each language makes only those distinctions in meaning which

seem relevant to its particular environment.

g. Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective

Physical perspective may be of more importance in one language than it is in another.

Perspective may also include the relationship between participants in the discourse (tenor).

h. Differences in expressive meaning

There may be a target-language word which has the same propositional meaning as the

source-language word, but it may have a different expressive meaning.

i. Differences in form

There is often no equivalent in the target language for a particular form in the source text.

Certain suffixes and prefixes which convey propositional and other types of meaning in

English often have no direct equivalents in other languages.

j. Differences in frequency and purpose using specific forms

Even when a particular form does have a ready equivalent in the target language, there may

be a difference in the frequency with which it is used or the purpose for which it is used.

k. The use of loan words in the source text

The use of loan words in the source text poses a special problem in translation. Quite apart

form their respective propositional meaning, loan words such as au fait, chic, and alfresco

in English are often used for their prestige value, because they can add an air of

sophistication to the text or its subject matter.

1.2. Notion of culture in translation

The definition of "culture" as given in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1999) varies from

descriptions of the "Arts" to plant and bacteria cultivation and includes a wide range of

intermediary aspects. More specifically concerned with language and translation,

Newmark (1988:94) defines culture as "the way of life and its manifestations that are

peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression", thus

acknowledging that each language group has its own culturally specific features. He

further clearly states that operationally he does "not regard language as a component or

feature of culture" (Newmark 1988:95) in direct opposition to the view taken by Vermeer

who states that "language is part of a culture" (1989:222). According to Newmark,

Vermeer's stance would imply the impossibility to translate whereas for the latter,

translating the source language (SL) into a suitable form of TL is part of the translator's

role in transcultural communication.

Despite the differences in opinion as to whether language is part of culture or not, the two

notions appear to be inseparable. Discussing the problems of correspondence in translation,

Nida (1964:130) confers equal importance to both linguistic and cultural differences

between the SL and the TL and concludes that "differences between cultures may cause

more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure". It

is further explained that parallels in culture often provide a common understanding despite

significant formal shifts in the translation. The cultural implications for translation are thus

of significant importance as well as lexical concerns.

Lotman (1978:211-32) states that "no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context

of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre, the structure of

natural language". Bassnett (1980:13-14) underlines the importance of this double

consideration when translating by stating that language is "the heart within the body of

culture," the survival of both aspects being interdependent. Linguistic notions of

transferring meaning are seen as being only part of the translation process; "a whole set of

extra-linguistic criteria" must also be considered. As Bassnett further points out, "the

translator must tackle the SL text in such a way that the TL version will correspond to the

SL version... To attempt to impose the value system of the SL culture onto the TL culture

is dangerous ground" (Bassnett, 1980:23). Thus, when translating, it is important to

consider not only the lexical impact on the TL reader, but also the manner in which

cultural aspects may be perceived and make translating decisions accordingly.

1.3. Cultural categories

Adapting Nida, Newmark (1988:95-102) places "foreign cultural words" in several

categories as follows:

(1) Ecology

Animals, plants, local winds, mountains, plains, ice, etc.

(2) Material culture (artifacts)

Food, clothes, housing, transport and communications

(3) Social culture – work and leisure

(4) Organizations, customs, ideas – Political, social, legal, religious, artistic

(5) Gestures and habits (often described in ‘non-verbal’ language)

1.4. Translation methods

Language and culture may thus be seen as being closely related and both aspects must be

considered for translation. When considering the translation of cultural words and notions,

Newmark proposes two opposing methods: transference and componential analysis

(Newmark, 1988:96). As Newmark mentions, transference gives "local colour," keeping

cultural names and concepts. Although placing the emphasis on culture, meaningful to

initiated readers, he claims this method may cause problems for the general readership and

limit the comprehension of certain aspects. The importance of the translation process in

communication leads Newmark to propose componential analysis which he describes as

being "the most accurate translation procedure, which excludes the culture and highlights

the message" (Newmark, 1988:96). This may be compared to the scale proposed by

Hervey et al, visualised as follows:

(Hervey et al, 1992:28)

Nida's definitions (1964:129) of formal and dynamic equivalence may also be seen to

apply when considering cultural implications for translation. According to Nida, a "gloss

translation" mostly typifies formal equivalence where form and content are reproduced as

faithfully as possible and the TL reader is able to "understand as much as he can of the

customs, manner of thought, and means of expression" of the SL context. Contrasting with

this idea, dynamic equivalence "tries to relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevant

within the context of his own culture" without insisting that he "understand the cultural

patterns of the source-language context". All in all, it can be easily seen that the above

approaches are not very much different from what Venuti (1995:20) named “source

language oriented and target language-oriented” translation approach, which may share

some similarities with Newmark’s ( 1988: 145) methods of translation as follows:

SL emphasis TL emphasisWord – for - word translation Adaptation

Literal translation Free translationFaithful translation Idiomatic translation

Semantic translation Communicative translation

Word-for-word translation

This method focuses on SL word order in which words are translated by most common

meaning and out of context. Therefore, the results of this method are that the translation is

read like original text.

Literal translation

The SL text, concretely its grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest

equivalents. In this method, words are translated single and out of text.

Faithful translation

Where the translator reproduces precise contextual meaning. Here, cultural words are not

translated.

Semantic translation

More account is taken on aesthetic value of the SL text and some small concessions are

made to the readers. As a result, the translation is more flexible and less dogmatic than the

application of other methods in the group

Communicative translation

This method attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that

obtained on the readers of the original.

However, according to Peter Newmark (1988), there are only two methods of translation

that are appropriate to any texts. They are as follows.

1) Communicative translation

In this method, translators try to produce the same effect on the TL readers as the

original does on the SL readers

2) Semantic translation

Translators attempt to reproduce the exact contextual meaning of the author with

the constraints of the TL grammatical structures.

