1

INTRODUCTION
1. Motivation for the study

It is popularly admitted that language is an indispensable part of our society‟s

cultural richness in particular and of the world‟s in general. However, in order to
keep ourselves on a par with the global standards in the today‟s world which is
called international community, we need to have the understanding of English - an
international language. English is considered as the most popular language popularly
used to exchange information and ideas among different nations and cultures today.
Thanks to their English translated versions, countries are able to have mutual
understanding and a sense of global citizenship in this multilingual world. It is
considered as an effective means to learn how to appreciate different countries‟
cultures, communities and people. By making comparisons, people are able to gain
insight into their own culture and society as well as mutually exchange countries‟
beauty of cultural values. Moreover, English translation makes people understand
each other more in the process of diplomatic relations and economic cooperation and
other fields in today‟s era when countries tend to integrate for the whole
development. As a result, English translation has gradually become an indispensable
and pressing tool which set the path for the global success of individuals,
organizations, and even businesses in the modern time when society is more
developed and competition is relentless. Therefore, nowadays when Vietnam
becomes one of the members of World Trade Organization, it is necessary for
Vietnamese students of English to have expert translation skill in order to meet the
demand of integration into the world economy and exchange of culture with other
countries. As a result, learning translation skill is undoubtedly an advantage for
Vietnamese students‟ ideal future jobs.

However, in reality, Vietnamese-English translation skill is not easy for

Vietnamese students to master, so learners can not avoid mistakes in their translating
prsctice. Perhaps, because of some influence on the differences about cultures or
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their own limited language ability, etc, Vietnamese students of English in general
still have mistakes on grammar, word choices and so on in translating Vietnamese
texts into English. The study Common mistakes in learning translation subject by
the second-year English majors at Dong Thap University (Duong Thi Thuy Hang
and Nguyen Thi Cam Xuyen, 2010, p.32-p.33) found the followings:

Lack of vocabulary causes many problems in translation process, frequently; they

could not choose the right word in the context and tried or code it did not know.

In the final text for BA English 2006 class, in the part of Vietnamese-to-English
translation, there was a phrase: “Đơn xin thị thực”- and the large percentage of
the students could not understand the meaning of the phrase. Therefore, they
translated with a wrong meaning or skipped it. Many students did not know what
“thị thực” means, and they thought that it was a thing related to food, so in many
test papers, it is translated into “food” as in the following: “Đơn xin thị thực”

The answer is “Visa Application Form”. The translated phrases by the students:

 “Declaration going food”

 “Enter-exit food”

 “Form of beg for food”

 “Giving foods form”…

The mistakes in tenses as in:

“Con bé dường như buồn ngủ” (this sentence was extracted from the first
semester final test papers for BA English 2007 class).

The key is “The little girl seems sleepy”. But many students translated into: “The
little girl is seem sleepy”, they were confused with the verb “to be” and the verb
“seem”.

In these situations, foreigners will misunderstand, even be not able to

understand the meaning of the passage when they read.
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Located on Mekong Delta which is considered as the agriculture and

aquaculture area, a special place in the strategy of economic and social development,
and national security of the country, Dong Thap University has experienced nine
years of establishment and development. It has had great achievements in training
human resources for the Mekong Delta and the country. According to PhD. Nguyen
Van De, Rector of Dong Thap University, one of the main tasks of the school is
training and fostering teachers with professional skills at all educational levels and
highly qualified personnel in other areas in order to contribute to the development of
the Mekong Delta and the country (Đại học Đồng Tháp: Hướng tới “Chất lượng -
Hiệu quả - Uy tín - Chuyên nghiệp - Hiện đại”).

Nowadays, in the integrated period, the school also show special concern for
training English majors who have expert translation skill as well as other skills of
English so that they are able to contribute their own real linguist abilities to the
society‟s development.

To complete this task, understanding the difficulties of Vietnamese students

when learning translation subject, Vietnamese–English translation is considered as a
significant class for Vietnamese students of English major by Dong Thap
University. Students of English major start to take the course of translation in the
second–year. Comprehending the importance of learning Vietnamese–English
translation, the students always want to improve their translation skill. However,
most of the students still have problems in translating. According to Duong Thi
Thuy Hang and Nguyen Thi Cam Xuyen (2010), the students have tended to have
common mistakes on verb tenses and word choices when doing translation from
Vietnamese texts into English ones. They do not know how to avoid those mistakes
to make the text look smooth and fluent which accord with the standard of English.

For those reasons, the researcher decided to choose the study “An analysis of
common errors on verb tenses and word choices in Vietnamese–English
translation by the second-year English majors at Dong Thap University” which
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aims at finding out what the second–year English majors‟ common mistakes on verb
tenses and word choices, which reasons causing those mistakes as well as how to
avoid them. It is a strong hope that the study will be a useful reference helping
improve translation skill for not only the second–year students majoring in English
at Dong Thap University but also all Vietnamese people who are interested in
translation work and really want to become expert translators.

2. Aims of the study

The primary aim of the thesis is to find out the second-year English majors‟
common errors on verb tenses and word choices in translating Vietnamese texts into
English. The study also aims at finding causes of these problems and then
suggesting some possible strategies to overcome the problems. The targeted subjects
of this thesis are mainly students; nevertheless, all people who are interested in
translation work can consider it as a useful reference for improving their translation
skills as well.

3. Scope of the study

When the second-year students of English major at Dong Thap University

(2010-2014 curriculum) translation courses, they have to study both English-
Vietnamese translation and Vietnamese-English translation. This thesis focuses on
analyzing the errors on verb tenses and word choices found in the Vietnamese-
English translation part of the final tests and the extra test papers made by the
second-year students of English major at Dong Thap University and making some
suggestions to help avoid those errors.

4. Significance of the study

The thesis will help the students recognize their common errors on verb tenses
and word choices in translating Vietnamese texts into English. The study will be a
useful reference with the solutions suggested which help the students be able to self-
correct their common mistakes and find out their own effective ways in leaning in
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order to improve their translation skill. Furthermore, it helps the students not only
improve their language learning in general but also have a great advantage for their
future ideal job.

5. Related previous studies

 “Errors in the translation of topic-comment structures of Vietnamese into

English”, Pham Phu Quynh Na, School of Languages and Literature-
University of Western Syney, Australia.(n.d)

 “Problems in Vietnamese-English translation of the third-year students of

English major at Dong Thap University: cause and solutions” (The B.A
thesis), Nguyen Ngo Minh Tri and Le Thi My Duyen, Dong Thap University,
2009.

