Application of house’s model for translation quality assessment in assessing the english version of the vietnam’s criminal procedure code no 192003QH11

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

**********************

MAI VĂN TRỌNG

APPLICATION OF HOUSE’S MODEL FOR
TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT IN
ASSESSING THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE
VIETNAM’S CRIMINAL PROCEDURE CODE NO.
19/2003/QH11
(Áp dụng mô hình đánh giá chất lượng bản dịch của House vào việc
đánh giá bản dịch tiếng Anh của Bộ luật Tố tụng Hình sự số
19/2003/QH11)

M.A. Major Program Thesis

Field: English linguistics
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2014


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

**********************

MAI VĂN TRỌNG

APPLICATION OF HOUSE’S MODEL FOR
TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT IN
ASSESSING THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE
VIETNAM’S CRIMINAL PROCEDURE CODE NO.
19/2003/QH11
(Áp dụng mô hình đánh giá chất lượng bản dịch của House vào việc
đánh giá bản dịch tiếng Anh của Bộ luật Tố tụng Hình sự số
19/2003/QH11)

M.A. Major Program Thesis

Field: English linguistics
Code: 60220201
Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Dr. LÊ HÙNG TIẾN

Hanoi, 2014


DECLARATION
I hereby certify my authority of the research submitted entitled
“Application of House’s model for translation quality assessment in assessing
the English version of the Vietnam’s Criminal Procedure Code No.
19/2003/QH11” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts.
Hanoi, 06th October, 2014

Mai Văn Trọng

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, my boundless and most sincere gratitude is due to
my beloved teacher, Assoc. Prof. Lê Hùng Tiến, Ph.D, Dean of the Faculty of
Post-Graduate Studies, ULIS for his insightful editorial skills and for truly
guiding the track for this paper. Whenever I lost track of thought, he pumped
plentiful guidance and inspiration to my mind in anticipation of my successful
study.
I would like to take this once-in-life-time opportunity to thank my

respectable ULIS teachers for their teaching, due assistance and kindness
blessed on me during my last two-year.
I cannot fully express my gratitude to my exceptional family who gave
me a love of life and to my friends who offered me a life of love.
None of those mentioned, or anyone else, is responsible for my errors
and omissions.
Limitations and mistakes are surely inevitable in my study. Therefore, I
take hold of high regards for all the recommendations and suggestions from
the readers.

ii


ABSTRACT
This study aims at assessing the quality of the English translation of the
Vietnamese Criminal Procedure Code. Among various approaches to, criteria

and models for translation quality assessment, House’s model is selected in
this study because it comprises a comprehensive set of parameters for
assessing functional and pragmatic equivalence of the translation text.
The analysis of and comparison between the ST and TT has yielded
significant results and implications for translating legal texts. Accordingly, the
TT is a “second original” or covert one; semantic translation method and textnormative equivalence type are suggested for the translation of such type of
texts. However, the accurate interpretation of the Vietnamese provisions can be
achieved mainly thanks to the ultimate command of both SL and TL.

iii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

SL:

Source Language

TL:

Target Language

ST:

Source Text

AT:

Translation Text

iv


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

The schema for analyzing and comparing original and translation texts……….. 32

v


TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION.......................................................................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...................................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................ iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................................... iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS................................................................................................. v
TABLE OF CONTENTS....................................................................................................... vi
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................... 1
1. Rationale for the study......................................................................................................... 1
2. Significance of the study.................................................................................................... 2
3. Scope and objectives of the study................................................................................... 3
3.1. Scope of the study................................................................................................ 3
3.2. Objectives of the study....................................................................................... 3
3.3. Research questions............................................................................................... 4
4. Research methods.................................................................................................................. 4
5. Overview of the study.......................................................................................................... 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW........................................................................... 6
1.1. Previous studies on legal language............................................................................. 6
1.2. Definition of translation.................................................................................................. 6
1.3. Approaches to translation quality assessment......................................................... 9

