A STUDY OF ENGLISH VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONS OF PRESENTATIONS AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES AT ICISE

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

ĐẶNG TRỊNH TRƯỜNG GIANG

A STUDY OF ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE
TRANSLATIONS OF PRESENTATIONS AT
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES AT ICISE

MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

BINH DINH - 2019



MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

ĐẶNG TRỊNH TRƯỜNG GIANG

A STUDY OF ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE
TRANSLATIONS OF PRESENTATIONS AT
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES AT ICISE

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 8.22.02.01

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

ĐẶNG TRỊNH TRƯỜNG GIANG

NGHIÊN CỨU DỊCH THUẬT ANH-VIỆT
TRONG CÁC BÀI PHÁT BIỂU HỘI NGHỊ QUỐC TẾ
TỔ CHỨC TẠI ICISE

Ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh
Mã số: 8.22.02.01

Người hướng dẫn: PGS.TS. NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN



i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

This thesis represents my own work and due acknowledgement is given whenever
information is derived from other sources. No part of this thesis has or is being concurrently
submitted for any other qualification at any university except where due reference has been
made in the text.
Quy Nhon, 2019

DANG TRINH TRUONG GIANG


ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Without the assistance of many people, this thesis could not have been completed. I
would like to express my profound gratitude and respect to those who provide me with
advice and assistance when I carry out this research.
First and foremost, I am deeply thankful to Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Quang Ngoan, my
supervisor, who kindly provides me with appropriate direction, useful suggestions and
critical comments so that I can have a suitable topic to pursue and finish in time.
Secondly, I would like to express my thank to Dr. Tran Thanh Son, the manager of
the International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education, who gives me an
invaluable source of data for collecting and studying. Besides, I owe a debt of gratitude to
Mr. Vo Ngoc Hoi, a PhD candidate and also my university graduation thesis supervisor.
Thanks to the support of Mr. Vo, a great number of materials sources are accessible to me,
which helps me to have appropriate reference whenever I need.
Thirdly, let me express my gratitude to all the lecturers of the Department of Foreign
Languages in specific and to Quy Nhon Univesity in general who have provided me with
precious education, not only in English major but also in other fields of knowledge. Without
such knowledge, I cannot make such a far progress in my academic career.
Last but not least, my big thank is sent to my family, my friends and my colleagues
who have helped me settle down many difficulties during this period so that I can focus on
the thesis and finish it in due time.


iii

ABSTRACT

Translation in general and interpretation in particular has become more and more
popular in the current trend of integration and internationalization. Because English and

Vietnamese have a different system of grammar and structure, it is believed that the
translation of certain English types of sentence into Vietnamese are problematic. Hence,
this study aims at investigating the Vietnamese translation of three common types of
sentence in English, namely passive sentences, conditional sentences and sentences
containing relative clause. The results of this study are expected to facilitate EnglishVietnamese translation process, and as a result, help translators and interpreters to perform
their job much better. The used qualitative method in this study found that the most used
strategy to translate the three investigated types of sentence was to keep using the structure
of the original sentence in its translation. This strategy was proved to be really effective
with the highest rate of good assessment and lowest rate of poor one. Nonetheless, this
study did not make much classification in translation strategies and did not pay close
attention to the interrelationship among factors in translation work, further studies with
larger scale are recommended to be carried out to shed light on these concerns.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ....................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................... iv
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATION ................................................................ ix
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................... 1
1.1. RATIONALE ......................................................................... 1
1.2. AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY ........................... 1
1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................... 2
1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY ...................................................... 2
1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ........................................ 3

1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY ...................................... 3
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL
BACKGROUND ................................................................................... 5
2.1. TRANSLATION AND RELEVANT ISSUES .......................... 5
2.1.1. Translation ...................................................................... 5
2.1.2. Translation assessment approaches ................................. 6
2.1.3. Conference interpretation ............................................. 12
2.1.4. Factors affecting conference interpretation ................... 13


v

2.2. INVESTIGATED TYPES OF SENTENCE .......................... 16
2.2.1. Sentences containing relative clauses, conditional
sentences and passive sentences in English ..................................... 16
2.2.2. Vietnamese equivalents ................................................ 20
2.3. PREVIOUS RELEVANT STUDIES ..................................... 21
CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................... 24
3.1. DATA SOURCES AND SAMPLES ..................................... 24
3.2. DATA COLLECTION ......................................................... 25
3.3. RESEARCH METHODS ..................................................... 25
3.4. TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT APPROACH .... 26
3.5. RESEARCH PROCEDURES .............................................. 29
3.6. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY ........................................... 29
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION................................. 31
4.1. FINDINGS .......................................................................... 31
4.1.1. Passive sentences .......................................................... 31
4.1.2. Conditional sentences ................................................... 33
4.1.3. Sentences containing relative clauses ........................... 35
4.2. DISCUSSION ..................................................................... 37

