Material process in The Old man and the sea by Hemingway and its Vietnamese translated version A systematic funtional comparison

Material process in "The Old man and the sea"
by Hemingway and its Vietnamese translated
version: A systematic funtional comparison


Đặng Thị Phương Mai

University of Languages and International Studies
M.A Thesis: English Linguistics; Code: 60 22 15
Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân
Year of graduation: 2011


Abstract. In this study, an attempt is made to explore whether such categories as the
number, configurations, voice and tense of material processes in the translation of
the written extract from “The old man and the sea” by Lê Huy Bắc are equivalent to
those in the original by Hemingway. The data analysis is based on the framework of
Halliday’s (1994) and Hoàng Văn Vân’s (2002). The conclusion claims that there
exists both analogies and deviations in the translation in comparison with the
original. However, the deviations are inevitable due to the fact that each country has
its own linguistic and cultural features. It is undeniable that the translator tried to
keep the target text equivalent to the source text as much as possible. Moreover, it is
vital for translators of literature to pay much attention to linguistic features and
cultural contexts, the author’s individual style and the genre of the text he or she is
going to translate.

Keywords. Hemingway; Biên dịch; Tác phẩm văn học; Tiếng Anh

Content

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale of the study
First, I used Systemic Functional Grammar as the leading theoretical framework because it is
different from Traditional grammar which is commonly taught at schools. The focus of
Traditional Grammar is linguistic structures only while that of SFG is the interpretation of the
wording by reference to what it means in particular socio-cultural contexts.
Second, in Vietnam there have been still few deep researches on material processes besides
Cao Xuan Hao’s and Hoang Van Van’s.
Third, the rationale for investigating this specific type of text lies on my personal interest in
literature translation. I am interested in finding out the equivalence between the original and
the translation.
1.2. Aims of the study
The aim of this study is to answer the following questions:
a. What is material process?
b. Are Material processes in the original extract from “The old man and the sea” written by
Hemingway the same as those in its Vietnamese translated version?
c. What implications of translation equivalence does the study have for Vietnamese teachers,
students and translators of literary works?
1.3. Scope of the study
The scope of investigation is limited to material processes in the written extract from
Hemingway’s short story “The old man and the sea” from page 88 to 94 and, equivalently,
its Vietnamese version which is translated by Lê Huy Bắc from page 64 to 70 of the whole
story because of the fact that it is supposed to contain a high density of verbs of action which
are frequently the representation of material process – process of DOING.
1.4. Methods of the study
To thoroughly answer the research questions above, I used the following methods:
- The descriptive method concerns with the description of material process in English and
Vietnamese
- The comparative method concerns with the comparison of the process in the two languages.
The analysis is based on both Halliday’s (1994) and Hoàng Văn Vân (2002)’s theory
1.5. Design of the study

This thesis is designed in five chapters:
Chapter I: introduces rationale, aims, scope and methodology of the study
Chapter II: provides the theoretical orientations for the study: systemic functional theory and
its related issues to the topic of my thesis.
Chapter III: discusses some basic notions of material process such as Actor, Goal and
Circumstance.
Chapter IV: is concerned with the comparative analysis between participants, process and
circumstances of material process in English and Vietnamese.
Chapter V: tries to reach the most clear-cut possible conclusions about the equivalence
between the two versions and provides some implications for translation task.

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1. Functional Grammar – A model of language in context
Halliday’s grammar is both semantic and functional. The former which is concerned with
meaning or language in context is represented by four strata: Context – Semantics –
Lexicogrammar – Phonology; while the latter concerning with function or language in use is
represented by three metafunctions: experiential – textual – interpersonal.
2.1.1. Strata of the systemic functional model
Phonology refers to the sound system of a language; Lexico-grammar refers to the words and
the structure of words; and Semantics refers to the systems of meaning in a language. The
relation between strata is natural.
2.1.2. Metafunctions
(i) Ideational function: is concerned with “the speaker’s experience of the real world”.
Within the ideational, there is a subdivision into experiential and logical. Experiential
function is realized by TRANSITIVITY system. The experiential refers to “propositional
content encoded as processes, events, participants, and the accompanying circumstances,
etc” These issues of transitivity are the focus of my study. The logical refers to “some
general organizing relations expressed”.
(ii) Interpersonal function: “serves to establish and maintain social relations”. One of its
major grammatical systems is MOOD. A clause consists of two components: Mood and

