Common translation errors (vietnamese english) committed by the third year english majors a case at dong nai technology university a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the req

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY
-------------------------------------------

COMMON TRANSLATION ERRORS (VIETNAMESE – ENGLISH)
COMMITTED BY THE THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS:
A CASE AT DONG NAI TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by TRAN THI HOAI NAM, BA

Supervisor
NGUYEN HOANG TUAN, Ph.D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, SEPTEMBER 2016


STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I certify that this thesis, entitled “Common translation errors (Vietnamese –English)
committed by the third-year English majors: A case at Dong Nai Technology
University”, is my own work.

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, it does not contain material
published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have
qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma.
No other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main
text of this thesis.

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any

other tertiary institution.

Ho Chi Minh City, September 2016

TRAN THI HOAI NAM

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply indebted to a number of people for helping me to make this thesis
possible. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude is to my wholehearted supervisor,
Dr. Nguyen Hoang Tuan for providing me with the initial inspiration to start the
study as well as giving all of his thoughtful and insightful comments and his
invaluable encouragement during the process of writing the thesis. His excellent
academic guidance and continuous support helped me in all the time of my study.
Furthermore, my most sincere gratefulness also goes to Dr. Luu Trong Tuan for his
kindly assistance given to me in difficulties.

I would like to gratefully thank my TESOL 08 classmates for the happiness and
difficulties we share throughout the course, which would be an unforgettable
memory in my life. Particularly, I would like to give my special thanks to Mr.
Nguyen Tri Tuc and Mr. Luong Minh Tin for helping me with the analysis of the
translation tests of the students.

My profound thanks are also reserved for the managing boards, the English
lecturers, and the third-year English majors in the academic year of 2015 – 2016 at
Dong Nai Technology University, who gave me best possible conditions to conduct
the study.

And last, but by no means least, I am extremely appreciated the endless love of my
family who are always by my side. I will never forget day and night supports of my
parents, my sisters to overcome all challenges in my life.

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ABSTRACT

Nowadays, with the trend of globalization in Vietnam, English as an international
language is necessary to bring the country‟s image to the world via the articles,
journals, research about Vietnamese people and culture. Therefore, translation
should have been paid much attention to. However, majority of the third-year
English majors at Dong Nai Technology University (DNTU) find a common
problem that they feel difficult to translate from Vietnamese into English and they
commit many errors in translation. Moreover, there is no study on this case at
DNTU. Hence, the research was conducted with two main objectives: first, to
investigate the common errors in translation from Vietnamese into English made by
the third-year English majors at Dong Nai Technology University and second, to
find out possible causes of those errors. In order to serve the aims of the study, six
translation tests were used for thirty third-year English majors. Interviews were also
carried out with ten students and one teacher of the translation subject. The findings
revealed that there were a large number of micro and macro-level translation errors,
especially errors of word choice, prepositions, articles and tenses made by the
students. More critically, the causes of those errors included both subjective and
objective reasons according to the data collected. Subjective causes concerned the
lack of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, culture, text type, and text style, the
ability to overcome the negative influence of the mother tongue in language
learning, the concentration and motivation in the translation process and the

inappropriate use of translation method while objective ones included the
differences between English and Vietnamese, the influence of the mother tongue
and inappropriate teaching documents and methods. Based on the findings of the
study, some important conclusions as well as recommendations were drawn, hoping
to improve translation teaching and learning at Dong Nai Technology University.