 “Common mistakes in learning translation subject by the second-year English

majors at Dong Thap University” (The B.A thesis), Duong Thi Thuy Hang
and Nguyen Thi Cam Xuyen, 2010.

6. Organization of the thesis

This thesis consists of the following parts:

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Definition of translation

1.2 The importance of translation

1.3 Types of translation

1.3.1 Literal translation versus idiomatic translation

1.3.2 Translating grammatical features

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1.3.3 Translating lexical features

1.4 Strategies for translation

1.5 The factors influencing translation process

1.5.1 The mother tongue

1.5.2 Words and choice of word meanings

1.5.3 Grammatical structures

1.5.4 Context

1.5.5 Characteristic of language

1.6 Common errors in Vietnamese-English translation

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research questions:

2.2 Research participant:

2.2.1 The researcher

2.2.2 The subjects

2.3 Research procedure

2.4 Data collect instruments

2.4.1 The test papers analysis and statistic

2.4.2 The questionnaire

2.4.3 The interview questions

2.4.4 Theoretical analysis

Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

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3.1 Results

3.1.1 Result collected from the questionnaire

3.1.2 Result collected from the interview questions

3.1.3 Result collected from the test papers

3.2 Discussion

Chapter 4: CONCLUTION AND SUGGESTION

REFERENCES

APPENDIX
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CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Definition of translation:

Translation has been variously defined. The following definitions are selected
because they are typical in some senses.

Translation is a transfer process, which aims at the transformation of written

source language text into an optimally equivalent target language text, and which
requires the syntactic, the semantic and the pragmatic understanding and analytical
processing of the source language. (Wilss, 1982)

Translation is the expression in another language (target language) of what has

been expressed in one language (source language), preserving semantic and stylistic
equivalencies. (Bell R., 1991)

Translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one language by a

representation of an equivalent text in s second language. (Bell R., 1991)

For example, the Vietnamese sentence “Người bắt đầu học ngoại ngữ luôn
luôn gặp khó khăn ngay từ bước đầu.” can be translated into the English sentence
“Beginners of foreign language always meet difficulties from the outset.” (Tran Van
Diem, Dong A Language School, 1998)

The author continues, and makes the problems of equivalence very plain:

Texts in different languages can be equivalent in different degrees (fully or partially

different), in respect of different levels of presentation (in respect of context, of
semantics, of grammar, of lexis, etc.) and at different ranks (word-for-word, phrase-
for-phrase, sentence-for-sentence).

Translation is the transmission of a thought expressed in one language by

means of another language. The language used to express the thought directly is
called the source language, and the language used to translate that thought is called
the target language. (Tu Anh, 2005)
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In Vietnamese-into-English translation, the Vietnamese is the source language

and the English is the target language as in the following example:

The source language: Dịch thuật là môn học bắt buộc đối với sinh viên chuyên
Anh ngữ.

The target language: Translation is a compulsory subject for students of

English major.

Translation is rendering a written text into another language in the way that the
author intended the text. (Bui Tien Bao and Dang xuan Thu, 1997)

“Translators are concerned with the written word. They render written texts
from one language into another. Translators are required to undertake assignments,
which range from simple items, such as birth certificates and driving licenses, to
more complex written materials, such as articles in specialized professional journals,
business contracts and legal documents.” (Bui Tien Bao and Dang xuan Thu, 1997)

Translation, by dictionary definition, consists of changing from one state or

form to another, to turn into one’s own or another’s language. (The Merriam-
Webster Dictionary, 1974) Translation is basically a change of form. When we
speak of the form of a language, we are referring to the actual words, phrases,
sentences, paragraphs, etc. The forms are referred to as the surface structure of a
language. It is the structural part of language which is actually seen in print or heard
in speech. In translation the form of the source language is replaced by the form of
the receptor/target language. But how is this change accomplished? What
determines the choices of form in the translation?

1.2 The importance of translation

Even with the most up-to-date and sophisticated communication system, we

can never know how many languages man uses today in the world; let alone how
many languages man has used during the course of his development. Some sources
say there are some two or three thousand languages being used in the world, but
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some others say the number may be as large as eight thousand. What a habit man
has that of speaking different tongues! And thus he offers himself difficulties and
obstacles.

Since communication within only one community is not enough, certainly there
has a great number of times arisen a situation in which some individuals are unable
to understand the words or expressions of some others. This phenomenon creates a
barrier to understanding whenever man tries to communicate across a great distance
of space or across a great interval of time. Something has to be done to overcome
this restriction. One way to cope with the restriction is for individuals to know the
foreign language. But this is not the final solution because apparently no individual
in the world can know all the languages in use. The best polyglot so far knows only
about twenty five languages, and still people want to read what other people write
and what people say. Translation and interpreting may be considered as the most
universally accepted solution for surmounting the obstacle. And thus there is a need
for professional translators and interpreters. (Bui Tien Bao and Dang Xuan Thu,
1997)

Stuart stated that translation as the product of language learning projected onto
an interlanguage framework. Therefore, translation skills should be evaluated
according to the state of learners‟ interlanguage in any stage of its development.
(Stuart Campbell, 1980)

Translation is a real-life, natural activity and increasingly necessary in a global

environment. Many learners living in either their own countries or a new one need to
translate language on a daily basis, both informally and formally. This is even more
important with the growing importance of online information.

Translation can be support for the writing process, especially at lower levels.
Research has shown that learners seem able to access more information in their own
L1, which they can then translate. (Stuart Campbell, 1980)
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The research totally agrees with the above ideas. When the human language
appears, translation becomes necessary and significant. Translation becomes more
important when all countries in the world have exchanged and cooperated together
in variety aspects like culture, education, business, etc. In order to meet the demand
of the multilingual world‟s development, it is required an appearance of a common
language to be used. Nowadays, English has been used as the universal language all
over the world. In our country, English more and more plays an important role in the
economic aspect. It is really true in business when our country is in cooperation with
foreign investors, contracts, emails, agreements or conventions, etc in English so it
requires they have to be translated effectively. Therefore, the role of translation was
attached importantly to every field in society.

1.3 Types of translation

1.3.1 Literal translation versus idiomatic translation

Because a text has both form and meaning, there are two main kinds of
translation. One is form-based and the other is meaning-based. Form-based
translation attempts to follow the form of the source language and is known as literal
translation. Meaning-based translation makes every effort to communicate the
meaning of the source language text in the natural forms of the receptor language.
Such translation is called idiomatic translation. An interlinear translation is a
completely literal translation. For some purposes, it is desirable to reproduce the
linguistic features of the source text; as for example, in a linguistic study of that
language. Literal translation can be considered as a very low level of translation. A
literal translation sounds like nonsense and has little communication value.