Residue. The Mood which is made up of the Subject (a nominal group) and Finite (part of a
verbal group). The Residue accommodates the remainder of the clause, namely predicator,
complement and adjunct.
(iii) Textual function: “enables the speaker or writer to construct texts”. It is realized by the
system of THEME. Theme is the starting point of the utterance or “point of departure” and
the rest of the clause is referred to as Rheme.
2.2. Transitivity system: processes, participants and circumstances
2.2.1. Three components of the process
(i) the process itself;
(ii) participants in the process;
(iii) circumstances associated with the process.
2.2.2. Types of process
- Mental process: a process of cognition, perception and affection
- Relational process: the processes of being
- Behavioral process: construes philosophical or psychological behavior
- Existential process: represents that something exists or happens
2.2.3. Circumstances
There are 9 main types of circumstantial elements: Extent, Location, Manner, Cause,
Contingency, Accompaniment, Role, Matter, and Angle.

CHAPTER III: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF MATERIAL PROCESS IN ENGLISH
AND VIETNAMESE
3.1. The framework of the material process in English
3.1.1. The process
A material process is characterized by particular structural configurations:
(i) Actor + Process
(ii) Actor + Process + Goal
(iii) Actor + Process + Range
(iv) Actor + Process + Recipient + Goal
(v) Actor + Process + Goal + Recipient

(vi) Actor + Process + Beneficiary + Goal
(vii) Actor + Process + Goal + Beneficiary
3.1.2. Participants in Material processes
- The Actor is the performer of the action.
- The Goal is what undergoes the action.
- The Recipient is the one who receives the Goal.
- The Beneficiary is someone for whose benefit the action is carried out.
- The Range is the element that specifies the range or scope of the process.
3.1.3. Circumstances in Material processes
Circumstances of location and manner are more typical of material processes than other
types.
3.1.4. Material Processes and Tense
English Material processes is distinguished with other types by checking the unmarked tense
selection used. In the simplest kind of narrative, simple past may be the only tense form used.
3.1.5. Material processes and Voice
In a transitivity pattern, if there is Actor only, the verb is intransitive and active in voice. If
both there are two participants – Actor and Goal, the verb is transitive and may be either
active or passive.
3.2. The framework of the material process in Vietnamese
Van (2000) has suggested some criteria for identifying Vietnamese material processes:
3.2.1. Number and nature of participants
Like English, material process in Vietnamese may involve Actor and Goal. Range is
typically realized by an inanimate nominal. Beneficiary may be realized either as a
participant or as a circumstance. Recipient is “one that goods are given to”.
3.2.2. Strong collocation of the process with Co-verb of Direction
This concerns the strong collocational tie between verbs of action and directional proverbs.
3.2.3. The Probe
From the perspective of doing, a material process can be probed by asking X đã làm gì Y?
and from the perspective of happening, it can be probed by asking Y làm sao thế? or Cái gì
xảy ra với Y thế?

3.2.4. Material Processes and Voice
When the clause is passive, the passive particle “được” precedes the Actor and the obligatory
participant is Goal, not Actor.

CHAPTER IV: MATERIAL PROCESS IN THE ORIGINAL AND VIETNAMESE
TRANSLATED EXTRACT FROM “THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA” BY HEMINGWAY: A
FUNCTIONAL COMPARISON
4.1. The author Hemingway and the novella “The old man and the sea”
4.1.1. Hemingway and his individual style
In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his mastery of the art of
narrative” in “The Old Man and the Sea”. His Iceberg Principle not only is particularly
effective in his short stories but also has caused a revolution in literature. In detail, the
principle which guides most of his writings is “the facts float above water; the supporting
structure and symbolism operate out-of-sight”
4.1.2. The novella “The old man and the sea”
“The old man and the sea” is written as one text without breaks and consists of only 125
pages with the total of 4 main characters: Santiago, Manolin, the marlin and the sea. It is the
story of the old man catching the big fish. The novella is typical of Hemingway’s individual
writing style.
4.2. The Vietnamese translated version by Lê Huy Bắc
The translation by Lê Huy Bắc which is published by Literature Publishing House in 2000
consists of 92 pages. The translation by Lê Huy Bắc is chosen for comparison in this research
for two reasons. Firstly, the translator Lê Huy Bắc has so much experience in teaching
American Literature at his university as well as studying and translating Hemingway’s works.
Secondly, Lê Huy Bắc’s translation is said by many critics to contain fewer deviations from
the original in comparison with other translations.
4.3. A Functional Comparison of Material Process in the original and Vietnamese
translated extract from “The old man and the sea” by Hemingway
The English text consists of 145 clauses and the Vietnamese translation consists of 159
clauses. The analysis aims at discovering whether such categories as the number,