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ABBREVIATIONS

DNTU

Dong Nai Technology University

FFL

Faculty of Foreign Languages

SL

Source language

TL

Target language

ATA

American Translators Association

iv


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .......................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS.........................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii
ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................. iv
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1
1.1 Background to the study ................................................................................... 1
1.2 Rationale for the study ...................................................................................... 2
1.3 Research objectives........................................................................................... 3
1.4 Research questions ............................................................................................ 3
1.5 Significance of the research .............................................................................. 4
1.6 The scope and limitation of the study ............................................................... 4
1.7 Definitions of terms .......................................................................................... 5
1.8 Overview of thesis chapters .............................................................................. 5
1.9 Chapter summary .............................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................ 7
2.1 Definitions of translation .................................................................................. 7
2.2 Equivalence in translation ............................................................................... 12
2.2.1 Definitions of equivalence in translation ................................................ 12
2.2.2 Types of equivalence in translation ......................................................... 14
2.3 The translation process ................................................................................... 14
2.4 Translation approaches ................................................................................... 16
2.4.1 Text-type oriented translation ................................................................. 16
2.4.2 Text linguistics ........................................................................................ 18
2.5 Translation methods ........................................................................................ 18

2.5.1 Word-for-word translation ...................................................................... 19
2.5.2 Literal translation .................................................................................... 19

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2.5.3. Faithful translation ................................................................................. 20
2.5.4 Semantic translation ................................................................................ 20
2.5.5 Free translation ........................................................................................ 20
2.5.6 Idiomatic translation ................................................................................ 21
2.5.7 Adaption .................................................................................................. 21
2.5.8 Communicative translation...................................................................... 21
2.6. Errors in translation ....................................................................................... 22
2.6.1 Definitions of errors in translation .......................................................... 22
2.6.2 Classification and description of errors in translation ............................. 23
2.6.2.1 Micro-level translation errors ............................................................ 25
2.6.2.2 Macro-level translation errors ............................................................ 31
2.6.3 Stages of error analysis............................................................................ 33
2.6.4 Criteria for translation quality assessment .............................................. 33
2.7 Review of previous studies and the research gap ........................................... 35
2.8 Chapter summary ............................................................................................ 40
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ......................................................................... 41
3.1 Research site ................................................................................................... 41
3.2 Participants and sampling ............................................................................... 42
3.2.1 Translation test participants ......................................................................... 42
3.2.2 Interview participants .................................................................................. 43
3.2.2.1 Student participants .............................................................................. 43
3.2.2.2 Teacher participants ............................................................................. 43
3.3 Methods of data collection .............................................................................. 43
3.4 Data collection instruments ............................................................................ 44

3.4.1 Translation tests ....................................................................................... 44
3.4.2 Interviews ................................................................................................ 45
3.5 Data collection procedures ............................................................................. 46
3.5.1 Piloting the translation tests and interview questions ............................. 47
3.5.2 Data collection procedures ...................................................................... 47

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3.5.2.1 Translation tests .................................................................................... 47
3.5.2.2 Student interviews ................................................................................ 48
3.5.2.3 Teacher interview ................................................................................. 48
3.6 Analytical framework ..................................................................................... 49
3.7 Ethical issues................................................................................................... 55
3.8 Chapter summary ............................................................................................ 55
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .................................................... 56
4.1 Results and Discussion ................................................................................... 56
4.1.1 From translation tests ............................................................................. 56
4.1.1.1 Micro-level translation errors ............................................................ 57
4.1.1.2 Macro-level translation errors ............................................................ 72
4.1.2 DNTU students‟ responses to the interview and interview analysis ...... 78
4.1.3 DNTU teacher‟ responses to the interview and interview analysis ....... 82
4.1.3.1 Question 01 ...................................................................................... 82
4.1.3.2 Question 02 ...................................................................................... 83
4.1.3.3 Question 03 ...................................................................................... 85
4.2 The summary of main findings ....................................................................... 85
4.2.1 Research question 01 .......................................................................... 85
4.2.2 Research question 02 ....................................................................................... 86
4.3 Chapter summary ............................................................................................ 87
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ................................... 89

5.1 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 89
5.2 Implications .................................................................................................... 91
5.2.1 Recommendations for students ............................................................... 91
5.2.2 Recommendations for teachers ............................................................... 93
5.2.3 Recommendations for The Executive Board of FFL .............................. 97
5.2.3.1 Textbooks ........................................................................................... 97
5.2.3.2 Using Billingual Corpus..................................................................... 98
5.2.3.3 Teaching Grammar modules .............................................................. 98