For example:

Vietnamese: Mời bạn về nhà tôi chơi.

Literal translation: Invite friend about my house play. (nonsense)

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This literal translation makes little sense in English. The appropriate translation
could be a question: Would you like to come to my house?

Idiomatic translations use the natural forms of the receptor language, both in
the grammatical constructions and in the choice of lexical items. A truly idiomatic
translation does not sound like a translation. It sounds like it was written originally
in the receptor language. Therefore, a good translator will try to translate
idiomatically. This is his goal. However, translations are often a mixture of a literal
transfer of the grammatical units along with some idiomatic translation of the
meaning of the text. It is not easy to consistently translate.

In one translation, the source text said, “Nhiều du khách nước ngoài đã giới
thiệu cho chúng tôi về khách sạn Hương Giang”. It was translated, “Many foreign
tourists have introduced us about Huong Giang Hotel.” (literal translation) It would
have been translated idiomatically, “Huong Giang Hotel has been recommended to
us by a number of foreign tourists.”

The translator‟s goal should be to reproduce in a receptor language a text which

communicates the same message as the source language but using the natural
grammatical and lexical choices of the receptor language. The basic overriding
principle is that an idiomatic translation reproduces the meaning of the source
language in the natural form of the receptor language.

1.3.2 Translating grammatical features

Each language has its own division of the lexicon into classes such as nouns,
verbs, adjectives and so on. Different languages will have different classes and
subclasses. It will not always be possible to translate a source language noun with a
noun in the receptor language.

Grammatical constructions vary between the source language and the receptor
language. The order of the words in the sentence may be completely reserved. The
following Vietnamese simple sentence is given with a literal English translation:
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Vietnamese: Chị sống ở đâu?

Literal English translation: You live where?

Understandable translation into English requires a complete reversal of the

word order: Where do you live?

It is common that passive constructions will need to be translated with an

active construction or vice versa, depending on the natural form of the receptor
language.

For example, Vietnamese people tend to use active constructions to express

their ideas whereas English people prefer to use passive constructions.

Vietnamese: Người ta xem Nguyen Du là một nhà thơ vĩ đại. (Active)

English: Nguyen Du is considered to be a great poet. (Passive)

The above translated sentences are only examples to show some types of
grammatical adjustments which will result if a translator translates idiomatically in
the source language. Certainly, there will be times by coincidence they match, but a
translator should translate the meaning not concern himself with whether the forms
turn out the same or not.

1.3.3 Translating lexical features

Each language has its own idiomatic way of expressing meaning lexical items.
Languages abound in idioms, secondary meanings, metaphors and other figurative
meanings. All languages have idioms – the string of words whose meaning is
different than the meaning conveyed by the individual words. In English to say that
someone is “bullheaded” means that the person is “stubborn”. The meaning has
little to do with “bull” or “head”. Similarly, in Vietnamese to say that someone is
“cứng đầu, cứng cổ” means that the person is “stubborn”. The meaning has little to
do with “đầu” or “cổ”. Languages abound in such idioms. The following are a few
English idioms using in and into: run into debt, rush into print, step into a practice,
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jump into a fight, dive into a book, stumble into acquaintance, fall in love, break into
society, etc. In spite of all these combinations, one cannot say the following break
into debt, fall into print, rush into a fight or dive into debt. The combinations are
fixed as to form and their meaning comes from their combination. A literal word-
for-word translation of these idioms into another language will not make sense. The
form cannot be kept, but the receptor language word or phrase which has the
equivalent meaning will be the correct one to use in the translation.

For example, the Vietnamese idiom “mạnh như trâu” is literally translated into
English as in the first column and is idiomatically as in the second column. The
literal English is misleading.

Literal Idiomatic

He is as strong as a buffalo. He is as strong as a horse.

Translators who want to make a good idiomatic translation often find figures of
speech especially challenging. A little translation of “strong as a horse” might
sound really strange in a language where the comparison between a strong person
and a horse has never been used as a figure of speech. In Vietnamese it would be
more natural to say “strong as a buffalo”. Similarly, a literal translation of “blind as
a bat” might sound really strange in a language where the comparison between a
blind person and a bat has never been used as a figure of speech.

Names of animals are used metaphorically in most languages. But the

comparison is often different and so the figure will be misunderstood unless aome
adjustment is made. For example, when someone is called a pig in English, it
usually means he is dirty or a greedy eater. In Vietnamese, it has different meanings.
It could means that the person is stupid or that the person is a greedy.

Some lexical combinations of the source language may be ambiguous. The

meaning is not clear. For example, “It is too hot to eat”, could mean any of the
following: The food is too hot to eat; the weather is too hot for us to feel like eating;
 15

the horse is too hot after running a race and does not want to eat. In the process of
making an idiomatic translation, such ambiguities must often be resolved to keep the
intended meaning in the context of communication.

In short, there are four typical types of translation: literal translation, idiomatic
translation, translation grammatical features, and translation lexical features.
However, one of them, literal translation, should be avoided because it will make the
translation meaningless or nonsense. Idiomatic translation, in contract, is considered
to be a strongly recommended mean.

1.4 Strategies for translation

Strategy 1: How to deal with non-equivalence at word level

It is often the case that no direct equivalents can be found in Vietnamese for
English words. It may be that the concept or idea is new to Vietnam, as is the case
with “gender”, which is in fact a relatively new concept in general, and a difficult
one to understand and explain in many languages. Or, it may be that the concept is
known or readily understood but there is no specific word in Vietnamese to express
it. Another difficulty id that, in addition to their concrete meaning, some words have
special connotations that are not conveyed by the Vietnamese word for the same
thing. The strategies listed below can be used to handle cases of non-equivalence.

Translating by a more specific word

In some case, it may be appropriate or necessary to use a more specific word to

translate an English word into Vietnamese. This usually involves choosing among
several different words, as there may be many Vietnamese words that correspond to
the general category or meaning expressed by the English term. For example, the
English word for “rice” can be translated by many different Vietnamese words (hạt
lúa, hạt thóc, hạt gạo, cơm), depending on whether one is planning it, harvesting it,
cooking it, or eating it. In these cases, the English word alone is not enough to
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determine the appropriate Vietnamese translation, and it is necessary to examine the

English context in deciding which Vietnamese word is to be used.