Adaptation

This is the ‘freest’ form of translation. It is used mainly for plays (comedies) and poetry;

the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the SL culture converted to the TL

culture and the text rewritten. The deplorable practice of having a play or poem literally

translated and then rewritten by an established dramatist or poet has produced many poor

adaptations have ‘rescued’ period plays.

Free translation

Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form

of the original. Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called

‘intralingual translation’, often prolix and pretentious, and not translation at all.

Idiomatic translation

Idiomatic translation reproduces the ‘message’ of the original but tends to distort nuances

of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where these do not exist in the

original. (Authorities as diverse as Seleskovitch and Stuart Gilbert tend to this form of

likely, ‘natural’ translation.)

1.5. Conclusion

This part of study has just examined general translation theories. It also takes a close look

on the significance of culture and the translation of cultural words. Furthermore, a variety

of different approaches have been examined in an attempt to shed light on Huu Ngoc

translation of cultural words in the next chapter.

Chapter 2: Vietnamese cultural words and their equivalences

2.1. The most common types of cultural words

In his classification of culture words, Newmark (1998) concluded five major categories of

culture words including ecology, material culture (artifacts), social culture – work and

leisure, organisations, customs, ideas and gestures and habits.

In Huu Ngoc’s book, the frequency of material culture, and to be more specific, food is the

highest as compared to other types. The ratio among them can be illustrated in the chart as

follows:

Culture-related words Quantity Rate (%)

Food and drinks 135 45.9%

Others 160 54.1%

2.2. The most common types of equivalence

As mentioned above, there are many approaches to the classification of equivalence in

translation. This thesis adopts Munday (2001)’s perspective of quantitative equivalence

which is consisted of one-to-one equivalence, many- to- one equivalence, one-to-part-of-

one equivalence and nil equivalence. We can hardly find the case of one-to- many

equivalence. Therefore, this kind of equivalence is not taken into consideration.

The writer of the thesis has listed almost all the cultural words occurred in his book and put

them into the order of the most common types of equivalence to the least common one.

The data can be easily find in the table below:

Type of equivalence Quantity Rate (%) Examples

Nil 194 66 Nước vối: “voi tea”

One-to-part-of-one 39

13

Cá kho: fish cooked

with sauce

One-to-one 43

14.6

Miếng trầu: a betel

chew

Many-to-one 19 6.4 Đền, miếu, phủ: temple

Total 295

NilOne-to-part-of-one

One-to-oneMany-to-one

2.2.1. Nil equivalence:

Looking into the translation of “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”, one can easily

see on the chart above that nil-equivalence makes up the largest part, consisting 66%.

Clearly, This is not a surprise to any translator who have ever stepped into the translation

land of culture related words. There are some explanations for this biggest share.

The possible explanation is the availability. Normally, with exactly the same meaning, no

one can say for sure that two cultures could choose to express it the same way. For

example, , Vietnamese people would prefer using the buffalo in many idioms “Ngưu tầm

ngưu, mã tầm mã” but the English would like to use “bird” as in “Birds of the same

feather flocks together”. One other example may be “hiền như củ khoai”, “hiền như bụt”

or “hiền như cục đất” for Vietnamese people but their English counter part would like to

say “as mild as a lamb” (hiền như một chú cừu non). That is the case when two cultures

express the same meaning. As a consequence, one can easily guess what the situation will

be like when there are abundant of things in Source Language (SL) culture but there is no

such things Target Language (TL) culture.

The first problem occurs when the Vietnamese word may express a concept which is

totally unknown in the target language culture. To be more exact, those words often link to

food and many kinds of tropical herbs and plants. For instances:

Tía tô Hoa đơn Cải cúc

Hẹ Hoa thị Mùi hoặc Ngổ

Húng Hoa mộc Lá khúc

Ngổ Hoa thiên lý Diếp cá

Lá chanh Hoa ngâu Gạo tẻ, gạo nếp

The explanation to this situation may be the climate differences. Vietnamese climate is hot

and humid which is home to many tropical kinds of plants while the English climate is cold

and dry, which may be suitable to totally different kinds of plants. Therefore, it can be

easily understood while there are a lot of tropical plant culture-related words in his book

which may not be known to English readers.

This may also be the reason for the second group of non-equivalence which is dishes.

Different kinds of vegetables / herbs may lead to different ways of cooking, which leads to

the existence of exotic Vietnamese dishes to Englishman. For examples:

Xôi gấc Thịt kho tàu Cua đồng nấu thiên lý

Xôi vò Gà tần thuốc bắc Miến lươn

Xôi đỗ Chả lươn Giả cày

Living on land, Vietnamese (and Chinese) peasants also have their own festivals, customs

or ceremonies relating to land, rice or grains, trees with special attention paid to the

weather, especially rain. For instances:

Lễ cầu đảo (cầu mưa) Lập Xuân Tết Đoan Ngọ (diệt sâu bọ)

Tết Hàn Thực Cốc Vũ Dựng cây nêu ngày tết

Tết Trung Thu Tết Ông Công Ông Táo Đi hái lộc

Additionally, the traditional games and entertainments of the Vietnamese are also various:

Trồng Nụ, Trồng Hoa Ô ăn quan Đánh thẻ

Múa khèn Múa sư tử Múa chiêng

Those mentioned categories are like only the tip of the Vietnamese culture iceberg which

can be roughly listed as illustrations for the diversity of the source language culture.

Clearly, this poses a huge challenge to the translator and the writer.

So that will happen if the translator has to face with the translation of culture-related

concepts? Looking into the translation of those nil-equivalents words, one can clearly see

that the first common translation tool that is fully made use of is borrowings.

First of all, looking at the group of typically tropical plants and vegetables, Huu Ngoc uses

the third language, that is, Latin as a medium for translation. He tends to use the scientific

terms of the plants to translate the Vietnamese words. For instances:

Cây sấu : dracontomelum duppereanum Pierre

Gạo tẻ : Oryza sativa Lin var dura

Gạo nếp : Oryzasativa Lin glutinosa

Hoa sói : Eugenia

Hoa ngâu : Algaria

Hoa đơn, hoa mộc : Apotasis

Hoa thiên lý : pergularia odoratissimasm

However, it can hardly be denied that Latin-original words can make the text difficult to

understand because not all common English readers can know all the Latin words or have

an available dictionary of plants and vegetables to check all the words up when necessary.