configurations, voice and tense of material processes in the translation are equivalent to those
in the original text.
4.3.1. The number of material processes
Material processes pre-dominate other process types due to the fact that the extract is an
action-oriented narrative:
Type
Material
Mental
Relational
Verbal
Behavioral
Existential
No. of occ.
111
15
25
4
0
0
%
70.32
9.67
16.12
2.58
0
0
Table 4: Transitivity in English text
Type
Material
Mental

Relational
Verbal
Behavioral
Existential
No. of occ.
116
21
19
3
0
0
%
71.69
12.57
11.94
1.88
0
0
Table 5: Transitivity in Vietnamese text
The number of occurrence of the material process in the translation is more than that in the
original. The reason is as Quang (2000) claimed redundancy is highly used in Vietnamese and
Vietnamese tends to use more verbs.
4.3.2. Configurations of material processes
Two main configurations of material processes when participants (Actor and Goal) are
present:
(i) Actor + Process + (Circumstance)
(ii) Actor + Process + Goal + (Circumstances)
The source text consists of 36 clauses and the target text consists of 38 clauses of this type.
* The use of Actors
The Actors are mostly animate:

Type
Animate Actor
Inanimate
Actor

Type
Animate Actor
Inanimate
Actor
The
old
man
The
marlin

The
old
man
The
marlin
NOC
43
36
18

NOC
50
37
20
%

43.87%
37.75%
18.36%

%
49.54%
32.43%
18.01%
Table 6: Actors in the original Table 7: Actors in the translation
Actors are dominantly two main characters: the old man (Santiago) and the marlin. It is clear
that the old man plays a central role and the marlin is only a cooperative character.
However, the target text is not analogous to the source text with the translation of Actors as
personal pronouns. In the English text, with the use of the third person he to replace the old
man, the character’s age, the author’s feelings and attitude towards his character are not
provided, except for the gender. This feature is typical of Hemingway’s style – lack of
emotive coloring. Meanwhile, the word “lão” is able to define age, gender and plight of the
character – an old miserable male person. The deviation in translating the third person is
resulted in by the typical expressiveness of Vietnamese personal pronouns.
* The use of Goals
Both the source text and the target text have a large proportion of Goals as concrete nouns.
These claims imply two things: (i) it indicates Hemingway’s individual style, which is
explained by his liking for clarity and simplicity; (ii) the translator seems to have a thorough
knowledge of a tendency among Anglicists (who speak English as their mother tongue)
“descriptive rather than evaluative in their statements” (Quang, 2000).
Goals in the Vietnamese text occur less frequently (23 times) than those in the English text
(33 times), which makes the translation deviate from the original. The reason is claimed by
Quang (2000) that Vietnamese tends to be subjective in their way of using the language.
* Omission of Actors and Goals
Actors and Goals are sometimes omitted in the translation. The elliptical Actors and Goals
are typical of Hemingway’s principle of writing “mean more by writing less”, which

provokes the readers’ imagination.
* Addition of Goals
The translator violates the author’s theory of ellipsis by adding Goals which are implicit in
the original extract.
* The use of Circumstances
Spatial Location (indicating places and positions) and Manner (indicating means, quality
and comparison) are under investigation due to their most frequent occurrences in two texts.
Type
Location
Extent
Manner
Cause
Acc.
Role
Total

Temporal
Spatial
Temporal
Spatial
NOC
8
46
3
3
27
2
1
1
91

%
8.79
50.54
3.29
3.29
29.67
2.19
1.09
1.09
Table 8 Distribution of Circumstances in English text
Type
Location
Extent
Manner
Cause
Acc.
Role
Total