1.3.1. Anecdotal, biographical and neo-hermeneutic approaches to
judging translation quality........................................................................................... 10
1.3.2. Response-oriented, behavioural approaches to evaluating
translations......................................................................................................................... 11
1.3.3. Text and discourse-based approaches..................................................... 12
1.4. Linguistic features of English legal language...................................................... 16
1.4.1. Vocabulary........................................................................................................ 16
1.4.2. Syntax................................................................................................................. 18
vi


1.4.3. Other properties of law language............................................................. 23
1.5. Linguistic features of Vietnamese legal language.............................................. 24
1.5.1. Vocabulary........................................................................................................ 24
1.5.2. Syntax................................................................................................................. 26
1.5.3. Other properties of legal language........................................................... 27
1.6. Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 28
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY..................................................................................... 29
2.1. House’s model for translation quality assessment.............................................. 29
2.2. Operation of the model................................................................................................. 32
2.3. Two Types of Translation: Overt and Covert Translation................................ 37
CHAPTER 3: TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF
SELECTED TEXT.................................................................................................................. 39
3.1. Analysis of Source Text................................................................................................ 39
3.2. Statement of function..................................................................................................... 55
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.......................................................... 57
4.1. Comparison of Target Text and Source Text......................................................... 57
4.2. Statement of Quality...................................................................................................... 68
4.3. Quality of the translation.............................................................................................. 68
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................ 71

1. Recapitulation...................................................................................................................... 71
2. Concluding remarks........................................................................................................... 71
3. Implications for translating Vietnamese legal documents into English.........73
4. Suggestions for further studies...................................................................................... 76
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................... 78
APPENDIX A: VIETNAMESE VERSION OF THE SELECTED TEXT...........I
APPENDIX B. ENGLISH VERSION OF THE SELECTED TEXT..............XIII

vii


INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the study
Vietnam has integrated into the common trends of the world in both
scope and depth. As a result, opportunities for our country to develop and
promote its image in the international area are numerous, whereas enormous
challenges posed to the public security forces are unable to be fought off
overnight, but it is required to initiate a well- planned roadmap including the
finalization of our legal system. As a matter of fact, laws constitute one of the
sharp and effective instruments to prevent and combat crimes. Vietnam is a
developing country which is lagged behind developed ones in terms of science,
technology, and legal and administrative system perfection as well.
Cooperation among law enforcement agencies worldwide, therefore, is in
urgent need to check the increasing types of crime. International extradition
and legal assistance are part of a step- forward finalization of our legal system
towards a cumber-free administration apparatus which is mainly inherited from
selective acceptance of and reference to other legal models of developed
countries. Equally important, Vietnam’s codes or laws should be analyzed and
made comparison with those of other nations in the light of legal perspective.
To that end, Vietnamese - English translation of such codes or laws is of

paramount significance, which somehow facilitates international legal experts’
further contribution of their comments on or recommendations to our adopted
laws or bills. Furthermore, upon the settlement of criminal cases, international
law enforcement officers are equipped with certain body of knowledge related
to our procedures in crime investigation, trial, and execution. English is an
accepted contemporary international language; consequently, an increasing
number of documents in other languages are

1


being translated into English with no exception granted to the legal field. The
quality of such translations has gained untold attention and put under much
discussion. Translation theorists have their own initiated criteria for translation
quality assessment, with Julian House, a German linguist, as an outstanding
representative who worked out her model for translation quality assessment.
In the hope of effective international integration in legal field, Vietnam
has ratified and amended a mixed variety of laws as an objective requirement.
In parallel with such laws’ efficiency in Vietnam’s territory, better
understanding should be bestowed upon foreign law enforcement offices via
reliable English versions of these laws in the fight against crimes. Though
these English versions do not have legal value, they do facilitate the process of
understanding and observing our laws by our counterparts. A good translation
of a legal document will mitigate misinterpretations and misapplications,
facilitating the settlement of criminal cases with foreign-related elements.
From the practice and status quo of the crime prevention and
suppression, our enacted law, the Vietnam’s Criminal Procedure Code no.
19/2003/QH11, is considered the most effective tool for international
cooperation namely international extradition, investigation, and trail of
transnational organized criminals. The Code has been translated into English

by the National Assembly Office. An assessment of the English version of the
Code is thus of practical requirements.
2. Significance of the study
The study will shed light on the features of the language of both
Vietnamese and English used in legal documents, thus making due