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5.2.3.4 Increasing the credits for each module and setting class-size limits . 99
5.3 Suggestions for further research ..................................................................... 99
5.4 Chapter summary .......................................................................................... 100
REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 101
APPENDIX 1: TRANSATION TEST 1 .......................................................... 113
APPENDIX 2: TRANSATION TEST 2 .......................................................... 114
APPENDIX 3: TRANSATION TEST 3 .......................................................... 115
APPENDIX 4: TRANSATION TEST 4 .......................................................... 116
APPENDIX 5: TRANSATION TEST 5 .......................................................... 117
APPENDIX 6: TRANSATION TEST 6 .......................................................... 118
APPENDIX 7: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS ....................... 119
APPENDIX 8: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR THE TEACHER ............... 120

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Definition of translation......................................................................11

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LIST OF CHARTS
Chart 4.1 Proportion of translation error types ..............................................................56
Table 4.1 Average errors per texts per category..............................................................58
Chart 4.2 Proportion of micro-level translation errors...................................................59
Chart 4.3 Incorrect vocabulary .........................................................................................61
Chart 4.4 Inappropriate vocabulary .................................................................................65
Chart 4.5 Proportion of incorrect grammar ...................................................................67
Chart 4.6 Proportion of inappropriate grammar ............................................................70
Chart 4.7 Proportion of macro-level translation errors ..................................................73
Chart 4.8 Average errors per texts...................................................................................78

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3. 1 The coding scheme to analyze students’ data from translation
tests. ................................................................................................................. 50
Table 4. 1 Average errors per texts per category ....................................... 58

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins by presenting the background and rationale for the study.
It will then go on to the objectives, the research questions, the significance, the
scope and limitation of the study. Finally, definitions of terms, which are used in the
research, are also provided.
1.1 Background to the study
Translation errors can be found easily in those backgrounds where English is
not the mother tongue. In Vietnam, English is quite common though it is still
positioned as a foreign language. For Vietnamese students and teachers, translating
a text from Vietnamese into English and vice versa has been long proved to be
convenient for both learning and teaching. Consequently, from elementary schools
to universities, translation has been fully exploited and different ways of translation
are used in distinctive levels. Nonetheless, there are an abundance of obstacles to
deal with in the translation process. One of those problems takes the researcher to
the job of analyzing errors that student translators might have.
In language teaching and learning, error analysis is considered as one of the
most significant tools. Hartmann and Stork (1972) emphasize that it is possible for
language learners to make errors. Learning how to translate a text from Vietnamese
into English is also included in the process of learning English; for that reason,
students are expected to make errors during their study. But when looking at the
bright side of the problem, we see that frequently made errors in translation, once
carefully analyzed, can help us to easily understand the way or strategies students
often adopt for their learning language (Richards, 1971). With this understanding,
teachers can eventually correct students and help them to self-correct and then just
move on. In order to analyze students‟ errors, it is advised to take into consideration
what Ellis (1994) suggests that the process of analyzing errors including those made
in the course of translation which consists of several steps such as collecting

1

samples of learners‟ language learning, identifying the errors, describing those
errors, classifying them into specific categories, and evaluating them according to
their seriousness. Also, errors made in the process of translation are worth
considering. Those errors can be the proof that will guide teachers to where students
are having difficulties. Therefore, Khodabandeh (2007) says that error analysis is
beneficial for syllabus makers to decide which is important and crucial to be added
in the translation course. For teachers, this really helps to build strong and effective
methodologies. For the students, this greatly assists them understanding themselves
in terms of their weaknesses and difficulties in the translation process. In a nutshell,
translation error analysis is the first step which needs to be done in order to improve
teaching and learning translation.
1.2 Rationale for the study
Translation is one of mandatory subjects that the students from the Faculty of
Foreign Languages (short for FFL) at Dong Nai Technology University (short for
DNTU) must complete. Taken down to the smallest detail, the subject of
Translation is divided into four modules which are Translation Theory, which
provides students with translation know-how, Translation 01, Translation 02 and
Translation 03. All of those modules guide students from theory to practice. Each
one consists of thirty periods. The aims of those modules are to well equip and to
further enhance students‟ translation skills for their jobs in the future.
Nevertheless, the majority of English majors still face some common
translation problems; one of which is that they seem ill at ease to translate a text
from Vietnamese into English and it becomes a fear of taking Vietnamese-English
translation tests. They always make errors and get into many difficulties in their
translation process. For example, the four above-mentioned modules were taught to
the two classes of FFL (2011 and 2012), whereas in general the students‟ translation
performance was not as satisfactory as expected. Moreover, by observing students
of the class 2013 who have just finished Translation Theory module in the third