4.2.1. Translation of passive sentences ................................... 38
4.2.2. Translation of conditional sentences ............................. 56
4.2.3. Translation of sentences containing relative clauses ..... 70


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4.3. SUMMARY ......................................................................... 85
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ................. 86
5.1. CONCLUSIONS ................................................................. 86
5.1.1. Passive sentences .......................................................... 86
5.1.2. Conditional sentences ................................................... 87
5.1.3. Sentences containing relative clauses ........................... 88
5.2. IMPLICATIONS ................................................................. 89
5.3. LIMITATIONS .................................................................... 90
5.4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES ...................... 91
LIST OF PUBLISHED WORKS ....................................................... 92
REFERENCES .................................................................................... 93
ANNEX I. TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF
PASSIVE SENTENCES ..................................................................... 95
ANNEX II. TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF
CONDITIONAL SENTENCES ....................................................... 107
ANNEX III. TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF
RELATIVE CLAUSES..................................................................... 126
ANNEX IV. PUBLISHED WORK 1................................................ 142
ANNEX V. PUBLISHED WORK 2 ................................................. 151


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LIST OF TABLES

Table Number

Title

Page Number

Table 1

Relative pronouns used in defining relative clauses

16

Table 2

Relative pronouns used in non-defining relative

17

clauses
Table 3

Trigger table

28

Table 4

Occurrence times and occurrence rate of different

31

assessment types in the translation of passive
sentences
Table 5

Occurrence times and occurrence rate of different

32

violation types in the translation of passive
sentences
Table 6

Occurrence times and occurrence rate of different

33

assessment types in the translation of conditional
sentences
Table 7

Occurrence times of different violation types and

34

their occurrence rate in the translation of
conditional sentences
Table 8

Occurrence times and occurrence rate of different
assessment types in the translation of relative
clauses

35


viii

Table 9

Occurrence times of different violation types and
their occurrence rate in the translation of relative
clauses

37


ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

&: and
B.C: before Christ
EFL: English as a foreign language
e.g.: for example
etc.: et cetera
ICISE: the International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education
i.e.: it means

NP: noun phrase
O: object
p.: page
pp.: pages
S: subject
V: verb
viz.: namely


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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. RATIONALE
Translation has long been a popular discipline due to its useful practice in reality. It
helps those whose languages are different to communicate and exchange ideas which is of
vital importance in the current trend of globalisation and integration. With an increasing
number of events in which participants from different language origins are involved, e.g.
scientific workshops, business conferences or just simply fan meetings, etc., translation,
especially interpretation, is rapidly gaining wide currency and creating enormous demand
in present society. Despite the fact that translation alrealdy received awareness from
scholars a long time ago (e.g. Cicero, Quintillian, 1st B.C.), it was not until the second half
of the 20th century that a lot of research on translation was carried out. Typical were works
by Goldman-Eisler (1972), Barik (1973, 1975), Gerver (1976), Moser (1978), Chernov
(1979), Larmbert (1984) (cited in Russell, 2005). However, not many studies have paid
attention to the translation of specific types of sentence which is believed to be a significant
work especially between languages that have dissimilar lexical, grammatical and cultural
system like English and Vietnamese. This study, thus, is expected to exert the first effort in
this concern, i.e. investigating translation strategies for English-Vietnamese translation of
different types of sentence. Nevertheless, because this study was given a period of 6 months

to be done, a large scale study is impossible to be launched. Hence, only 3 common types
of sentence are investigated in this study, namely passive sentences, conditional sentences
and sentences containing relative clauses.

1.2. AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
With the major aim of investigating how 3 types of sentences, viz. passive sentences,
conditional sentences and sentences containing relative clauses, are translated from English
into Vietnamese, the following objectives are aimed at:


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1. To find out how English sentences containing relative clauses in the investigated
presentations are translated into Vietnamese
2. To find out how English passive sentences in the investigated presentations are
translated into Vietnamese
3. To find out how English conditional sentences in the investigated presentations
are translated into Vietnamese

1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Based on the aims of the study, the following questions are expected to be answered:
1. How are English sentences containing relative clauses in presentations at an
ICISE’s international conference translated into Vietnamese?
2. How are English passive sentences in presentations at an ICISE’s international
conference translated into Vietnamese?
3. How are English conditional sentences in presentations at an ICISE’s
international conference translated into Vietnamese?