2


contribution to the acquisition of the distinctive features by students and
operational services.
The results of this study will help test the quality of the English
translation of the Criminal Procedure Code 2003 of Vietnam under the model
developed by House (1997), and suggest any timely changes should there be to
limit avoidable misunderstandings by foreign law enforcement officers in
interpreting the law.
Besides, the study will also propose some suggestions concerning the
translation of Vietnamese authoritative legal documents into English. More
important, the comparison and contrast between the use of the two languages
used in the two versions are likely to function as references for students and
officers of the Ministry of Public Security for better translating Memoranda of
Understanding or Agreements between our legal bodies and their counterparts.
3. Scope and objectives of the study
3.1. Scope of the study

The Criminal Procedure Code 2003 of Vietnam is composed of 346
articles, divided into 37 chapters. A study of the entire document is therefore
beyond the needed requirements of the paper. Therefore, the paper will put
chapter IX only under analysis, with the title of which being “Những quy định
chung về điều tra”. There are sixteen articles in this chapter, from Article 110

to Article 125.
3.2. Objectives of the study
The study is aimed at:
-

Exploring the functional and pragmatic mismatches resulted from the
translation of the Vietnamese Criminal Code into English.

3


-

Identifying the type of the English translation of the Code according the
model of translation quality assessment proposed by House.

-

Assessing the quality of the English translation of the Code in the light
of the distinctive features of legal text in the English language.

3.3. Research questions
The study is aimed at finding answers to three following questions:
1. What are the functional and pragmatic mismatches between the

source text and the target one?
2. Is the translation, according to House’s model, overt or covert?
3. To what extent does the English translation of the Code satisfy the

requirements for translating a Vietnamese legal text into English?

4. Research methods

The paper is aimed at assessing the quality of the English translation of
the Criminal Procedure Code of Vietnam. Therefore, a set of parameters for
assessment is of necessity. Among the various criteria and models for
translation quality assessment, House’s model is selected in this study because
it is deemed to have a comprehensive set of parameters for assessing functional
and pragmatic equivalence of the translation text. Furthermore, as House
argues, the model can be applied with a wide range of texts.
In applying House’s model, a source text is first selected, then analyzed
to draw its textual profile along the eight situational dimensions and a
statement of function of the ST will be made. Similarly, a profile of the
translation text will be come up with and compared with the ST’s under the
same set of parameters to find out any possible mismatches before a statement
of quality can be drawn about the TT.

4


5. Overview of the study
The paper is composed of three chapters, excluding the Introduction and
Conclusion:
Chapter 1: Literature review
The first part of this chapter will first introduce some studies on legal
language in Vietnam.
The next two parts present some definitions of renowned scholars
worldwide and discuss different approaches to translation quality assessment,
respectively.
Linguistic features of both Vietnamese and English are also under indepth analysis and comparison in the last two parts.
Chapter 2: Methodology

In this chapter, House’s model for translation quality assessment will be
introduced as the analytical framework and its operation model will also be
interpreted for the follow-up application.
Chapter 3: Translation quality assessment of selected text
The English translation of Chapter IX of the Code will be analyzed and
assessed on the basis of the aforesaid analytical framework with the same set
of parameters for both ST and TT.
Chapter 4: Findings and discussion
Findings about the quality of the translation text based on the application
of the model will be discussed and the research questions will be answered.