Translating by a more general word

In other cases, it may be appropriate to use a more general word to translate

English with no specific Vietnamese equivalent. For instance, English makes
distinctions among mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles, the latter having larger
wheels and engines than both mopeds and scooters; Vietnamese, on the order hand,
refers to all two-wheel, motorized vehicles as “xe máy”. Similarly, the English
words “paw”, “foot”, and “leg” may all be translated by the Vietnamese word
“chân”, which does not suggest any problem of comprehension in Vietnamese, as it
should be clear from the context which of these words is meant.

Translating by paraphrase

This strategy can be used when translating an English word or concept that
does not exist in Vietnamese, or when the Vietnamese term for it does not include
all the meanings conveyed by the English term for the same concept. For example,
in the sentence “Pregnant women should avoid alcohol.” In English the word
“alcohol” includes all alcoholic beverages in its meaning. However, the Vietnamese
word for alcohol, “rượu”, does not include beer in its definition, so the Vietnamese
translation should add the word beer to reflect the full meaning of the source
language sentence “Phụ nữ mang thai nên tránh uống rượu, bia.”

Strategy 2: How to deal with idioms and fixed expressions

According to English Idioms in Use (McCarthy & O‟Dell, 2004, p.6), an idiom
is defined as a fixed expression which “has a meaning that is not obvious from the
individual words”. In other words, words have lost their individual identity in the
idiom. The structure of the idiom is, to a large extent, fixed and unchangeable. Every
language has a set of idioms and fixed expressions of its own, which has been
created and developed throughout history. It is profoundly influenced by the
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geographical position, natural and social conditions of the culture in which the
language is used. Thus, the sets of idioms and fixed expression in different
languages vary in many ways. Idioms and fixed expressions can be dealt with in
ways similar to those discussed above. With idioms, however, there is the added
difficulty that the translator may not realize that she is dealing with an idiomatic
expression, since more idioms may make sense when translated literally.

Using an idiom or fixed expression of similar meaning and form

It is sometimes possible to find a Vietnamese idiom or expression with a

similar meaning to an English idiom or expression, and which is expressed in the
same way. One example is the idiom “to fight like cats and dogs”, which is
expressed using the same words in Vietnamese “cãi nhau như chó với mèo”;
another is “Better late than never”, which is translated as “Thà muộn còn hơn
không”. It is ideal if such a match can be found, but this kind of correspondence is
not common, and it is usually necessary to use other strategies in dealing with
idioms and fixed expressions. One example is the idiom “It is raining cats and
dogs”. This idiom does not have any meaning related to the pets (cats or dogs), but
it just means “It is raining heavily” – “Trời đang mưa to.” or “Mưa tầm tã.” in
Vietnamese. If this English idiom is translated in the way of literal translation which
just focuses on the meaning in dictionary of the word “cat”- “con mèo” and the word
“dog” – “con chó” like “Trời đang mưa những con mèo và chó”, the sentence is
totally nonsense. Thus, it is clear that no Vietnamese idiom or expression with a
similar meaning to this English idiom can be found.

Using an idiom or fixed expression of similar meaning but dissimilar form

It is also possible, and usually easier to find a Vietnamese idiom with a similar
meaning to an English idiom or set expression, but which is expressed differently. A
good example is the translation for “chở củi về rừng”, which is translated as “to
carry firewood to the forest”. However, in English “to carry firewood to the forest”
is not an idiom and does not have the meaning as the Vietnamese idiom “chở củi về
 18

rừng”. The correct English equivalent of the Vietnamese idiom is “to carry coals to
Newcastle”. The meaning here is clearly the same for both idioms - to bring
something to a place that already has an abundance of that thing - but the way in
which each language expresses it is bound to the culture of that language. It would
be far more cumbersome to translate this idiom word-for-word into Vietnamese with
an explanation that Newcastle is a well-known coal-producing city in England (as
was suggested by some Vietnamese translators), which would unduly interrupt the
flow of the text and greatly diminish the idiom‟s impact. By substituting a similar
Vietnamese idiom, then, the flow and the impact of the original text are retained in
the translation.

Translating by paraphrase

When Vietnamese equivalents cannot be found, paraphrasing may be the best

way to deal with an idiom or fixed expression. A good example can be found in an
article on maternal mortality, which includes the sentence, “But before the new
estimates replace the old as a way of packaging up the problem, it should be said
that a mistake has been made in allowing statistics such as these to slip into easy
language”. The expression “packaging up the problem” presented problems in
translation, as it was misinterpreted to mean “assembling” or “gathering together”.
However, even if this phrase were clearly understood, it would be difficult to find a
concise equivalent in Vietnamese; in fact, it would be difficult to re-state concisely
in English. This phrase is best dealt with by paraphrasing, which in English should
read something like, “summing up the problem by referring to it simply as number,
which does not reflect its true magnitude or impact”. The expression “to slip into
easy usage” is problematic for the same reasons, and is also best dealt with by
paraphrasing, as a direct translation into Vietnamese would nonsensical.

Strategy 3: How to deal with voice, number and person

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VOICE: The passive voice is used very frequently in English and poses some
problems for translation from English into Vietnamese and vice versa in the
following ways:

(a) - Vietnamese: (i) A được + động từ + (bởi B) (positive meaning)

A được/do +(B) + động từ

(ii) A bị + động từ + (bởi B) (negative meaning)

A bị + (B) + động từ

- English: A to be done (by B) = A be + V3/ed (by B)

For example: (1) Tom được Mary tặng một món quà

= Tom is given a present by Mary.

(2) Ngôi nhà này do John xây năm 1930.

= This house was built by John in 1930.

(3) Tom bị một kẻ lạ mặt tấn công tối hôm qua.

= Tom was attacked by a stranger last night.

(b) - Vietnamese: (i) A được + động từ (positive meaning)

(ii) A bị + động từ (negative meaning)

(iii) Người ta/ai đó + động từ + A

- English: A to be done = A be + V3/ed or A has/have been + V3/ed

For example: (1) Tom mới được đề bạt gần đây.

= Tom has been promoted recently.

(2) Chiếc đĩa CD đã bị vỡ rồi, or

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= Ai đó đã làm vỡ chiếc đĩa CD rồi.

= The CD has been broken.

The positive and negative connotation is often conveyed in English, it can be

difficult to know which verb to use in the Vietnamese.

For example: English: The children were given injections.

Vietnamese: “Các cháu được tiêm” or “Các cháu bị tiêm.”

Depending on whether receiving shots was considered a positive or negative

experience. On the other hand, when the positive or negative connotation of the
sentence is clear, it is more appropriate to retain the passive voice in the Vietnamese.

For example:

English: The H‟Mong people do not like to be called Meo,

they prefer to be called H‟Mong.