One more thing is that a common reader may find it uninteresting to read a culture books

with full of Latin original words. Huu Ngoc seems to understand this fact when he

accompanying each Latin word with the specific description or use of each type. For

instance:

Cà cuống: lethocerus indicus belostomalidae, an insect the size of cicada which gives an

aromatic meat and essence

Back translation: Cà cuống: lethocerus indicus belostomalidae, một loài côn trùng cỡ như

con ve, thịt và tinh dầu làm gia vị (my translation-Bach Anh Hong (BAH))

Quả thị: The fruit of the cây thị is found in countries with warm climates and grows fleshy,

light yellow, aromatic fruits the size of oranges. Its scientific name is diospyros decandra

lour and it belongs to the ebancea family, whose generic name in Vietnmamese is hồng

(khaki). (p288)

Back translation:

Quả thị: Quả của cây thị, thường có ở các nước có khí hậu ấm áp, thịt mọng, màu vàng

nhạt, là loại quả tỏa mùi hương có cỡ bằng quả cam. Tên khoa học là diospyros decandra

lour, thuộc họ ebancea có tên Việt Nam thường gọi là hồng.

After translating the word with the Latin-original equivalence, together with some

description, the Vietnamese word is then used as a common English word. That is, the

author of the book has loaned the original words as the equivalence like in:

Ornamental flowers are orchids, camellias, chrysanthemums, sói, mộc, dahlia, peony…(p

291)

Many Vietnamese words have been rendered in the translation effectively. In those cases,

there is no other language that has such words to be used as the third medium:

Nước vối : “voi tea”

Chuối tiêu : bananas of the kind called “tieu”

Múa khèn : khen dance

Múa Hát : Hat dance

Lúa chiêm : rice of the Chăm

The second effective tool is communicative methods or to be more specifically, the free

translation or paraphrasing. However, not all the words are paraphrased in the same way.

With dish-related group, each word is translated by the description of how the dish is

cooked:

Source Language Target Language Back Translation

Bánh cuốn steamed rice roll Cuốn gạo hấp

Nem chua minced and fermented pork Thịt lợn xay rồi để lên men

Giò boiled pork paste Thịt lợn xay luộc

Chả sautéed pork paste Thịt lợn xay rán

But the biggest group is translated by the detailed description of how the food is cooked

plus its ingredients:

Source Language Target Language Back Translation

Bún chả grilled pork eaten with

vermicelli

Thịt lợn nướng ăn kèm bún

Phở sốt vang

rice noodles severed with

beef stewed and flavored

with wine

Phở ăn với thịt bò hầm rượu

vang

Lươn om củ chuối

eel cooked over a slow fire

with pieces of banana

rhizome

Lươn nấu trên lửa nhỏ với

những miếng củ chuối.

In many other cases, the purpose of the things is used for paraphrasing:

Source Language Target Language Back Translation

Thuốc lào home – grown tobacco for

the water bubble pipe

Thuốc lá nhà tự trồng dùng

cho ống điếu nước

Giấy bản absorbent paper to write

ideograms on with a brush

pen

Giấy thấm mực dùng để viết

chữ tượng hình bằng chổi

lông

Giấy lệnh paper for the royal

ordinances

Giấy dùng để viết các lệnh

của nhà vua

With the culture word relating to festivals, customs or ceremony, the author describe in

detail how the process is preceded as the translation:

Hái lộc: people pick a twig from a tree growing on the pagoda’s grounds which they

believe will bring them prosperity

Back translation:

Hái lộc: mọi người bẻ một nhánh từ cây trồng trong sân chùa với niền tin rằng nhánh cây

sẽ đem lại sự thịnh vượng cho họ

Đoan Ngọ: an occasion to “kill insects” on a person’s system by eating and drinking, right

at the drawn, anything which is better or sour : glutinous rice alcohol, green fruits

(peach, plum, mango, star fruit…) and other foods like the watermelons, coconut

milks …

Back translation:

Đoan Ngọ: một dịp để “diệt côn trùng” trong cơ thể người bằng cách ăn và uống, ngay

vào lúc sáng sớm, bất cứ thứ gì ngon hoặc chua: rượu nếp, hoa quả còn xanh (đào,

mận, xòai, khế…) và các thức khác như dưa hấu, nước dừa…

The shape and appearance of things also proves its use when being rendered in translation:

Source Language Target Language Back Translation

Nhà sàn house on stilts Nhà trên các trụ

Bánh dẻo moon shaped cake Bánh giống hình mặt trăng

Bánh chưng square cake Bánh vuông

Literal translation is ultilized in many cases to deal with the culture-words that are totally

dissimilar to the target language readers. Some illustrations are:

Source Language Target Language Back Translation

Hoa đá literally, rock flower =

coral

Nghĩa đen, hoa đá = san hô

Hoa tai literally, flower of the ear = Nghĩa đen, hoa của tai =

pendant khuyên tai

Mặt hoa literally, blossoming face –

lovely face of a woman

Nghĩa đen, mặt như hoa nở-

khuôn mặt đáng yêu của phụ

nữ

Số đào hoa literally, born under the star

of a peach flower = to be

chased after by women

Nghĩa đen, được sinh ra

dưới ngôi sao hoa đào =

thường bị những người phụ

nữ đẹp theo đuổi

The final way of paraphrasing that Huu Ngoc used is to explain in detail the difficult to

understand part of the word to the commonly understandable ones. For instances, “lúa

chiêm” and “lúa mùa” or “ông đầu rau” are often heard but many Vietnamese youngsters

do not understand exactly the meaning of the words. When reading the translations, the

Vietnamese young readers could understand the words more, and hopefully they can do the

same to English readers. Followings are some common cases:

Source Language Target Language Back Translation

Lúa chiêm Summer rice Lúa mùa hè

Lúa mùa Autum rice Lúa mùa thu

Ông đầu rau The gentlemen bearing pots Ông đội nồi

In general, Huu Ngoc has successfully cracked the hard culture word nuts by paraphrasing

together with borrowings both from scientific names and the source language culture

words. However, in some minor cases the translated version is not the best one. This is, in

part, caused by the inappropriate use of the word. In many cases, the source language word

is lexicalized in the target language word but is not rendered in the translation. For instance

“cà dái dê” was translated as “testicles of billy goats, thus named perhaps because of its

colour and shape”. Reading the translation, no one can say for sure that the English

readers could understand that it is the exact “eggplant” in their country. The same case

may be true for “the drawing orange trees” (cây cam nhỏ). Obviously, had the “quat”

transferred into “kumquat”, many target-language readers would not have spent time

imagining what kind of trees the translation refers to. One more case that would need

further discussion is “convolvulus” (336:2006) in “the convolvulus rau muống is well

liked vegetable, especially in summer when the weather is hot and oppressive and people

suffer from constant thirst”. If a reader understands both English and Vietnamese, he will

understand “convolvulus” as “rau muống”. But if he does not understand Vietnamese and

checks it up in the “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary”, he would find the definition

of the words as “a wild plant with triangular leaves and flowers that are shaped like

trumpets. It climbs up walls and fences, etc, twists itself around other plants (336:2005)”.

Our Vietnamese scholars translated the definition in“ Từ Điển Anh-Việt” (p347:1999) as

“loại cây thân quấn, có hoa hình loa kèn; cây bìm bìm”. A Vietnamese would be fully

aware of the kind of “bìm bìm” that often climbs up walls and fences, which is not eatable

and their common “rau muống”. More suitably, the word should be translated as

“morning-glory” which is more common to the target language reader. Additionally,

“morning-glory” means “bìm bìm hoa tím” in Vietnamese which is exactly the other name

of “rau muống”.

Another thing in the translation of culture words is that the translations of the same words

are not consistent from the beginning to the end of the book. For example:

“This time the man’s family would be required to bring area nuts and betel leaves, tea,

pork, glutinous rice and an equal number of glutinous rice cake (bánh dày) and square

cake (bánh chưng) (404:2006).

But in the “New-life” weeding (411:2006), one can read “For the engagement ceremony

alone, the bride’s family would demand for each member of the clan and each friend a gift

consisting of one “bánh chưng” (square cake) or “bánh dày” (round cake). The same case

happens with nem (spring roll) and “… one roll of nem (pork pie)” (411:2006). One more

illustration could be “rau muống”. In P.334, he translated:

“Trời còn đây, đất còn đây, còn ao rau muống còn đầy chum tương” - “as long as

heaven and earth remain I will have my pond of water cress and my jar of soya sauce”.

However, in the next page 335, another very interesting text is dedicated to “convolvulus

and aubergine” with the translation of:

“Anh đi anh nhớ quê nhà

Nhớ canh rau muống nhớ cà dầm tương”

as:

“Far from home I think of my native hamlet

Of the bowl of boiled convolvulus

Of the aubergine bathed in soya sauce”

It is strongly doubtful that a foreigner could think “round cake” and “glutimous rice cake”

refer to the same thing or one may say the same situation of nước mắm (fish sauce and fish

brine); chả (kebab and grilled pork); phở tái (noodles servered with parboiled or scalded

beef and noodles soup with half done beef).

One more inappropriateness, to the best of my understanding, is the translation of norminal

group. There are common words that have been frequently used and turned into proper

nouns such as name be transferred but the nominal sense of the words is not. For instance,

“Lễ xem mặt” is translated into “Looking at the face” as in:

“The first would be an introduction ceremony called Lễ xem mặt (Looking at the face)”

conducted after the match-maker has got the agreement of the fiancee’s family. The man’s

family would make a visit, bringing gifts of tea and area nuts, and the two young people

would be allowed to have a bring look at each other.” (p404)

“Lễ đưa dâu” (Sending off for the Bride) would take place the following day, with the two

family in a lavish meal” (P 405).

“Lễ đưa dâu” is not fully translated as only the name is translated, not the way the

ceremony is conducted. Treated as a noun, Vietnamese people would prefer to use “dự lễ

đưa dâu” not “tôi đưa dâu”. The same would happen to “lễ xem mặt”.

In conclusion, the first part of this chapter has found out that the most common types of

equivalences the translation of the culture-related word is nil-equivalence. The major

reason for this largest part is that the source language concept is unknown to the target

language readers. Those non-equivalences are mainly attributed to the differences in

plants, dishes, traditional customs or ceremony of festivals. The writer of the book has

successfully made full use of free translation method in dealing with the non-equivalence.

He also borrows word from a third language to translate the culture-related word, it is

Latin. However, there still remains some minor inappropriateness such as the inconsistency

in translating the same words, the misuse of some lexical items and the translation of

nominal group.

2.2.2 Other types of equivalence

In the second part of the chapter, the writer of this thesis would set the aim to look into less

common types of equivalence found in the book. Those are: one-to-part-of-one and many-

to-one equivalence.

2.2.2.1 One-to-part-of one equivalence

Stepping into the land of one to part of one equivalence, which happens when a English

expression could only covers part of a concept designated by a single Vietnamese

expression. Those are the cases of “Tam cuc” when translated as “card games” or “cá kho”

as “fish cooked with sauce” or “rồng rắn lên mây” as “dragon snake game”.

Source Language Target Language Back translation

Tam cúc Card games Chơi bài

Cá kho Fish cooked with sauce Cá nấu với nước mắm

Rồng rắn lên mây Dragon snake game Trò chơi rồng rắn

Clearly, the back translated version has partly helped us to see the cultural gaps between

the SL and TL. Mentioning “card games”, westerners could refer immediately to bridge,

poker and whist as in:

“Bridge, pocker and whish are card-games” (Brit, tú lơ khơ và uýt là các trò chơi bài)

(English- Vietnamese Dictionary, p228: 1999).