5


CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Previous studies on legal language
Mellinkoff (1963) claims that legal language today is full of mannerisms
that have found their way in gradually, over the course of centuries of law
practice. At first the purpose probably was a laudable one: to increase clarity,
accuracy, and unambiguity. The result, however, has been a style as “a wordy,
unclear, pompous, and dull”. Instead of resorting to short expressions, lawyers
and law drafters build up long, unnecessarily specific lists of words.
Van der and Nienaber’s (2002) hold that we experience difficulty in
understanding the language of statutes because of the very nature of this
language.
In Vietnam, some linguistic authors such as Cù Đình Tú, Nguyễn Thái
Hòa (1983) have studied some lexical and syntactic features of legal texts as a
subtype of administration and public service style. Lê Hùng Tiến (1999) made
a discourse analysis of legal text in Vietnamese contrasted with English. More
recently, Lương Tố Lan (2007) conducted an analysis on translation of law on

investment.
1.2. Definition of translation
Traditional view of translation
There are various definitions of translations proposed by different
linguists and scholars in different perspectives.
Translation in the pre-linguistic era concerned itself with the translating
of the classics in such a way as to result in two distinct but interrelated trends
of translation. Translation, on the one hand, was considered an art. The
translation of literary work necessitated the translator to be well-articulated in
literature so as the feeling of the work may be transformed to the TL. This
6


emphasis laid on the effect of translation rather than the transfer of the form of
the SL has been the trademark of much of those translations that have as their
prime concern the TL reader. Moreover, such translations aimed at the
enrichment of the native language rather than following the more rigid notions
of "fidelity" (McGuire 1980: 44). The ultimate aim in this trend is ‘sense for
sense’ rather than ‘word for word’ translation. In this case, translation was
considered as ‘art’, and the emphasis was on the transfer of the merit, the
feeling, the sense of the original work (cf. Finlay 1971, and McGuire 1980).
In Tytler's (1870) "Essay on the Principles of Translation", he said that a
good translation is that in which ‘the merit of the original work is so
completely transfused into another language, as to be distinctly apprehended,
and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs,
as it is by those who speak the language of the original work.’ (Finlay 1971:
22).
Translation, on the other hand, was considered as ‘second activity’, the
ultimate aim was to transfer as closely as possible the words of the original
work. McGuire (1980) refers to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1861) as saying that

the major characteristic of a translator is self-denial and repression of his own
creative impulses'.
Linguistic definition of translation
Linguistic development seems to have a considerable impact on
translation studies (see McGuire (1980) for a detailed account of the term
‘translation studies’). The underlying factor of many translation definitions has
its roots in one of the developing theories of language. Catford's definition
relies, to a large extent, on comparative linguistics and systemic linguistics.
Translation according to Catford (1965:20) is “the replacement of textual

7


material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another
language (TL)”. He criticises the view that regards the SL and the TL as having
the same meaning.
Nida's definition draws upon generative grammar, generative semantics,
and most importantly on the pragmatic approach to language study. Finally,
Miler, Neubert, de Beaugrande, Reiss and Wilss's views on translation all have
their roots in text linguistics, in which text not sentence is considered to be the
ultimate unit of analysis.
Post-linguistic Definitions of Translation
Newmark (1988: 5) defines translation as the rendering of "the meaning
of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text,' not
as could be understood and accepted by the reader. In addition to the author's
intention in his text, most of the other approaches focus on the receiver's
apprehension of the intended meaning of the text.
Casagrande (1954: 338) states that the attitudes and values, the
experience and tradition of a people, inevitably become involved in the freight
of meaning carried by a language’. Therefore, he points out that one does not

translates languages, one translates cultures. Along these lines, definitions such
as the following emerge:
1. Nida (1964: 19) holds that translating consists in producing in the

receptor language the closest natural equivalent to the message of the source
language, first in meaning and second in style.’
2. Wilss (1982:14) defines translation as follows: “Translating is a

specific form of interlingua communication linked to linguistic acts and
decisions.”
3. Seleskovitch (1977: 83) views translation as a movement from

linguistic meaning to sense and from sense to expression of sense.