1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The three main concerns of this study are translation strategies for sentences

containing relative clauses, passive sentences and conditional sentences. Data for this study
are records of presentations at international conferences held at the International Center for
Interdisciplinary Science and Education (ICISE) in Vietnam and their Vietnamese
translation records. Only three types of sentence are covered in this study because of the
time limitation allowed for this study to be done within a 6-month period. The reason why
only presentations at ICISE are chosen is three-fold. First, other sources of data were
inaccessible and only ICISE had the record system that made translation records available
for this study. Second, the conferences held at ICISE were scientific conferences which
were believed to be a good context for data collection. More specifically, the ICISE hosts
between 10 and 12 high level international scientific conferences on an annual basis.
Having already covered disciplines in the scope of fundamental or applied science mainly


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in the field of physics, the program was expected to cover a larger array of scientific
disciplines such as biology, medicine, social and human sciences. Finally, the interpreter
for the investigated conference was the director of the Vietnamese National Center for
Translation and Interpretation, so his translation could be considered as a reliable source of
samples, which could be somehow regarded as the model of English-Vietnamese
translation for English relative clauses. Although only presentations at ICISE are taken for
examination, the number of samples of each type of the three investigated sentences are
sufficient for analysis with about 120 samples for each one.

1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
First, the study is expected to somehow contribute to the recognition of possible
difficulties and challenges that an interpreter are likely confronted with during his
translation work in the context of a conference. Besides, after examining the way sentences
containing relative clauses, passive sentences and conditional sentences are translated from
English into Vietnamese by the investigated interpreter, recommendation translations are

made for each poor-assessed and average-assessed translation made by him. Finally,
general recommendations for the translation of each type of sentence are provided to
facilitate the work of English-Vietnamese conference interpretation.

1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This study consists of 5 chapters as follows:
Chapter 1, Introduction, includes the rationale, aim and objectives of the study,
research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study, and organization of the
study.
Chapter 2, Literature Review and Theoretical Background, provides some previous
relevant studies and relevant theoretical background for the study.
Chapter 3, Research Methodology, gives information about the data sources and
samples, data collection, research methods, the translation quality assessment approach,
research procedures and the reliability and validity of the study.


4

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, presents the findings of the study which is
followed by a discusion.
Chapter 5, Conclusions and Implications, provides a summary of the major findings
from which conclusions are drawn and implications are stated. After that, limitations of the
study are indicated to make suggestions for further studies.


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CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1. TRANSLATION AND RELEVANT ISSUES
2.1.1. Translation
The definition of translation, just like other abstract terms, varies from scholar to
scholar. The variety of its definition can be explained as the result of the difference in the
mentality of people from different period as well as the difference in the perspective from
which translation is considered. Catford (1965) defined translation as an operation
performed on languages which was a process of replacing a text in one language by a text
in another language.
Nida (1969), an American scholar, stated that translation was a science, he said:
Translating consists in 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.
But this relatively simple statement requires careful evaluation of several seemingly
contradictory elements (1969, p.12).

In 1984, Larson claimed that a translation included transferring the meaning of the
source language into the receptor language. This process was done by going from the form
of the source language to the form of the receptor language thanks to semantic structure.
He said that it was the meaning which was being transferred and must be held constant
because the meaning was the most important thing in a translation process. He meant that
in the process of translation, only the form changed, while the meaning of the source text
should be re-expressed and maintained in the target form. These meanings should then be
transferred, encoded and recorded into the receptor language.
In 1988, Mary Snell-Horby, by focusing on the interaction process between the
author, the translator and the reader, defined translation as follows:


6

Translation is a complex act of communication in which the SL-author, the reader as
translator and translator as TL-author and the TL-reader interact. The translator starts from

a present frame (the text and its linguistic components); this was produced by an author
who drew from his own repertoire of parly prototypical scenes. Based on the frame of the
text, the translator-reader builds up his own scenes depending on his own level of
experience and his internalized knowledge of the material concerned (1988, p.81).