The use of “card games” in:

“A festival always includes worshipping rituals followed by a procession of

palanquins and a wide variety of games and entertainments such as performances by the

local folk music ban, water puppetry, card games, oriental chess in which the pieces are

young men and women...”(P224)

may misunderstand the western readers that Vietnamese peasants also play bridge, poker

and whist in traditional Vietnamese festival. In my opinion, I would like to suggest that the

word “tam cúc” or any other similarly traditional kind should be translated as “Vietnamese

traditional card game” (chơi bài truyền thống của người Việt Nam). This could help make

a clear distinction between the westerner’s card games and ours.

Obviously, a source-language word “does not have to be morphologically complex to be

semantically complex” (Bolinger and Sears, 1968). Sometimes, there is a target language

word which has the same proportional meaning as the source language word but it may

have a different expressive meaning. Take “rồng” in Vietnamese and “dragon” in English

as examples.

The Vietnamese dragon is created by different small parts of many different animals:

“mình rắn, vẩy cá chép, mắt quỷ, sừng nai, tai thú, trán lạc đà, chân cá sấu, móng chim

ưng” (Dương Kỳ Đức, 2001) (snake body, calf scale, devil eyes, deer stark, mammal ears,

camel forehead, crocodile legs and hawk claws). Vietnamese people considered

themselves children of Father Dragon and Mother Fairy. The appearance of the dragon is

often accompanied with images of clouds which can bring about water - the most

important factor for agriculture (nhất nước, nhì phân, tam cần, tứ giống – water is the most

important factor, then comes fertilizer, industriousness and breeds). “Obviously, it is

reasonable for people living in agriculture” (Dương Kỳ Đức, 2001). That may be the

reason why they rank dragon the first place in many lists. Dragon is put a first place in list

of four worshipped animals: “dragon, lion, tortoise, and phoenix”. Dragon symbolizes the

king images in the eyes of common people. King’s throne is named dragon’s throne (long

ngai); king’s palace is dragon’s place, likewise, king’s bed is known as dragon’s bed (long

sàng). Dragon image is also associated with that of a noble, superior man which is in

contrast with the common, inferior ones: “Trứng rồng lại nở ra rồng, liu điu lại nở ra

dòng liu điu” (a dragon will be hatched from a dragon’s egg while a snake can only give

birth to a snake-noble- men are of noble origin and superior to that of common one);

“Rồng đến nhà tôm” (A dragon visits a shrimp’s house- a superior man visit an inferior

one’s home). In a Vietnamese’s mind, dragon always has a positive image. It symbolizes

the best things namely: power, nobility. On the contrary, the image of dragon appears in

English proverbs and idioms is negative one. Vietnamese dragon itself is a flying image

without any wings while its English one breathes out fire. In an Englishman’s mind,

dragon is “a mythological monster, usually with wings and able to breath out fire” (Little

Oxford Dictionary, 2000, p145). Another meaning of the words is “a fierce person” as in

an example “we are really frightened of the math teacher, she was real dragon”. The

idioms “to chase the dragon” means “to take a drugs”.

However, Huu Ngoc, as a Vietnamese writer, rather prefer to use the image of dragon in

the writing: He called Đồng Văn and Mèo Vạc “the head of the dragon”; Cà Mau “the tail

of the Vietnamese dragon”; Thăng Long the “soaring dragon” and translated “rồng rắn lên

mây” as “dragon snake game”.

Taking what the common image of the word “dragon” refers to in English readers mind in

to consideration, it is doubtful that those translations could convey the exact meaning that

the writer would wish to transfer. On the contrary, holly and positive Vietnamese dragon

could be imagined as a horrible negative Western dragon. To clear this possible

misunderstanding, some note at the end of the page in term of what and how Vietnamese

people consider and appreciate their dragon is strongly recommended.

2.2.2.2 Many-to-one equivalence

The next group of equivalence is many-to-one equivalence this kind of equivalence, in

contrast with one-to-many equivalence, could occur, when there is more than one

expression in the source language but there is a single expression in target language which

is equivalence to them.

As distant as Vietnamese and English culture, it is more common that English tends to

have general words but lack specific ones. For example,

Lĩnh: Hàng dệt bằng tơ nõn, mặt mịn bóng (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt; p 1024)

(Lĩnh: fabric made of fine silk with a glossy surface- my translation)

Đũi: Hàng dệt bằng tơ gốc (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt; p625)

(Đũi: Fabric made of raw silk - my translation)

Vóc: Thứ hàng tơ, nền bóng (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt; p1281)

(Fabric made of silk, with glossy surface- my translation)

Any Vietnamese woman could make a very clear distinction between those kinds of fabric.

Mainly, the difference between them depends on the type of silk each type is made of. Lĩnh

is created from fine silk, while đũi is from raw silk and vóc is made of glossy silk in

common. However, when translated into English, the translator has no other choice but to

make them some kind of general silk like “sateen” whose meaning is:

Sateen: fabric of silk or various man-made fibres, with a glossy surface on one side

produced by a twill weave with the weft-threads almost hidden.(www.bamboo.net)

Another case worth discussion is:

Đền: Công trình kiến trúc tôn giáo xây dựng ở những nơi liên quan đến truyền thuyết

hoặc sự tích, cuộc sống của thần hoặc người có công đức lớn với dân tộc được tôn

thờ. (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt, 623) (A religious building in legendary places of

human beings or gods/goddesses who have great merit to common people and is

worshipped –my translation)

Miếu: Đền thờ nhỏ, để thờ thần thánh (như miếu thờ thổ địa) (Đại Từ Điển Tiếng

Việt,;p 435) (A small temple worshipped particular gods, e.g: god of land- my

translation)

Phủ: Đền thờ nhỏ, để thờ các Mẫu có trong truyền thuyết của người Việt)

(wikipedia.com)(A small temple devoted to the worship of Mother Goddesses in

Vietnamese legends)

Scrutinizing those definitions, one can easily see the dissimilarity between those three

types of worshipping places of Vietnamese people belongs to who the place is devoted to.