8


Seleskovitch notes that in translation there always seems to be an attempt to
‘adjust the expression of sense to the linguistic meaning of the original
language.’
4. Buhler (1979: 451) considers translation both a process and as a

product. As a process he views translation as "a communicative process, i.e. the
transfer of a message from source language to target language with the
translator as mediating agent in a double function of receptor and source."
Most of the translation studies that underlie such definitions recognise
the fact that a translation may lose or gain in relation to the original. Though
recognition of undertranslation or overtranslation is apparent in the works of
such translation theorists, they are not included in their definitions.
1.3. Approaches to translation quality assessment

House (1997) discusses three issues which she considers important in
translation evaluation. The first of them is the relationship between the source
and target text. The second is the relationship between texts (or features of the
texts) and the persons involved with them (author, translator, recipients) as
regards how they perceive the texts. The third issue is the implications these
relationships carry for determining which texts are translations and which
belong to other texts. These questions are the starting point for House’s (1997)
model for translation quality assessment, and she considers these issues crucial
to any approach dealing with translation evaluation (House 1997: 1-24). Three
broad approaches to assessing the quality of a translation are discussed by the
author within the framework of the above-mentioned questions.

9


1.3.1. Anecdotal, biographical and neo-hermeneutic approaches to judging
translation quality
Faithfulness to the original”, “retention of the original’s special flavour”,
“preservation of the spirit of the source language”, etc., are typical anecdotal
reflections made by generations of professional translators, poets, writers,
philologists and philosophers who have passed evaluations of other writer’s
texts intuitively, without basing them on any solid theoretical framework
(House 1997). The quality of translation is thought to depend on the
translator’s personal knowledge, intuition and artistic skills (Baker & Malmjaer
2001: 197). The idea of the neo-hermeneutic approach is that the process of
understanding and interpreting the source text as well as the production of a
translation are individual, creative acts that cannot be systematized or
generalized. (Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies 2001: 197.) Since
each instance of translation is unique, translation rules cannot be developed.
Furthermore, producing a good translation is seen possible only when the

translator identifies entirely with the source text (House 1997). Although the
neo-hermeneutic approach presents the notion of a good translation, it does not
explain in detail how translation quality can be assessed (Baker & Malmjaer
2001: 197).
“To sum up, most of the anecdotal approaches to the evaluation of
translation emphasize the belief that a quality of a translation depends largely
on the translator’s subjective interpretation and transfer decisions, which are
based on his linguistic and cultural intuitive knowledge and experience (ibid).
In

concentrating

on

the

individual

translator’s

process

of

comprehension, the original text, the translation process proper, the relation
between original and translation, the expectations of the target text readers are
not given the attention they deserve, and the problem of distinguishing

10

between a translation and various types of versions and adaptations is not even
recognized” (ibid).
Since the anecdotal, biographical and neo-hermeneutic approaches do
not offer precise guidelines for translation quality assessment, they are not
considered suitable for the purposes of the present study.
1.3.2. Response-oriented, behavioural approaches to evaluating translations
Behavioristic Views
One of the most outstanding representatives of this approach is Nida
E.A, whose most important criterion for assessing the quality of a translation
“is closely related to his well-known basic principle of ‘Dynamic (or
functional) Equivalence of a Translation’ i.e., the manner in which the
receptors of the source text respond to the translation text must be equivalent to
the manner in which the receptors of the source text respond to the source text”
(p.4).

