Applying house's translation quality assessment model to assess the Vietnamese translation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX

Applying house's translation quality
assessment model to assess the Vietnamese
translation of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX and its
Vietnamese translation by Xuân Oanh
p dng mô hnh đnh gi cht lưng bn dch
ca House vo vic đnh gi bn dch ting
Viê
̣
t “Như
̃
ng cuô
̣
c phiêu lưu cu
̉
a Huckleberry
Finn” chương XX di
̣
ch gia
̉
Xuân Oanh

Hoàng Th Diễm Hằng

University of Languages and International studies
M.A Thesis. English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Supervisor : Asso. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tin
Năm bo v: 2012

Abstract. It is common for people to approach a foreign literature work via its
translation; therefore, whether the readers can enjoy a translation text that successfully

conveys the author’s intention is a question concerning many researchers. In this
study, with a view to assess the quality of the translation of “The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn”, the researcher utilizes the schema of Translation Quality
Assessment proposed by House. The application of House’s Translation Quality
Assessment shows that though the translation text achieves some success and in most
cases, conveys the author’s message, it still reveals a number of mismatches in
comparison with the source text. Among which inability to render America- African
vernacular language is a great loss of the target text. In addition, the ideational
component of the translation text is also affected by overtly erroneous mistakes. On
the basis of such findings, some implications for literary translation are drawn.
Keywords. Dch thuật; Ting Anh; Biên dch
Content.

1. Rationale
People all over the world are now getting closer and closer thanks to many
factors, among which literature is an important one. Not only can readers entertain but
they can also approach the cultures of a far away country while staying at their home.
However, it is a matter of fact that not everyone is competent enough to read the
original text. Therefore, the readers normally choose to read translation texts. The
increasing number of translations available calls for the need of assessing the quality of
such works so that the readers can enjoy reliable ones.
Given the situation, the evaluation of a translation has become the concern of
Translation Quality Assessment approaches and quite many attempts have been made
to find the answer to the question of how to effectively assess the quality of a
translated work. Along with those attempts are a numbers of related frameworks
advocated by some translation researchers; among which The Translation Quality
Assessment Model by the German scholar Juliane House is one of few approaches
considered promising.
This assessment model by House is based on Hallidayan Systemic-Functional
Theory, but it also draws eclectically on Prague School ideas, speech act theory,

pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus-based distinctions between the spoken and
written language. House’s Model enables us to analyze and compare an original text
and its translation on three different levels: Language/ Text, Register (Field, Mode and
Tenor) and Genre. This study aims to apply House’s Model on Mark Twain’s “The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”-chapter XX and its Vietnamese translation by Xuân
Oanh (2009).
It can be said that this research is a new exciting experience for the researcher in
that she is not a graduate majoring in translation. Therefore, this research first and
foremost is to fullfill the researcher’s interest in translation and in House’s Model in
particular. In addition, being able to assess a translation will provide the researcher
confidence and knowledge to practice translation, particularly literature translation.
Besides the above reasons, through library reasearch, it is realized that House’s
Model has been widely applied to assess legal document translation. Therefore, this
study seeks to explore new aspects on utilizing House’s framework to evaluate a literal
translation work.
2. Purpose of the study
In this research, an attempt will be made to apply the Housian TQA Model to
identify two kinds of errors in the translated work: overtly erroenous errors and
covertly errornous errors. The frequency of their occurences will be the foundation to
assess the quality of the target text and to challenge House’s idea that to literary work,
it has to be an overt kind of translation.
3. Reserch questions
 How good is the translation according to House’s model?
 What are the remaining problems of the translation?
 Whether the translation is an overt or covert kind of translation?
 What might be some implications for the translation of English literature
into Vietnamese?
4. Research method
This study utilizes qualitative design. First, the original text will be read
thoroughly and comprehensively then the source text will be compared to its

translation under the framework of House’s TQA model. Although, there are quite
many models available for translation quality assessment, House’s model is applied in
that this model provides a comprehensive set of parameters enable the researcher to
assess the translation text on dimension of both functional and pragmatic equivalence.
In addition, as stated by House, the model can be applied for a wide range of text. The
procedure is briefly introduced by Munday (2001, p.92) as below:
 A profile is introduced of the ST register
 To this is added a description of the ST genre realized by the register
 Together, this allows a “statement of function” to be made for the ST,
including the ideational and interpersonal component of that function (in
other words, what information is being conveyed and what the
relationship is between sender and receiver)
 The same descriptive process is then carried out for the TT
 The TT profile is compared to the ST profile and a statement of
“mismatches” or errors is produced, categorized according to genre and
to the situational dimensions of register and genre
 A “statement of quality” is then made of the translation
 Finally, the translation can be categorized into one of two types: overt
translation or covert translation
As it is impossible for the researcher to analyze the whole text due to limit of
time and knowledge and also to be suitable with the applied framework, only one
chapter will be selected randomly to guarantee the objectiveness of the procedure
(chapter XX). However, examples from other chapters will be taken to prove the
generality of the obtained findings in possible cases.
5. Significance of the study
It is very important to be able to evaluate a translation in that translation has
become an indispensable part in human civilization. In Vietnam, English is a popular
foreign language and is a tool of communication as well as a key to human knowledge.
The demand for knowledge has fostered the development of translation and it seems
that many non-professionals and semi-professional translators undertake the task of

translating. Hopefully, this study will be a source of reference for other researcher
concerning the same issue and important features of the framework will be
ackowledged to have successful translation works.
References.
Bridgman, R. (1966) The colloquial style in America, Oxford University
PressBridgeman, R. (1987) Traveling in Mark Twain, University of California Press
Bush, P. (1998) "Literary Translation." In: M. Baker, ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies, London: Routledge, 127-130.
Lance Hewson. (2011)An Approach to Translation Criticism: Emma and Madame
Bovary in Translation. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Landers, Clifford E. (2001) Literary Translation: A practical Guide, New Jersey
University Press: Multilingual Maters.
Larson, Mildred L. (1984) Meaning-Based Translation: A Guide to Cross-Language
Equivalence. Lanham and New York: University Press of America, Inc.
Hewson, L. (2011) An Approach to Translation Criticism. John Benjamin Publishing
Company.
House J. (1997), Translation Quality Assessmen: a model revisitedt, Gunter Narr
Verlag Tubingen.

Twain, M. (1997) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, McDougal Littell. A
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Newmark, P. (1988) A Textbook of Translation. New York and London Prentice- Hall.