Đền is for national heroes or heroines while Miếu is for special god and Phủ is devoted to

the Mother Goddesses of Vietnamese legends. Coming to the task of translating those

words, in English, there is only one word, that is

Temple: a building devoted to the worship, or regarded as the dwelling-place, of a god or

gods or other objects of religious reverence, especially in religions other than Christianity,

(Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, p1580)

This word creates the distinction by clarifying the difference between Christianity and

other religions. The general clarification can not meet the demands of distinguishable

worshipping places of Vietnamese people. However, to some extent, “temple” is the best

possible choice of word in this case.

The same case can easily be seen with:

Lúa: as in summer rice (p326)

Cơm: as in “cơm ba bát, áo ba manh” (three bowfuls of rice at mealtimes, a change

of three shirts to cover one’s back) (p 329)

And xôi as in “ăn mày mà đòi xôi gấc” (beggars asking for momodicar rice)(p339)

Vietnamese eaters could be very upset if there were no differences things such as “lúa”

(rice plant), “xôi” (steamed sticky rice)or “cơm” (cooked plain rice) but only one thing

“rice”. They could not be happier to see that:

Bún: Sợi bột tẻ đã luộc chín dùng làm thức ăn (www.bamboo.com)

(Bún: boiled the plain rice noodle, used as food- my translation)

Miến: thứ đồ ăn gồm những sợi dài và nhỏ làm bằng bột đậu xanh

(www.bamboo.com)

(Miến: thin, long thread of grean bean, used as food- my translation)

are sometimes unavoidably translated as vermicelli as in:

Nem is served hot, together with rice vermicelli, lettuce, mint, and a sweet sour sauce

made of nước mắm (fish brine) flavoured with vinegar, a bit of sugar, and red pepper.”

(p346)

Back translation: Nem thường được ăn nóng, với bún, rau xà lách, rau bạc hà và nước

mắm chua ngọt có dấm, một chút đường và ớt.

In another text of “vermicelli with paddy crabs” (p351), he wrote “Yet, my French poet

friend, the late Francoise Corrize, was quite fond of paddy crabs, eaten with vermicelli…(

Tuy nhiên, người bạn thi sĩ Pháp quá cố của tôi, Francoise Corrize, rất thích cua đồng ăn

với bún/ miến…- my translation.) (p352) or in “Of tastes and smells” (p353) he once again

mentioned “mắm tôm… sets off the taste of boiled pig offal, vermicelli soup severed hot

(bún thang)…” (mắm tôm… làm dậy lên hương vị của món lòng lợn hoặc bún thang …-

my translation). In “The Vietnamese eel” (p320) he determined: “Typical peasant dishes

are: eel cooked over a slow fire with pieces of banana rhizome which is usually fairly

salty, vermicelli with eel (miến lươn)…”

More commonly, English tends to make less distinction in meanings of some words than

Vietnamese people. Those meanings belong to group of religious places or, once again,

food or some trees or material. In English culture, the most common religious places is

church, not “đình, đền, miếu, phủ” as its multi - religious counterpart. In term of food,

Vietnamese environment is home to both rice and a lot other similar species which can be

processed to make vercemili or noodles but it is not the case for English environment. All

in all, languages tend to have a superordinate but lack hyponyms since each language

makes only those distinctions in meaning which seem relevant to its particular

environment.

In English, there is only “bamboo” not “tre, nứa, giang, mai, trúc” like in Vietnamese. So

we have:

“Tre già măng mọc” ( When the bamboo is ageing, the young shoots grow)

Or

“Khi đi trúc chửa mọc măng

Khi về trúc đã cao bằng ngọn tre”

Or

“When I left, the shoot had not shown up

On my return, it has become a full grown bamboo” (p263)

To deal with this problem, the translator and the writer has no other choice but to use that

loan word with some addition. For example:

“Topping the list is the orchid, flower of the superior man and female beauty…. The hoa

quỳnh (a type of hortensia) of a candid white, blossoms only at night for poets… the Phù

dung (a type of hibiscus) symbolize a fast waning beauty.” (p293)

Back translation: Đứng đầu danh sách này là hoa phong lan- loài hoa của người quân tử

và vẻ đẹp nữ tính…. Hoa quỳnh (một loại hortensia) có màu trắng tinh khiết, chỉ nở về

đêm cho các thi sĩ…. Hoa Phù Dung (một loại hibiscusi) là biểu tượng của vẻ đẹp chóng

tàn phai.

The other way round is that he translated the literal meaning of the words then added some

detailed description:

chuối tiêu: The group of chuối tiêu (in the North) and chuối giạ (in the South) give few

calories but smell sweet and are easily digested (chuối tiêu literally means digestible

bananas). (p271)

Back translation: Nhóm chuối tiêu (ở miền Bắc) và chuối giạ (ở Miền Nam) có ít calo

nhưng có mùi thơm và dễ tiêu (nghĩa đen của từ chuối tiêu có nghĩa là chuối dễ tiêu)

chuối tây: The group of chuối tây (literally Western bananas) in the North and

chuối sứ in the South. The fruits are plump, short and starchy. (p271)

Back translation: Nhóm chuối tây (nghĩa đen là chuối phương Tây) ở miền Bắc và chuối

sứ ở miền Nam. Quả của loại chuối này thường mập, ngắn và giàu tinh bột.

2.2.2.3 One-to-one equivalence

The last but not least group is one–to–one equivalence. This type of equivalence could be

achieved when a single expression in Vietnamese is equivalent to a single expression in

English.

Given the fact that culture is “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a

community that uses a particular language as the means of expression” (Newmark, P.