2

semester of academic year 2015, the researcher comes to see that they are extremely
scared of translation and worried about how to successfully adapt their translation
skills to their work after graduation. One of many reasons is that within thirty
periods (one period lasts about forty five minutes), the lecturer must cover both
translation theory and translation practice; therefore, it does not give her enough
time to check all students‟ answers and analyze students‟ errors which can help
students exploit their strengths and reduce their weaknesses in the translation
process. Amongst the known and unknown reasons for why students fail to translate
successfully, one has been commonly addressed is that teachers might have not
been deeply successful in putting their feet into students‟ shoes to understand them
in detail. Therefore, Vietnamese-English translation errors of English majors need
to be classified; however, it seems that no study on this case has been done
previously at DNTU. To fulfill this gap, the study entitled “Common translation
errors (Vietnamese-English) committed by the third-year English majors: A case at
Dong Nai Technology University” is conducted.
1.3 Research objectives
The research focuses on two main objectives: first, to investigate the
common errors in translation from Vietnamese into English committed by the third
-year English majors at DNTU and second, to find out what possible causes lead to
those errors. Based on the results, the students‟ errors and possible causes will be
critically analyzed and classified into specific categories to help students avoid such
errors in the future. Also, some recommendations for improving the current
teaching and learning translation at DNTU will be offered.
1.4 Research questions
The study is conducted to answer the following two research questions:
(1) What are the common errors in translation from Vietnamese into English
committed by the third-year English majors at DNTU?

3


(2) What are possible causes that lead the students to commit those
translation errors?
1.5 Significance of the research
This study is carried out to achieve expected outcomes as follows.
Realistically, the results of this study are intended to help teachers and students at
FFL to have a clear picture of what is going on with their teaching and learning
translation. Also, some recommendations are suggested with the hope that students
and teachers can improve their performance in both teaching and learning
translation. Theoretically, this research will help in contributing to the library of
current literature about the theme of translation from Vietnamese to English within
the context of DNTU as well as Vietnam.
1.6 The scope and limitation of the study
The study was at DNTU in more than one year, from June, 2015 to
September, 2016. Notwithstanding the effort of the researcher, the limitation can be
found in the study. The first limitation of this study was the sample size. Only thirty
third-year English majors and one translation teacher at Dong Nai Technology
University involved in the study, thus the generalization and recommendations
would be limited to other students at Dong Nai Technology University and to other
universities in Vietnam. Secondly, the research only focused on investigating
students‟ errors in Vietnamese-English translation. Thirdly, only six translation tests
regarding business and tourism were used to collect data and they were done in
class with the limited time. Therefore, the results might not fully show the
translation ability of students. In addition, suggestions for improving the translation
learning were only provided to help English majors. In other words, with the bigger
sample size including groups of students from different majors and VietnameseEnglish as well as English-Vietnamese translation tests concerning variety of topics
will allow the researcher to get more outstanding results. Also, its recommendations
can help different groups of students at DNTU improve their translation skills.