From another point of view, Carbonell (2006), a Spanish language scholar, defined
translation as a form of communication and a means of achieving things. Nevertheless, he
continued, the original communicative act was relocated to a different setting where
different actors performed for different purposes; thus, accordingly, there was a mediation
qualifying the whole act at different levels.
In the same year, Marie Karlsson (2006) carried out a study on the translation of
hedging, adjectives and non-finite ing-participles in the book Horse Talking of Margrit
Coates. In her work, she pointed out that the translation process consisted in conveying a
message from a language to another language; therefore, she said “the optimal aim is to
create a text that will have the same effect on the target reader as on the readers of the
source text” (p. 5). By this perspective, she meant that not only the process of translation
but also the effect it produced on readers from different languages was of great importance.
In his Introducing Translation Studies (2001), Jeremy Munday, a notable lecturer in
Spanish Studies, a freelance translator, a lexicographer and also a materials writer, stated
that the term “translation” itslef contained several meanings, i.e. “it can refer to the general
subject field, the product (the text that has been translated) or the process (the act of
producing the translation, otherwise known as translating)” (pp. 4-5). The process of
translation, as he mentioned, involved the change of a written text in the original verbal
language into a written text in a different verbal language.

2.1.2. Translation assessment approaches
There have been numerous approaches used by researchers and practitioners to
assess translation works. It goes without saying that it is impossible to mention all such
approaches. In this section, only some dominant approaches are reviewed.

7

Sonia Colina (2008) categorized translation approaches into 4 major ones namely
experience-based & anecdotal approaches, theoretical & research-based approaches,
reader-response approaches, and textlinguistic & pragmatic approaches. Regarding
experience-based & anecdotal approaches, they are often ad hoc translation rating scales
established to be used for a particular professional organization or industry, such as the
American Translators Association certification exam, the Society of Automotive Engineers
Translation Quality Metric for the automotive industry, and the Localization Industry
Standards Association Quality Assurance model for localization. Although being adequate
for specific purposes of such users, experience-based & anecdotal approaches are often
found difficult to transfer to other environments because they lack a clear theoretical
framework or empirical evidence to be based on. The lack of an explicit theoretical
framework and/or empirical findings also makes it impossible to ensure the replicability
and inter-rater reliability of the approaches. There is no clear description for errors
recognized in translation process leading to another problem in individual rater’s
judgement. In a culturally dependent field like translation, the absence of clearly defined
translation criteria is claimed to cause significant variation and increased subjectivity
between raters. In short, the experience-based & anecdotal approaches hardly have
replicability and inter-rater reliability due to the lack of an explicitly formulated theoretical
model and/or empirical evidence.
With regard to theoretical and research-based approaches, as their name reveals,
these approaches are based on a theoretical framework or assumptions. They tend to take
the user of translation works into account. Despite arising out of a theoretical framework
or assumptions, theoretical and research-based approaches also have some inadequacies
that have frustrated their success and widespread application. Colina (2008) stated that
because these approaches focused only on aspects of quality, while translation was an
interdisciplinary field, they were often difficult to apply in numerous other areas such as in
professional and teaching situations.

8
Reader-response approaches, however, “assess the quality of a translation by
determining whether readers of the translation respond to it as readers of the source would
respond to the original” (Nida, 1964, Carroll, 1966, Nida and Taber, 1969, cited in Colina,
2008, p. 100). There are two sub-types of these approaches, namely behavioristic
approaches and functionalist approaches. In 1960s, being affected by the behavioristic
views arisen in the United States, Nida (1964) proposed some response-based tests
(behavioristic approaches) with the aim at reaching a conclusion on the quality of
translation works. He mentioned some types of assessment such as reading aloud
techniques, cloze tasks and rating tasks. In line with this idea, Nida and Taber, in their study
in 1969, suggested three criteria to assess a translation work viz. how far TL readers
understand the message in SL, how comprehensible the translation work is, and to what
extent the readers are involed. Nevertheless, these kinds of test did not become so popular
due to the fact that the response of the readers solely was insufficient to make a claim on
the quality of the translation work (House, 2015). Furthermore, another limitation of this
approach was the lack of consideration on the source text in the assessment process (Hằng,
2017). Regarding the second branch of reader-response approaches, Functionalism arouse
with German scholars like Hans J. Vermeer and Katharina Reiss. These approaches are
called “skopostheorie” or “skopos theory” in English. Skopos means “aim” or “purpose” in
Greek, so it is the aim or purpose of the translation work which is the major focus of these
approaches (Nord, 1997). One of the most important elements when recognising the
purpose of a translation is the receiver of the translation work, and due to the fact that
translation is seen as a purposeful activity, there is always an intended receiver of the
message. “With functionalism, translation was no longer seen as a mere act of transcoding,
but instead as an act of communication” (Jensen, 2009, p. 15). The strong point of Skopos
theory is that a source text can be translated with a variety of methods dependent on
different purposes of the translations. Moreover, the translator is given freedom and spaces
in the choice of strategies or translation approaches to fulfill different purposes that the

translator aims at (Ân, 2017). However, the skopos theory is not considered as a real theory