1998:94), one could question why there are still one-to-one equivalence between two

distant cultures? Why can we still see some one-to-one equivalence in translation such as:

Gỏi cá: raw fish

Mộc nhĩ: wood ear

Chả xiên: kebab

Thịt chó: native dog’s meat

Thịt dê: goat’s meat

Thịt ếch: frog’s meat

Đánh đu: swinging

The explanation may be that they are universal. That is, most nations in the word have

undergone the developing stages of human social forms, from primitive to modern time.

People in all over the world would share the common needs for food, home and clothes. In

the process of development, they can share a common games or entertainment like:

Thả diều: flying the kite

Đánh đu: swinging

Nhảy lò cò: hopscotch

Cà kheo: stilting game

Đàn đá: litho phone

Or the equivalence may originate from a culture that immigrates into English culture:

Múa sư tử: lion’s dance/unicorn’s dance

Or sometimes they do raise the same animals but do not eat the same animal. In case of

one-to-one equivalence, the hardest task of the translators is to find the exact equivalence

to the word (literal translation). In conclusion, one-to-one equivalence between two

cultures is possible but how to match them with each other requires much knowledge and

experiences of the translator.

PART C: CONCLUSION

This paper starts with definition of the translation. Concerning the nature of translation,

many translation theorists worded their ideas differently and lay their emphasis on

dissimilar aspects of translation such as a basic “change of form” (Larson (1984: 3); the

“intended in the text” Newmark (1988:5) or, the communicative purpose of translation

Hatim & Mason (1990:3), “semantic and stylistic equivalences” Bell (1991: 5). However,

they all seem to agree one the importance of achieving the closest equivalence in meaning

by the choice of appropriate target language’s lexical and grammatical structures,

communication situation, and cultural and the requirement to find equivalents which have

similar characteristics to the original.

Logically, the great emphasis is now laid on equivalence. Equivalence is defined as a

relation that holds between a source language text and a target language text. As far as the

nature of equivalence is concerned, the question to be asked is not whether the two texts

are equivalent, but what type and degree of translation equivalence they reveal. As a

consequence, some main approaches to equivalence are listed such as quantitative,

meaning based, form-based and function based.

The next question to be answered is about the difficulties that the translator has to

encounter when executing his task? Could he always achieve the long-awaited

equivalence? Baker (1994: 72) has tried to give her response by synthesizing the common

problems of non-equivalence such as: culture-specific concepts; the source-language

concept is not lexicalized in the target language; the source-language word is semantically

complex etc.

In an attempt to narrow the topic, the following part of the literature review focuses on

definition and notion of culture in translation. The writer of the thesis chooses to follows

Newmark (1988:94) definition of translation and draw out that it is important to consider

not only the lexical impact on the TL reader, but also the manner in which cultural aspects

may be perceived and make translating decisions accordingly.

To come to a more concrete step, some typical categories of culture-related words

proposed by Newmark (1988:95-102) are listed as the theoretical basis for the latter

classification of cultural words under investigation in the book. Those are ecology;

material culture (artifacts); social culture – work and leisure; organizations, customs, ideas;

gestures and habits. In order to lay the theoretical foundation for the translation of cultural

words, the thesis writer reviews major methods assisting the translator dealing with non-

equivalence and finding the equivalence with major focus on Hervey et al, (1992:28)’s

and Newmark’s. The first chapter set its aims to lay a foundation, on which the castle of

investigation on Huu Ngoc translation of cultural words will be built in the following

chapter.

The second chapter finds out that the frequency of material culture words, and to be more

specific, food, occupying 45.9% is the highest as compared to other types. Then most of

the cultural words occurred in his book is listed and put into the order of the most common

types of equivalence to the least common one as follows:

Nil equivalence (66 %)

One-to-part-of-one equivalence (13%)

One-to-one equivalence (14.6%)

Many-to-one equivalence (6.4%)

From investigating the data, nil- equivalence is the biggest group. Therefore, much focus is

laid on figuring out the reasons for this situation. The first occurs when the Vietnamese

word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the target language culture. To be

more specific, those words often link to food and many kinds of tropical herbs and plants.

This may also be the reason for the second group of non-equivalence which is dishes.

Different kinds of vegetables / herbs may lead to different ways to cook, which leads to the

existence of exotic Vietnamese dishes to Englishman. The wet-rice peasants also have their

own festivals, customs or ceremonies relating to land, rice or grains, trees with special

attention paid to the weather, especially rain.

First of all, borrowing is the first tool that Huu Ngoc has rendered to narrow down the

cultural gaps of typically tropical plants and vegetables. Huu Ngoc uses the third language,

that is, Latin as a medium for translation with the specific description or use of each type.

Additionally, he also uses the technique of source- language word loans, which means the

original Vietnamese culture words are used as common English words preceding their

detail description.

The second effective tool is communicative methods or to be more specifically, the free

translation or paraphrasing. However, not all the words are paraphrased in the same way.

With dish-related group, each word is translated by the description of how the dish is cooked. However, the biggest group of dish is translated by the detailed description of how the food is cooked plus its ingredients.

The purpose of the things is also used for paraphrasing.

With the culture word relating to festivals, customs or ceremony, the author describe in

detail how the process is preceded as the translation.

The shape and appearance of things also proves its use when being rendered in translation.

Literal translation is utilized in many cases to deal with the culture-words that are totally dissimilar to the target language readers together with their possible equivalence in meaning

The final way of paraphrasing that Huu Ngoc used is to explain in detail the difficult to understand part of the word to the commonly understandable ones.

Huu Ngoc has mostly succeeded in fulfilling his task of bridging the gaps between the two cultures via the translation. However, in some minor cases the translated version is not the best one. This is, in part, caused by the inappropriate use of the word. In many cases, the source language word is lexicalized in the target language word but is not rendered in the translation.

Another thing in the translation of culture words is that the translations of the same words are not consistent from the beginning.

The other inappropriateness, to the best of my understanding, is the translation of nominal group. There are common words that have been frequently used and turned into proper nouns such as name be transferred but the nominal sense of the words is noting to the end of the book.