Nida

operationalized

this

equivalence

as

comprising

equal

“informativeness” and “intelligibility.” Assuming that it is true that a “good”
translation should elicit a response equivalent to the response to its original, we
must immediately ask whether it is possible to measure an “equivalent
response”, “let alone “informativeness” or “intelligibility”. If these phenomena
cannot be measured, it is useless to postulate them as criteria for translation
evaluation. Therefore, the level of dynamic equivalence is difficult to measure.
Nida and Taber (1969) have, for instance, proposed the use of a cloze
technique, back-translation and read-aloud tests as viable tests for determining
the level of dynamic equivalence in the target text. Back-translation can be
understood that the translation is tested by translating the target text back into
source language. In cloze technique, readers receive a translated text in which
some of the words have been deleted and they are then asked to fill in the

11


gaps. If the predictability of the text is high, it is easier to understand and it is
more probable that the reader is able to guess the missing words correctly
(House 1997: 4-5). There are two types of read-aloud tests. In the first one, a
translation is read aloud to a test subject, who will then explain the contents of
the text to other persons. In the second type of read-aloud test, test subjects
read a translation aloud, and if they have any difficulties, it shows that those
parts of the text contain translation problems. (House 1997: 5)
The response-oriented approaches have been criticised for a number of
deficiencies. For example, they tend to ignore the source text, and thus they
cannot tell anything about the relationship between the source and target text
(House 1997: 5-6). The form and meaning of the translation are not properly
compared with the source text. Furthermore, tests which employ expert judges
take unspecified criteria for granted, so there is no way of knowing what the
criteria used in the assessment actually are (House 1997: 5-6). These

approaches are also dismissed in the present study on the grounds that the
criteria for the translation evaluation seem too vague, and the tests which have
been suggested seem incomplete in that they do not take the source text into
account. Furthermore, the tests are somewhat difficult to conduct in the present
circumstances.
1.3.3. Text and discourse-based approaches Literature-oriented
approaches: Descriptive translation studies
This approach is oriented squarely towards the translation text: A
translation is evaluated predominantly in terms of its forms and functions
inside the system of the receiving culture and literature (cf. Toury 1995). The
idea is to first of all attempt to “neutrally” describe the characteristics of that
text as they are perceived on the basis of native (receptor) culture members’
knowledge of comparable texts in the same genre. For House, the basic

12


problem in this approach is “how one is to determine when a text is a
translation and what criteria one is to use for evaluating a translation –but these
are questions which a descriptive translation researcher would probably never
ask, since he would typically start from the hypothesis that a translation
belongs exclusively to the literary system of the target lingua culture” (ibid).
The major problem with taking this approach is summarized by House in one
question: “On which criteria are we to legitimately say that one text is a
translation, another one not, and what exactly are the criteria for judging the
merits and weaknesses of a given ‘translation’?”
Post-modernist and deconstructionist approaches
Theorists in this approach “undertake to unmask the unequal power
relations that are reflected in the translation directions from and into English,
and the promotion of further English language hegemony through one-sided

translations from English and an ever decreasing number of foreign texts being
translated into English”. The critical post-modern approaches are most relevant
in their attempts to find answers to the first question and also to the second
one. However, no answers are sought for the question of when a text is a
translation, and when a text belongs to a different textual operation”.
Functionalistic, “skopos”-related approach
Probably the most famous of these approaches is Reiss (1971) and Reiss
and Vermeer’s (1984) skopos theory. Reiss and Vermeer (1984) claim that it is
the “skopos”or purpose of a translation that is of overriding importance in
judging a translation’s quality. The translation is evaluated on the basis of how
well it is adapted to the target culture norms and target language norms. The
way target culture norms are heeded or flouted by a translation is the crucial
yardstick in evaluating a translation. It is the translator or more frequently the
translation brief he is given by the person(s)