4


1.7 Definitions of terms
Target language: the language which is going to be translated into
(Newmark, 1998)
Source language: the language which is used before the translation
(Newmark, 1998)
1.8 Overview of thesis chapters
The overall structure of the study takes the form of five chapters including
(1) Introduction, (2) Literature Review, (3) Methodology, (4) Findings and
Discussion and (5) Conclusions and Implications.
First of all, chapter one begins by providing background, rationale and
objectives of the research. Research questions, significance, scope and limitation of
the study are stated later. Also, definitions of terms come in the end. Secondly,
chapter two reviews the literature relevant to the research topic, summarizes what
has been done and what has not yet been done about the topic so far, points out the
gap that the current thesis will bridge. Then, the research methodology in terms of
the research site, participants and sampling, methods, instruments, procedure of data
collection, analytical framework and ethical issues are introduced in chapter three.
Next, chapter four presents the research‟s results and discussion in detail. Finally,
chapter five draws obvious conclusions, discusses some important practical
implications and gives helpful suggestions for further research.
1.9 Chapter summary
The first chapter of this research provides general background and rationale
for investigating common errors in translation from Vietnamese into English
committed by the third-year English majors at Dong Nai Technology University.
The aims of the study are first, to investigate common errors in translation from
Vietnamese into English made by third-year English majors at Dong Nai

Technology University and second, to find out possible causes of these errors.
There are two research questions which will be answered according to those

5


objectives. The significance, scope, limitation and organization of this research are
introduced in the end.

6


CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter mainly focuses on five major issues: (1) Definitions of
translation, (2) Equivalence in translation, (3) The translation process, (4)
Translation approaches (5) Translation methods, (6) Errors in translation, and (7)
Review of previous studies and the research gap.
2.1 Definitions of translation
Various ways of understanding translation make different ways of translating.
It is believed that the lack of understanding of translation might greatly affect the
translation quality, thus in-depth discussion about definitions of translation is
necessary. There are many definitions of translation coming from a variety of
authors with different viewpoints. Hence, only several typical definitions will be
taken into deep consideration within this research.
Firstly, Brisset (2000) defines translator‟s task as the replacement the
language of the other by a native language. This definition seems easy to understand;
however, it simply emphasizes the act of change in meaning but not the translation
process from one language into another. Similarly, Munday (2001) believes that the
translation process between two distinct written languages concerns the change of

the source text into the target text. Overall, those things are true; nevertheless, the
mismatch between the two languages, which occurs because every language has its
own way to convey messages in both spoken and written forms, is not mentioned in
those definitions.
Differently, some scholars introduce their definitions of translation to
accentuate contents of the text when translating. Hartmann and Stock (1972) view
translation as the text‟s representation in one language by another equivalent text‟s
representation in a second language. Likewise, Brislin (1976) points out that
translation is the act of changing thoughts and ideas from source language to target
one. As can be seen from his definition, he pays much more attention to contents of

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a text, especially thoughts and ideas in the translation process. In a similar vein, Bell
(1991) strongly emphasizes that translation directly concerns the transfer of
meaning from one language‟s text into another one‟s.
Besides, Larson (1998) believes that translation is fundamentally a form
change and translator‟s task is to keep the constant of meaning. Moreover, he
claims that the form of a language refers to the actual words, phrases, clauses,
sentences, paragraphs and the like. Importantly, a meaning, which is expressed by a
specific form in a language, can be effectively conveyed by a distinct form in
another; thus, changing the form in translation process is often essential. In simpler
terms, the form of the source language is substituted by the form of the receptor
language in translation. Counting on this definition, Larson states that translation is
the changing of form between two languages without changing meaning.
Remarkably, Sugimoto (2005: 1) considers translation as “the exchange of one set
of clothes for another set of clothes that will cover the same meaning or thought”.
From Sugimoto‟s definition of translation, the source text‟s meaning and thought
should be remained constantly in the source text by different forms of target text.