Vietnamese: Người dân tộc Hơ Mông không thích bị gọi là dân tộc
Mèo, họ thích được gọi là dân tộc Hơ Mông hơn.

Note: In Vietnamese, there are some cases where you see the word bị/được,
but there are not passive sentences in English at all.

For example:

- Anh ấy bị ngã = He falls.

- Chị Lan bị ho = Lan has a cough.

- Hôm nay chúng ta được đánh chén no nê.

= We have an enormous and fantastic meal today.

NUMBER: Through both languages have similar notions of number and

countability, each language expresses this in very different ways. In Vietnamese,
number is often not expressed at all. In English, number is expressed as a
grammatical category, that is, there are different grammatical forms for the singular
 21

and plural nouns. In Vietnamese, however, no such distinction is made

grammatically. For example, “Phụ nữ” can mean either woman or women. In
Vietnamese, some plural makers such as “các”, “những”,”tất cả”,”mọi”,”mỗi”…
can be used in addition to the noun. “Các” generally means all of a given category
of thing, whereas “những” refers only to some of the total number of the things
being discussed. “Mỗi” emphasises the identity of the individual members of the
category without connoting anything of their totality, while “mọi” expresses both
individuality of the items and the totality of the category. If it is clear from the
English context which of these plural markets should be used in the Vietnamese,
then the translator should choose accordingly.

Note: some words that can be countable in Vietnamese but are uncountable in
English. For example: information, equipment, furniture, potential, advice …

PERSON: Participants roles and forms of address are expressed in Vietnamese

through a very complicated system of personal pronouns based largely on kinship
(mối quan hệ họ hàng) terms. Unlike their distinctions, depending on relationship
within the family, familiarity, social status, and even one‟s particular mood or
attitude in a given situation. These distinctions are not always clear in English and
can usually be determined by the context, if at all. If it is not possible to determine
the distinctions of the English pronouns, the decision should be based on
consideration of tone and overall purpose of the document.

For example: A manual on health care contains sections written specifically

for children and adults. In the section for children, “you” should be translated as
“chúng ta”, which is the inclusive “we” – that is, the speaker is including the
listener in a group with him/herself. And in different contexts, “we” can be
translated as “chúng tôi” meaning “other people and I, but not you” or “chúng ta”
meaning “you and I”.

Note: In English, age is often not important in the addressing system. And
there is no distinction between the relatives of mother‟s side or father‟s side.
 22

Hai anh em = two brothers

Hai chị em = two sisters

Chú, bác = uncle

Cô, dì, bác gái = aunt

Strategy 4: How to deal with proper names

Geographical terms: either translated into another word in English or

translated phonologically („s‟ becomes „x‟) or remained unchanged.

Example:

- Bắc Kinh = Beijing

- Vương quốc = Kingdom

- Singapore or Xingapo = Singapore

- Liên bang, Liên hiệp, Khối thịnh vượng = Commonwealth

- Úc or Ôxtraylia = Australia

- Xã hội chủ nghĩa = Socialist

- Braxin = Brazil

Names of organizations: Translation from Vietnamese into English: often

using the reverse order or adjective + noun or noun +preposition + noun.

“Bộ”, “Sở” = Ministry of …, Department of …

“Ngân hàng” = Bank for …, or Adjective + Bank

“Tổng công ty” = Corporation

Example:

Ngân hàng phục vụ người nghèo = Bank for the poor

Ngân hàng công thương Việt Nam = Vietnam industrial and Commercial Bank
 23

Sở giao thông công chính = Department of transport and public works

Văn phòng chính phủ = Government office

Tổng cục thống kê = General Statistic Office

Bộ kế hoạch và đầu tư = Ministry of Planning and investment

Strategy 5: How to deal with non-subject sentences

In Vietnamese-written passages, some non-subject sentences are often come

across. In this case, the following techniques of translation can be used:

1. Passive voice

2. It to be + adjective + to do something

3. There is/are …

4. Ving (s) + V + O

5. Put in the real subject that is often found in the previous sentence(s).

Example:

- Cần đẩy mạnh công nghiệp hóa, hiện đại hóa.

= Industrialization and modernization should be promoted.

Or: It is necessary to promote industrialization and modernization.

- Vẫn chưa có cách chữa trị bệnh AIDS.

= There has been no cure for AIDS.

1.5 The factors influencing translation process

1.5.1 Influence of the mother tongue

In the process of learning a foreign language, our mother tongue shapes our
way of thinking, and, to some extent, our use of the target language (word order,
choice of words).
 24

Thanks to translation, we understand better the interference in the mother

tongue when learning a foreign language and will be able to explore the potential of
both languages – their merits and shortcoming – by using contrastive analysis.

Word order:

The differences between word orders in Vietnamese and English are shown in
the following example:

Vietnamese-into-English translation:

(i) “Anh ấy là một sinh viên giỏi. Tên của anh ấy là Nam.”

In the phrase “sinh viên” is a noun, “giỏi” is an adjective, “tên” is a noun, and
“của anh ấy” is possessive adjective.

As we know, in Vietnamese, an adjective or possessive follows a noun. In

contrast, an adjective precedes a noun or possessive adjective has the same position.

And the above phrases are written:

“He is a good student. His name is Nam.”

adj n possessive n

However, because of the influence of the mother tongue, many beginners

hardly avoid the mistakes – wrong English word orders, as in the example below:

(ii) “Tuy nhiên, một số hãng phần mềm vi tính lại lo ngại về phần mềm mã
nguồn mở.”

Beginners sometimes translate in this way:

“However, some companies software computer worry about software open

source.”

Suggested English version:

“However, some computer software companies worry about opened source

software.”
 25

1.5.2 Words and choices of word meanings

Words are necessary for any language learners to build their own vocabulary to
get advantages in their language learning. Vocabulary is the fundamental component
of communication; it carries with the ability to communicate effectively. Developing
this basic tool will open up opportunities in learning translation subject well. With a
translation text, when learners have no difficulty in new words, it is easy for them to
translate into the target language. In contrast, they seem to fail translating.

Most of the English words have many meanings; the exact meaning of one
word can be expressed only in context, as in the following example:

“My uncle ran for governor so he was a fair game for the press. The reporters
dug back into his past and printed things about him that happened way back in
childhood. But they found nothing that looked too bad and he did get elected.”

The word “ran” is the past and past participle of “run” which mean chạy, vận
hành, chạy trốn, tranh cử, bò… and the meanings of the word “dig” are đào bới, xới
thọc sâu, khơi, khai quật …

It is obvious that there will be a bad translated text if the meanings of the words
are not selected appropriately.