Temporal
Spatial
Temporal
Spatial
NOC
7
40
3
4
33
3

2
0
92
%
7.60
43.47
3.26
4.34
35.86
3.26
2.17
0
Table 9 Distribution of Circumstances in Vietnamese text
The analogy cannot be achieved when the manner of means is transferred into a new material
process in the translation. This is because Vietnamese tend to use more verbs in their texts.
4.3.3. The use of Tense and Phase
The unmarked tense selections are the simple past, past continuous and past perfect.
The notion of time in Vietnamese material processes is expressed by vocabulary while that of
English material processes is expressed by tense. Similarly, the second verb in an English
phase has a nonfinite form (to + V, Ving, V) whereas that in Vietnamese does not have.
The reason is that Vietnamese is an isolating language, an analytical language or a non-
inflectional language which does not use any inflections to indicate grammatical
relationships.
4.3.4. The use of Voice
The passive form is used in the English clause and the active form in the Vietnamese clause
when talking about the motion of an inanimate participant.
It is the influence of active characteristic of Vietnamese that makes Bắc’s translation not
fulfill Hemingway’s intention of using stative expressions to denote the man’s tiredness and
his depressing circumstance.

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION
5.1. Recapitulation
Here are the conclusions we arrive at in the study:
First, the highest number of occurrences shows that material process plays a preponderant
role in both the original and the Vietnamese translation. The usage of this kind of process
contributes to convey the characteristic of the texts – an action-oriented narrative.
Second, the translation contains more material processes than the original. This is explained
from the cultural aspect that Vietnamese people tend to use redundancy and more verbs than
Anglicists.
Third, the structure of material clauses consists of the Actor only or both the Actor and the
Goal; Circumstances are optional.
The Actors are mostly animate due to the central role of two main characters – the old man
and the big fish. Yet, the analogy cannot be achieved in the translation of the dominant
personal pronoun he with reference to the old man. The mere use of the third person is not
only typical of English language, that is, personal pronouns themselves are not able to
express ages and genders of the characters and the author’s feelings and attitude towards his
characters but also typical of Hemingway principle of writing – lack of emotive colouring. On
the contrary, he is translated into lão in Vietnamese in which age, gender and plight of the
character as well as the author’s sympathetic and respectful attitude is explicitly shown
simultaneously.
The majority of Goals are concrete nouns without adding any adjectives. It is implied that the
translator is conscious of the author’s individual writing style – priority is given to clarity and
simplicity. Moreover, he becomes aware that speakers of English as their mother tongue
prefer giving description to giving evaluation of the subjects.
The elliptical Actors and Goals are typical of Hemingway’s principle of writing “mean more
by writing less” which provokes the readers’ imagination. On the one hand, the omission of
Actors to avoid unnecessary repetition makes the target text equivalent to the source text. On
the other hand, the omission of Goals which are present in the original makes the translation
deviate from the original.
Sometimes, the translator violates the author’s theory of ellipsis by adding Goals which are

implicit in the original extract.
The third component is Circumstance, with its two sub-types: Spatial Location and
Manner. Unlike English, Vietnamese prepositions of direction put emphasis on subjectivity,
not objectivity. The analogy cannot be achieved when the manner of means is transferred into
a new material process. This is because Vietnamese tend to use more verbs in their texts.
Next, the notion of time in Vietnamese material processes is expressed by vocabulary and by
tense in English. Similarly, the second verb in an English phase has a nonfinite form (to + V,
Ving, V) whereas that in Vietnamese does not have. The reason for these differences is that
Vietnamese is an analytical language and English is a synthetic one.
Lastly, verbs in material processes in the original are sometimes in passive voice. In this
aspect, Vietnamese material processes describing the actions of inanimate entities seem to be
more dynamic than those in English text due to the influence of active characteristic of
Vietnamese.
5.2. Implications of the study
The first attention should be paid to when translating a literary work is the equivalence in
terms of linguistics features and cultural contexts. Moreover, the translator should have a
thorough knowledge of the author’s individual style. Added to this, it is vital for translators to make
sense of the genre of the texts which he or she is going to translate.
For learners whose major is translation, it is a must for them to master the linguistic features
of the source language. It is the researcher’s worry that the notion of “tense” and “phase” in
English can be a problem for them.
5.3. Suggestions for further study
In a near future, it is the researcher’s hope that all process types which appears in the original
text will be brought into comparison with those in the translated text.

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