Also, a “set of clothes” refers to lexical and grammar. This is such an interesting
translation definition that teachers can use to help students easily conceive and
understand what translation is.
Compared with above-mentioned authors, the following ones focus more on
equivalence in translation. Catford (1965) believes that translation is the act of
substituting textual material in one language with equivalent textual material in
another. He also claims that equivalent plays a key role in translation, thus the
crucial task of translation theory is to define the translation equivalence‟s nature and
conditions. In general, the linguistic view of translation is particularly focused on
his theory. Similarly, Houbert (1998: 1) states that “translation is to be understood
as the process whereby a message expressed in a specific source language is
linguistically transformed in order to be understood by readers of the target

8


language”. Also, Bell (1991: 5) suggests that translation is “the expression in
another language (or target language) of what has been expressed in another, source
language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences”. Clearly, from his point of
view, equivalence between source text and target one in both semantic and stylistic
features plays a central role in translation and the translator has to make a big effort
to ensure it. Therefore, according to him, a translator has the choice of “finding
formal equivalents which „preserve‟ the context-free semantic sense of the text” or
“finding

functional

equivalents

which

„preserve‟

the

context-sensitive

communicative value of the text”. Generally speaking, the close correspondence
between the source text and target one is the basis of translation in Bell‟s definition.
Different from Catford‟s viewpoint, Bassnett (2013) states that translation involves
the text representation in one language by another equivalent text representation in a
second language in order to ensure that first, the surface meaning of the two closely
will resemble each other and second, the structure of the SL will be maintained as
properly as possible, without leading to serious distortion of the TL structures
Supporting for the concept of equivalence, Sa'edi (2004: 242) considers
translation as “the process of establishing equivalence between the source language
texts and target language texts”. Adding pragmatic aspect to translation when
looking at equivalence, House (1997) views translation as the replacement of a text
in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the
target language. Nida (1984: 83) points out that “translation consists of reproducing
in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language
message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style”. It can be
deduced that the equivalence in both meaning and style are strongly focused in his
definition. By and large, the key aspect in the authors‟ definitions is the concept of
equivalence which is absolutely vital for the translation process.
Adding culture element in his definition, Tudor (1987) defines translation as
the process of expressing messages across linguistic and cultural barriers. In the

9

same way, Hatim and Mason (2005: 1) consider translation as “an act of
communication which attempts to relay, across cultural and linguistic boundaries,
another act of communication”. Adewuni (2000: 1) notes that translation is “a
reality despite the complications and doubt attached to it based on the nature of the
elements involved, the languages, the cultures, and the translator”. The researcher
totally agrees with Adewuni‟s point of view. By this definition, he lists three crucial
factors in the process of translation, which significantly affect every aspect of
translation quality, are languages, cultures and the translator. The important point is
that each country has its own language and its own way to convey messages in both
spoken and written forms. Noticeably, according to Luu Trong Tuan (2011: 1)
“every language has its own beauty”. Hence, as noticed by Durdureanu (2011: 1),
“when translating, people find out things about others, about a world which is not
theirs”. Clearly, the differences in languages and cultures are emphasized in the
definition, those are very useful for the current study.
Also, translation is considered as a skill which helps people replace a source
text by a target one or a task. A first definition is given by Newmark (1981: 7), who
describes “translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written
message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in
another language”. Giving strong support to Newmark, Aziz and Lataiwish (2000)
define translation as the replacement of a text in one language by another. A further
definition is given by Kelly (2005) who views translation as the skill of
understanding the source text and using the register, the background knowledge,
and other language resources to render it into the target language according to the
intended purpose. Nonetheless, a translator should be a person who mediates
between the two languages and cultures to transfer the SL to the TL. Hence, the
equivalence, from those definitions, is taken into consideration at the whole text
level. In other words, the whole source text should be replaced by the target one.
Secondly, the term “a problem-solving task” is used Kaur (2005) to refer
to translation. Actually, there are many problems which arise in the translation

10


process, thus translators have to identify translation problems to find out the most
appropriate procedure for translation in order to solve the identified problems. For
that reason, this definition is generally accepted.
Additionally, from cross-cultural communication view, Tianmin (2006)
provides a new definition of translation which is “translation is simultaneous
decontextualization and recontextualization, hence is productive rather than
reproductive”. On the contrary, the terms “decoding” and “encoding” are used
instead of “decontextualization” and “recontextualization” by Weber (2005) in his
theory when he claims that translation includes decoding the meaning of the source
language (SL) text and encoding this meaning into a receptor language (RL) text.
Figure 2.1 illustrates this point as below.