“Ông cậu của tôi chạy trốn thống đốc vì thế ông là mục tiêu đáng chú ý cho
báo giới soi mói. Các phóng viên đã quay lại bới móc cái quá khứ của ông và đăng
những gì đã xảy ra trong thời thơ ấu. Nhưng họ không tìm được cái gì quá xấu và
chú tôi đã đắc cử.”

Suggested Vietnamese version:

“Ông chú tôi ra tranh cử vào chức vụ thống đốc vì thế ông là mục tiêu đáng
chú ý cho báo giới soi mói. Các phóng viên đã quay lại khơi dậy lại quá khứ của ông
và đăng những gì đã xảy ra trong thời thơ ấu. Tuy nhiên, họ không tìm thấy điều gì
quá tệ về ông và chú tôi đã đắc cử.”
 26

Vocabulary plays an important role in translation texts. How many we know

about meanings of a words will bring to us many advantages in translation process
and thus there will be many chances for us who are really interested in translation
work to become expert translators.

1.5.3 Grammatical structures

Vocabulary is not enough for translating. It needs a special mean to make it

meaningful in the sentence. That is grammar or grammatical structures. In the
process of translation, the grammatical structures are indispensable means.
Insufficient knowledge on either of the two areas may lead to translation of poor
quality. English is very inflexible when compared to other languages. It goes by
very strict structures while the Vietnamese language is much more flexible. For
instance, the Vietnamese language does not always use articles; there are many
tenses in English, they are used with a particular structure. In case, an untrue tense is
used readers cannot understand or misunderstand. For instance, “Tôi đã học tiếng
Trung Quốc 5 năm nay.”

Suggested English version: “I have learned Chinese for 5 years.”

The tense of the verb is the present perfect tense, it shows an action which
happened in the past, and up to now or in the future.

However, there are no rules of using the different verb forms to express time
when an action happens in the Vietnamese language. With the above present perfect
tense, the sentence can be translated as “Tôi đã học tiếng Trung Quốc được 5 năm
rồi.” In this way, the verb “học” has no inflection and the meaning of the sentence
is the same.

In conclusion, grammatical structures in English are so complicated and not

easy to master. It requires the learners have to find an effective way of learning to
study and practice more if they want to limit grammar errors in using English in
general and specifically in translation subject as skilled translators.
 27

1.5.4 Context

A language is the vehicle of our ideas, thoughts and perspectives of our world.
Translation is understood as an act of carrying the meaning of a text from one
language to another one. This process involves interpretation of meaning of the
source text and producing the same meaning in another language. Texts however,
cannot exist out of context. By context what is meant is the entire environment in
which the word or sentence is expressed or stated. Any word in the text is not
present in isolation but interacts with other words in the text and with the whole text
at large. This interaction among words determines their meaning rather than its
isolated meaning. For example, the uses of the word “work” in the following
sentences:

(i) I work at Ministry of education and training.

(ii) Kieu story is a famous work.

(iii) After graduating, I will look for work.

The word “work” in example (i) is a normal verb, it means the activity by
which one makes a living; in (ii), it means the output of a creative writer, whereas in
example (iii), the word “work” has another meaning – that is a job or an
employment.

Context helps us grasp what word we should choose to have the suitable
meaning in our translated text. If we misunderstand the context, it leads to choosing
of unsuitable meanings. Context partly contributes to creating a true translated text
which is considered the most important requirement of translation.

1.5.5 Characteristic of language

There are certain characteristic of languages which have a very direct bearing
on principles of the translation process.
 28

Firstly, the characteristics of meaning components are referred as a

phenomenon of the differences among languages. Meaning components are
packaged into lexical items, but they are packaged differently in one language than
in another one. In most languages there is a meaning of plurality, for example the
English final letter “-s”. This occurs in the grammar as a suffix on the nouns or
verbs or both. However, in Vietnamese, plurality is expressed in an isolated word
“những, các or vài”. Many times a single word in the source language, English, will
need to be translated by several words into the target language, Vietnamese, and
vice versa.

Example:

(i) English: Tom has just bought some English reference books.

Vietnamese: Tom vừa mới mua vài quyển sách tham khảo tiếng Anh.

(ii) Vietnamese: Các bạn trong lớp của tôi đều rất thân thiện.

English: My classmates are all friendly.

Secondly, it is the characteristic of languages that the same meaning

components will occur in several surface structure lexical items. Let us look at the
word “sheep” in English. The words “lamb”, “ram” and “ewe” also include the
meaning “sheep”. They include the additional meaning components of a young
sheep in “lamb”, an adult male sheep in “ram” and an adult female sheep in “ewe”.

Thirdly, it is about a further characteristic of language that one form will be

used to represent several alternative meanings. This again is obvious from looking at
any good dictionary. For instance, the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary give
33 senses for the verb “run”. Most words have more than one meaning. There will
be a primary meaning – the one which usually comes to mind when the word is said
in isolation – and the contextual/secondary meaning – the additional meanings,
which a word has in other contexts with other words in certain orders. In English,
we can say “The boy runs.” with the meaning “The boy moves fast”, but in the
 29

sentence “My uncle runs for governor.”, “run” has the contextual meaning - “to
stand as a candidate for the position of a governor of an office”.

The principle is not limited to lexical items for it is also true that the same
grammatical pattern may express several quite different meanings. For instance, the
English possessive phrase “my house” may mean “the house I built”, “the house I
rent”, “the house I live in”, or “the house for which I drew up in my plans.”

Whole sentences may also have several functions. A question form may be
used for a non-question. For instance, the question: “Daisy, why don‟t you wash the
dishes?” has a form of a question, and may in some context be asking for
information, but it is often used with the meaning of a command rather than a real
question. A simple English sentence like “He made the bed” may mean either “He,
a carpenter, made the bed.” or “He put the sheets, blanket, and pillows in neat
order on the bed.” Just as words have primary and secondary meanings,
grammatical markers have their primary function and often have other contextual
functions. The preposition “on” is used in English to signal a variety of meanings,
Compare the following uses of “on” with the corresponding form used in
Vietnamese.

English Vietnamese

John found the book on the floor. John tìm thấy cuốn sách trên sàn nhà.

John found the book on mathematics. John tìm thấy cuốn sách viết về môn toán.

John found the book on Tuesday. John tìm thấy cuốn sách vào ngày thứ ba.

Compare also the following uses of the preposition “by”:

John was stopped by the policeman

John wax stopped by the bookstand.