Stepping into the land of one to part of one equivalence, which happens when a English

expression could only covers part of a concept designated by a single Vietnamese

expression. Those are the cases of “Tam cuc” or outstandingly, the translation of the

Vietnamese “rồng” into the English “dragon”. To clear this possible misunderstanding,

some note at the end of the page in term of what and how Vietnamese people consider and

appreciate their dragon is strongly recommended.

The next group of equivalence is many-to-one equivalence this kind of equivalence, in

contrast with one-to-many equivalence, could occur when there is more than one

expression in the source language but there is a single expression in target language which

is equivalence to them.

As distant as Vietnamese and English culture, it is more common that English tends to

have general words but lack specific ones.

To deal with this problem, the translator and the writer has no other choice but to use that

loan word with some addition.

The literal meaning of the word with some detailed description is also a good way of

solving this ad-hoc.

Due to the similar in process of social development and ideas of life and society, there are

still one-to-one equivalence between two distant culture. The evidences can be easily

found in his book but how to match them with each other remains challenges.

To date, Huu Ngoc still proves himself as the leading translator in term of culture with a

great number of works involving introducing Vietnamese culture to the world, which will

bring about the indispensable task of translating Vietnamese authentic words of culture

into English. His greatest of all work, “Wandering through Vietnamese culture”, is

assessed by an American writer, Lady Borton as “one comprehensive resource on

Vietnamese culture in English” (Wandering through Vietnamese culture, p 7). Similar

comments from source language readers have talked louder than any praise. Huu Ngoc has

shown the readers as well as the researcher of translation how flexibly free translation or

paraphrasing could be used to crack the hard cultural nuts. He has also suggested a new

idea of translation by borrowing, that is, borrowing from a third language as a medium for

understanding.

From the point of a young researcher of translation, shedding the translation of the

Vietnamese culture words from the book in the light of translation theory, I would like to

make following suggestions:

First of all, given the fact that culture words challengingly belongs to a particular group of

people, the consistency of the translation from the beginning of the book to the end of the

book is crucial. This helps avoid the misunderstanding that two translated versions of the

same thing could mean two different things.

Secondly, when a common noun was already nominalization and treated as a proper noun

in the source language culture, it should not be literally translated since its nominal sense

could be lost.

Thirdly, in case the two languages may have words which are “false friends”, that is, they

seem to be each other’s equivalence but in fact, they have different referential meaning, it

is necessary for the translator to make clear note of the differentiation to avoid the

misunderstanding.

To conclude, via his book “Wandering Through Vietnamese Culture”, Huu Ngoc has made

a significant contribution to the translation study area in Vietnam as it provides a

resourceful materials for the translation studies of Vietnamese culture words. This book is

like a mine of gold waiting for further reaches and studies. Some of the suggestive topics

could be the study of the translation of proper names in the book or the stylistic

equivalence in the translation of Sino-Vietnamese culture words into English.

This is my very first research on the issue. I am fully aware that mistakes and

inappropriateness are indispensable. I would be extremely grateful to any comments that

could help better the study and enable me to go on with further research.

REFERENCES

Baker, M. (1994). In Other Words. A Coursebook on Translation. Routledge - London and

New York

Bassnet, S. (1980). Translation Studies Reader. Routledge-London and New York

Bell, R. T. (1991). Translation and Translating. Routledge-London and New York.

Bolinger, D. and Sears, D.(1968). Aspects of Language, New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich.

Campbell, Stuart J. 1986. Community Interpreting and Translation in Australia. The

Linguist.

Đức, Dương Kỳ (2001). Rồng Ta, Rồng Tây. Tạp chí Ngôn Ngữ và Đời Sống. Hà Nội

Hatim, B & Munday, J. (2004).Translation-An Advanced Resource Book. Routledge

Hervey, S., Higgins, I. 1992. Thinking Translation. London. Routledge.

Koller, W. 1979/89. Equivalence in translation theory (translated by A. Chesterman). In A.

Chesterman (ed.), Readings in translation theory (Helsinki, Finn Lectures).

Larson, M. L. 1994. Translation and linguistic theory. In R.E.Asher (ed.), The

encyclopedia of language and linguistics, volume 9. Oxford and Tarrytown, NY: Pergamon

Press.

Lotman, Jurij . 1978. "On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture." New Literary History

Munday, J. (2001). Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications, Londres-

Nova York, Routledge.

Ngoc, H. (1998). Wandering through Vietnamese culture. The Gioi Publisher

Newmark, P. (1988). Approaches to Translation. Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd.

Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of Translation. B and Jo Enterprise Pte Ltd.

Nida, E. & C. Taber. (1964). The theory and practice of translation. Leiden, E.J. Brill.

Pym, Anthony.(1992). Translation and Text Transfer: An Essay on the Principles of

Intercultural Communication. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Seleskovitch, Danica. (1978). 'Language and Cognition', in Gerver, D. and Sinaiko, H.W.

(eds.)

Tien, Le Hung. (2007). Lectures on translation study. Post Graduate Studies, Vietnam

National University.

Thu, Nguyen Xuan (1998). A Course Book on Translation and Interpretation. Hanoi

University of Foreign Studies, English Department

Venuti, L. (2001). The Translation Studies Reader. Routledge-London and New York.

Vermeer, H. (1989). "Skopos and Commission in Translational Activity." In Venuti, L. The

Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Ý, Nguyễn Như.(1998). Đại Từ Điển Tiếng Việt. Văn Hóa- Thông Tin Publisher

Websites:

Http:www.amstat.org/sections/SRMS/Proceedings/papers/1994 215.pdf

Http: www.bamboo.com

Http: www. aracupid.com

Dictionaries:

Concise Oxford Dictionary. 1999. Oxford University Press

Little Oxford Dictionary. 2000. Oxford University Press

Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary. 2005. Oxford University Press

Từ Điển Anh- Việt. 1999. Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa Học Xã Hội. Việt Nam