9

because a real scientific theory must per definition be formulated as a hypothesis that can
be empirically tested (Schjoldager, 2008). Indeed, the skopos theory sets up prescriptions,
nonetheless, these prescriptions have not been empirically tested, and they therefore only
describe ideals.
The reader-response approaches are claimed to be controversial because, in addition
to the impossibility of capturing/measuring reader response, the reader-response itself is
not equally important for all translation situations, especially for those that are not readeroriented like legal texts, etc. Another problem is that these approaches are concerned with
only one small aspect of a translated text, i.e. equivalence of effect on the reader, ignoring
other aspects, such as the purpose of the translation, context, etc. Furthermore, it is also
challenging to consider whether two responses are equivalent or not because even with a
text in the same language, slightly different groups of readers can have non-equivalent
responses. Finally, the assessment of the quality of a translation work based on reader
response is a time-consuming activity. Careful selection of readers is required to ensure that
they are the intended audience for the translation. Despite all these challenges, readerresponse approaches are given credits for taking account of the role of the audience in
translation, and more specifically, of translation effects on the reader as a translation quality
measure.
Textual and pragmatic approaches play an important role in the field of translation
assessment by changing the focus from counting errors to assessing texts and translation
goals, which gives the reader and the communication itself a much more prominent role.
However, these approaches have not been widely adopted by either professionals or
scholars. Different proposals or models have been criticized because they pay too much
attention to the source text (Reiss, 1971, as cited in Colina, 2008) or to the target (Reiss and
Vermeer, 1984; Nord, 1997; as cited in Colina, 2008). House’s (1997, 2001) functional
pragmatic model is a symbolic example for these approaches. It is based on the analysis of
the linguistic-situational features in the original and its translation, the comparison of the

original and its translation and the assessment of their match. The fundamental requirement


10
of House’s model is that the textual features and function of the translation match those of
its original, i.e. the final goal is to create a functional equivalence of the original and its
translation.
Nonetheless, textual and pragmatic approaches are also problematic due to their
dependence on the notion of equivalence which is often an unclear and debatable term in
translation studies (Hönig, 1997, as cited in Colina, 2008). This is an obstruction because a
particular translation sometimes serves different functions from that of the original
depending on the oriented audience and the time it happens. To clarify the same point of
view, Colina (2008) gave the following example:
…one could imagine at least two slightly different purposes for the translation of a physics
textbook written in the US for college audiences: (1) for a college audience in Mexico; (2)
for a publisher of college textbooks in Argentina to study educational and presentational
strategies used in the US for the same content. A good translation for (2) would require nonequivalence of function, as the translation’s main function would not be to teach college
students, but to show the publisher how these textbooks are structured and written in the
source culture. (2008, p. 6)

Besides, another impediment in using textual and pragmatic approaches is the fact
that there is not clear assessment criteria for making translation decision after the texual
features have been analyzed and the function of the translation has been indentified.
In addition to the four mentioned major approaches, the use of analytic rating scales
is a relatively new approach of assessing translation and interpretation in recent decades. In
fact, there has not been absolute certainty about the usefulness of using analytic rating
scales in assessing interpreting. This mainly derives from the unavailability of rigorous
empirical evidence in available literature (Angelelli, 2009; Bontempo & Hutchinson, 2011;
Clifford, 2001; IoL Educational Trust, 2010; Jacobson, 2009; Wang, 2011, cited in Han,
2017) to prove the effectiveness of this approach. Despite the uncertainty about its

usefulness, the utility of analytic rating scales to assess translation quality is beginning to
increase in interpreter certification testing (Angelelli, 2009; Certification Commission for
Healthcare Interpreters, 2011; Han, 2015a, 2016a; IoL Educational Trust, 2010; Jacobson,
2009; Liu, 2013; Turner et al., 2010; Wu, Liu, & Liao, 2013, cited in Han, 2017), in