 30

In the first sentence, “by” is used to signal the meaning that the policeman is
the agent of the action. In the second sentence, “by” is used to signal that the
bookstand is the location.

We have seen that one form may express many meanings. On the other hand,
another characteristic of language is that a single meaning may be expressed in a
variety of forms. For example, the idea “that cat is black”, which is black,
depending on how that meaning relates to other meanings. In addition, the meanings
of “Is this place taken?”, “Is there anyone sitting here?” and “May I sit here?” are
essentially the same. Also, the meaning is essentially the same in the following
English sentences:

Others blamed John because of the difficulty.

Others blamed John for the difficulty.

Others blamed the difficulty on John.

Others said John was responsible for the difficulty.

Others accused john of being responsible for the difficulty.

Moreover, English has a very clear distinction between tenses while the tense
distinction in Vietnamese is not clear. For example, Vietnamese people tend to use
present simple tense instead of past simple tense (đã, rồi).

Vietnamese: Hôm qua là ngày Chủ nhật.

English: Yesterday was Sunday.

We have seen that even within a single language there are a great variety of
ways in which form expresses meaning. Only when a form is being used in its
primary meaning or function is there a one-to-one correlation between form and
meaning. The other meanings are secondary meanings or figurative meanings.
Words have these extended meanings and in the same way grammatical forms have
extended usages (secondary and figurative function). This characteristic of
 31

“skewing”; that is, the diversity or the lack of one-to-one correlation between form
and meaning is the basic reason why translation is a complicated task. If there were
no skewing, then all lexical items ad all grammatical forms would have only one
meaning and a literal word-for-word and grammatical structure-for-grammatical
structure translation would be possible. But the fact is that a language a complex set
of skewed relationship between meaning (semantics) and form (lexicon and
grammar). Each language has its own distinctive forms for representing the
meaning. Therefore, in translation the same meaning may have to be expressed in
another language by a very different form.

1.6 Common errors in Vietnamese-English translation

The following errors are usually found in Vietnamese-English translation.

1.6.1. Vocabulary errors

Word collocation

Word collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur

more often than would be expected by chance. Each of language has its own
principle in word collocation. For example, the word “pretty” often goes with girls
and women, while the word “handsome” often goes with boys or men. Some
translators do not realize this, which leads to wrong and funny collocation. For
instance, in Vietnamese the word “uống” (drink) can go with many different kinds
of liquid including water, beer, alcohol, medicine and even poison. It is incorrect to
say “drink medicine” in English there are clear distinctions as follows:

Drink beer/ water/ wine/ coffee.

But: Take medicine/ poison.

Another example indicates that in Vietnamese the word “nói” (say) can be
collocated with “dối” (a lie), “sự thật” (the truth),”ngôn ngữ” (English, French,
Vietnamese…). However, in English it is incorrect.
 32

Say the truth (incorrect).

Say a lie (incorrect).

Say English/ French/ Vietnamese (incorrect).

In Vietnamese-English translation, the phrases must be corrected as “tell the

truth, tell a lie, and speak English/French/Vietnamese”.

In Vietnamese, the word “đàn” cab be collocated with many different nouns
such as “cá” (fish), “chim” (bird), “sư tử” (lion), “gia súc”(cattle). On the
contrary, in English there are many words meaning “đàn” as follows.

A flock of birds/sheep: đàn chim/ cừu.

A herd of cattle/buffaloes: đàn gia súc/ trâu.

A pack of dogs/calves: đàn chó/ bê.

A school of fish/chickens: đàn gà/ gà.

A pride of lions: đàn sư tử.

When the word “flock”, “herd”, “pack”, “school”, “pride” are used
interchangeably, errors will occur.

The following examples are extracted from the book “Translation 1&2”
(Nguyễn Văn Tuấn, 2006), and they show the wrong collocations of some
translators:

1. “Chính phủ đã thực hiện nhiều biện pháp ngăn chặn việc buôn lậu ma túy.”

(The government has made many measures to stop the drug smuggling.)

2. “Sau khi nghiên cứu thị trường, chúng tôi đã quyết định đưa ra thị trường
một sản phẩm gây ấn tượng có thể cạnh tranh với hàng ngoại nhập.”

(After making a market research, we decided to launch an impressive product

which can compete against the imported ones.)
 33

It is the mother tongue interference that leads to the mechanic collocation

which is unacceptable in target language. In fact, each language has its own
principles of word collocation. Neither English nor Vietnamese is an exception. As a
result, the above- mentioned examples should be translated more accurately and
idiomatically as follows:

1. “The government has made many measures to stop the drug smuggling.”
should be corrected as “The government has taken many measures to stop
the drug smuggling.”

2. “After making a market research, we decide to launch an impressive product

which can compete against the imported ones.” should be corrected “After
doing a market research, we decided to launch an impressive product which
can compete against the imported ones.”

In a word, it is inevitable for translators to obey the principles of English and

Vietnamese word collocations. In order to avoid this type of errors, the translator
should read as many English books and magazines to take notes of collocated words
under the English standard.

Misuse of prepositions

Due to the mother tongue interference of Vietnamese, the translators found

themselves in a confusing situation when they use prepositions in English. The
following errors are extracted from the book “Translation 1&2” (Nguyễn Văn Tuấn,
2006):

1. “Tòa án nhân dân quyết định kết án họ 15 năm tù về tội buôn lậu ma túy.”

(The People‟s Court decided to condemn them to 15 years imprisonment

about the drug smuggling.)

2. “Là một giáo viên ưu tú trong nhiều năm, ông Nam có nhiều king nghiệm về
giáo dục và giảng dạy học sinh.”
 34

(As a qualified teacher for many years, Mr. Nam is experienced about
educating and teaching the students.)

As can be seen from the above-mentioned examples, the translators tended to

choose the English prepositions basing on Vietnamese meanings without paying
attention to their variations. These errors could be corrected as follows:

1. “Tòa án nhân dân quyết định kết án họ 15 năm tù về tội buôn lậu ma túy.”
should be translated “The People‟s Court decided to condemn them to 15
years imprisonment for the drug smuggling.”

2. “Là một giáo viên ưu tú trong nhiều năm, ông Nam có nhiều kinh nghiệm về
giáo dục và giảng dạy học sinh.” should be translated “ As a qualified
teacher for many years, Mr. Nam experienced in educating and teaching the
pupils.”