Figure 2.1 Definition of translation
Theoretically, from above-mentioned definitions of translation, the
researcher has a sound foundation for following two points. Firstly, while a variety
of definitions of the term translation have been suggested, this paper will use the
definition of Kelly (2005). This is because translation, a crucial notion which is
closely related to culture, is considered as the replacement of a text in the source
language by a semantically, pragmatically and stylistically equivalence text in the
target language. To do those things, translators should have good understanding of
the source text and full knowledge of languages and cultures. Secondly, language,
culture and translator are three vitally key factors involving in the translation
process. Specially, language and culture are closely interrelated. Actually, people
use translation commonly because people today live in a transparent world in which
they barely say where the borders between countries are. Globalization makes
people closer and closer to each other. However, there is a language barrier between

people when they approach each other. Obviously, a concept of one typical culture

11


may be a non-exist concept to other culture. Thus, how do people understand each
other when they become internationally? People use translation to transfer the
meanings of a language or culture into their own similar meanings or
understandable concepts. Consequently, it would be difficult or impossible to
communicate with people from other countries, if translation did not exist. In order
to make the clear meaning of source language, it is expected that the meaning of
target language can be understood by the readers. So, the result of translation must
be readable. Translation is not only the transmission of words and phrases but also
the sense of language, culture and social norm because what translators should
translate are messages, senses, and texts. It will make the readers easy to understand
the content of the text well. In conclusion, Cary (1956: 181) concludes that
“translators live off the differences between languages, all the while working
toward eliminating them”.
2.2 Equivalence in translation
2.2.1 Definitions of equivalence in translation
It is said that no matter how translation is defined, the notion of equivalence
is indivisible from it; thus, equivalence is the key concept in translation. Generally,
the notion of equivalence occurs when people try to describe and explain the
relationship between the source text and the target text (Luu Trong Tuan, 2009).
Many researchers try to give out its definition.
First of all, House (1997) considers equivalence in translation as “the
conceptual basis of translation and, to quote Catford, „the central problem of
translation practice is that of finding TL (target language) equivalents‟ (1965:21)”.
Additionally, Leonardi (2000) states the theory of equivalence is related to the
comparison of texts in different languages. To talk about the relationship between

translation and equivalence, in an interesting way, Pym (1992) views it as a
circularity: equivalence is supposed to define translation, and translation, in turn,
defines equivalence. For Halverson (1997: 207), equivalence means “a relationship

12


existing between two entities and the relationship is described as one of likeness/
sameness/ similarity/ equality in terms of any of a number of potential qualities”.
Similarly, Panou (2013) uses the term “equivalence” to refer to some kinds of
“sameness” which source text and target text share. From those definitions, it can be
deduced that equivalence shows the relationship between a source text (ST) and a
target text (TT) and basing on it translators decide whether the TL is considered as a
translation of the ST in the first place or not. Therefore, it is important for
translators to keep equivalence relationships between parts of ST and parts of TL.
Meetham and Hudson (1969) claim that translation texts in different languages
might have differences in equivalent extent (full or partial equivalence), in
representation aspects (equivalent in context, semantic, syntax, vocabulary, etc.)
and levels (word, phrase, sentence level). Jakobson (1959) realizes that the cardinal
problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistic are equivalence in
difference. Also, he believes that “there is ordinarily no full equivalence between
code–units”. In a similar vein, Nida (1984) gives the statement that it is impossible
to reach absolute equivalence in translation. Clearly, the notion of equivalence is
problematic.
From above-mentioned definitions of equivalence in translation especially
Meetham and Hudson‟s one, the researcher deduces some significant points which
are very helpful for the study, equivalence in translation is the comparison between
the source text and the target one in terms of representation aspects (equivalent in
context, semantic, syntax, vocabulary, etc.), levels (word, phrase, sentence level).
Remarkably, there is no absolute equivalence. It is worth mentioning that

equivalence is the most important concept that every translator strives for when
translating in order to make a good translation for readers.

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