13


commissioning the translation that decides on the function the translation is to
fulfill in its new environment. However, the notion of “function” is never made
explicit, let alone operationalized in any satisfactory way. How exactly one is
to go about determining the (relative) equivalence and adequacy of a
translation, let alone how exactly one is to go about determining the linguistic
realization of the “skopos” of a translation, is not clear.
Linguistically-oriented approaches
In these approaches the source text, its linguistic and textual structure
and its meaning potential at various levels (including the level of context of
situation in a systemic framework), is seen as the most important, indeed
constitutive factor in translation. House’s approach can be located within these
linguistically-oriented approaches. Reiss’ (1971) has been one of the most

influential linguistic textual approaches. She suggested that the most important
invariant in translation is the text type to which the source text belongs, as it
determines all subsequent choices a translator has to make. She claims that
different types of texts can be differentiated on the basis of Bühler’s three
functions of language: content-oriented texts, e.g., news, scientific, technical
texts, form-oriented texts, such as poems and literary journal, and conative
texts, e.g., advertisements and texts of persuasive bent. House criticizes this
approach as Reiss “gives no clear indication as to how one should go about
establishing language functions and the source text type. Further, at what level
of delicacy that can and should be done is left unexplained” (ibid)
The anecdotal, biographical and neo-hermeneutic approaches do not
seem to provide any definite set of criteria for translation quality assessment,
and neither do the response-oriented approaches. Furthermore, the responseoriented approaches focus on target text and more or less forget the source

14


text. The main problem with the text-based approaches is that in many cases
the models for translation quality assessment have not been developed far
enough, and they do not explicate how the assessment is carried out in practice.
However, among the text-based approaches, there are some models which
present both the criteria for translation assessment and the way the model can
be used in practice. The model proposed by House (1997) may be an
appropriate one which is hoped to address such shortcomings. Thus, House’s
model for translation quality assessment (1997) is selected as the methodology
which will be used in this study. Though the above-discussed models provide
practical insights into the nature of texts and their pivotal role in translation,
they do not, to the best of my knowledge, offer solid grounds for solving the
problems of evaluating translations as finished products.
In Vietnam, application model for translation quality assessment has just

studied in some universities and professional training programs. The theory
and its application have been explored with some minor researches studying in
University of Linguistics and International Studies. More specially, Nguyen
Thi Thanh Binh (2001) conducted “A study on the stylistic Equivalence
between “The Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway and Its Translated
Versions in Vietnamese”; Nguyễn Thùy Yên (2007) with the research about “
Evaluating the translation of the guide book “Du lịch Hạ Long” based on
J.House’s Approach. In her research, the model developed by J. House is set up
on the basis of pragmatic theories of language use. It provides for the analysis
of the linguistic-situational peculiarities of a given source text (ST) and its
translation text (TT), a comparison of the two texts, and the resultant judgment
of their relative match or mismatch. The translation text “Ha Long Tourism” in
a large extent, meets the requirements for equivalence of the source text and it
has a function-consisting of an

15


ideational and interpersonal functional component – which is equivalent to the
function of the ST. Moreover, it is not just the matter of accuracy, the TT can
convey the idea and concept of Ha Long and its beauty, at the same time,
attract the attention of the readers, potential visitors or investors or
businessmen to Ha Long. That can help to boost tourism of Ha Long as the aim
of the ST.
1.4. Linguistic features of English legal language
1.4.1. Vocabulary
1.4.1.1. Technical terms
Law language contains a large number of technical terms which have
acquired a specific and accurate legal meaning through centuries of
jurisdiction. For example 'ordinary court hours', arrestor', 'suspect', etc.

'ordinary court hours' means the hours from 9:00 until 16:00 on a court
day.
'arrestor' means any person authorised under this Act to arrest or to assist
in arresting a suspect; and
'suspect' means any person in respect of whom an arrestor has or had a
reasonable suspicion that such person is committing or has committed an
offence
1.4.1.2. Foreign words
English legal vocabulary abounds in foreign words, mostly loanwords
from French or Latin. Some examples are laches, res judicata, prima facie,
mutatis mutandis; basis, registered, stated, part…
E.g. A return by the person who served the summons that the service
thereof has been effected in terms of paragraph (a), may, upon the failure of the
person concerned to attend the relevant proceedings, be handed in at such

16