In English, prepositions themselves are difficult to use, so in Vietnamese-

English translation the use of prepositions become even more complicated.
Therefore, the errors related to the misuse of prepositions are common and
unavoidable. In order to avoid this type of errors the translators should learn the
prepositions going with nouns, adjectives or verbs by heart. If they do not know how
to use prepositions exactly, they tend to the Vietnamese ones into English or vice
versa. As a result, the translators should be provided with as many structures with
prepositions systematically as possible to help them take notes and draw out the
formation and rules.

Misuse of synonyms

Some translators depend largely on the meaning in dictionary picking out the
synonyms without paying much to context. In fact, the pairs of synonyms share at
least one sense in common, but they do not share all their senses. To some extent,
they can hardly substitute for each other. The misuse of synonyms makes the
meaning of one of the following sentences unacceptable.
 35

“Con sông này sâu lắm.”

“This river is very profound.” (unacceptable)

“Profound” means “showing great knowledge or understanding”, and it

cannot be used to describe the depth of the river. The sentence “This river is very
profound.” should be corrected: “This river is deep.”

The following misuses of the synonyms were made by some of the

inexperienced translators.

1. “Cậu bé này rất bướng bỉnh”.

(This boy is very stubborn/ unyielding.” (Incorrect)

2. “Người Việt Nam có tinh thần bất khuất”.

(The Vietnamese people are really stubborn.” (Incorrect)

3. “Chính phủ có kế hoạch xây dựng hàng nghìn ngôi nhà cho người
vô gia cư.”

“The government plans to build thousands of homes for homeless

people.” (Incorrect)

In example 1 “stubborn” is the synonym of “unyielding” and means “cứng

đầu, bướng bỉnh” in Vietnamese. In example 2 “stubborn” fails to evoke the
features of positive meaning which praises the Vietnamese people on their heroism
expressing the speaker‟s admiration. In contrast, it expresses the speaker‟s anger and
discontent. In example 3, “home” and “house” are places where one lives, meaning
“nhà” in Vietnamese. However, in terms of the connotation meaning they are quire
different. “House” refers to the building or structure while “home” refers to the
atmosphere feeling found in the house.

Example: “There is no place like home.”

“Home is where the heart is.”

 36

Most of the synonyms have the same meaning in certain context. If a translator
uses synonyms without referring to the context, (s)/he can make wrong & funny for
his readers. In order to avoid the misuse, the translator should carefully take the
synonyms into consideration before using them. In addition, it would be better for
the translator to consider the differences of the pairs of synonyms when translating.

Spelling errors:

Spelling errors in translation are also the common errors like spelling errors in
writing. When people have to translate a Vietnamese text into English in a short
period of time, surely they do not have much time to read their translation products
before they submit it. Sometimes, people are so careless that they dare to write out
the words which they have not used for a long time. Moreover, the misuse of the two
similar words in written form can also lead to spelling errors.

All in all, some inexperienced translators committed the vocabulary errors

mentioned above in concluding those of word collocation, misuse of prepositions,
misuse of synonyms, and spelling errors. They are committed by those who have
little knowledge of target language. At the same time, they thought that although
English is different from Vietnamese, both languages have a correlation about
lexical items. In practice, in terms of translation, it can be chosen the only one
appropriate equivalent from this into that language. Even more, that equivalent
hardly keeps the meaning of the word itself but that of context.

Another problem is that some translators did not realize the linking meaning of
word units. It is obvious that these units link together to create a larger unit of
meaning in a given text to be translated. The linking meaning itself does not exist in
separate word units but in the link of the units constituting the whole text.

1.6.2 Grammar errors

Grammar errors are also common in Vietnamese-English translation. They are errors
related to tenses, the forms of words, the sentence structures found in the translated
 37

text. These errors are caused by the misuse of verb forms, the misuse of relative
pronoun, and the misuse of part of speech.

Misuse of verb forms

The grammar errors which are related to the misuse of verb forms often occur
when the translators keep Vietnamese structures to translate the Vietnamese
sentences into English. The following sentence is considered to have grammar error
because the translator misused the voice.

Vietnamese: “Giáo dục qua mạng, hay giáo dục trực tuyến là một loại hình
giáo dục phát triển nhờ vào tiến bộ của ngành công nghệ thông tin.”

English: “Internet or on-line education is a form of education which develops

thanks to information technology.” (Incorrect)

(Nguyễn Thành Đức, 2009)

The error of this example is the verb “develops”, which is in active form. It
must be in passive form “is developed” because “Internet or on-line Education”
cannot develop by itself. Therefore, the Vietnamese sentence should be translated
“Internet or on-line Education is a form of education which is developed thanks to
information technology.”

Misuse of relative pronouns

The grammar errors related to the misuse of relative pronouns often occur
when the complex Vietnamese sentences are translated into English. The following
sentence is considered to have grammar error because the translator misused the part
of speech of pronoun.

Vietnamese: “Các nhà khoa học nhận thấy những người phụ nữ ăn nhiều
chocolate trong suốt thời gian mang thai thì con của họ cười nhiều và năng động
hơn những bà mẹ không hề ăn chocolate trong thời gian mang thai.”
 38

English: “A research group observed that the children of mothers who eat
much chocolate during their pregnancy frequently laugh and more active than the
children of other mothers.” (Incorrect)

(Nguyễn Thành Đức, 2009)

The error of this example is that the wrong combination of the noun phrase
“children of mothers” and the relative pronoun “who” fails to express the meaning
“the pregnant women eat chocolate”. In this case, the relative pronoun “who” must
be replaced by the relative pronoun “whose”. Therefore, the Vietnamese sentence
“Các nhà khoa học nhận thấy những người phụ nữ ăn nhiều chocolate trong suốt
thời gian mang thai thì con của họ cười nhiều và năng động hơn những bà mẹ không
hề ăn chocolate trong thời gian mang thai.” should be translated “A research group
observed that the children whose mothers eat much chocolate during their
pregnancy frequently laugh and more active than the children of other mothers.”

Misuse of the part of speech

The following sentences are considered to have grammar mistakes because the
translator misused the part of speech.

Example 1:

Vietnamese: “Trong đời sống con người, cười là dấu hiệu của một cơ thể khỏe
mạnh.”

English: “In people‟s lives, laugh is a sign of a healthy body.” (Incorrect)

(Nguyễn Thành Đức, 2009)

The English sentence ““In people‟s lives, laugh is a sign of a healthy body.” is
incorrect because of the subject “laugh”. In above Vietnamese sentence, “cười” has
a general meaning, so “a laugh”, “laughing”, or “to laugh” will be the suitable
subject. Therefore, there are three ways to translate the Vietnamese sentence “Trong
 39

đời sống con người, cười là dấu hiệu của một cơ thể khỏe mạnh.” Into English as
follow:

“In people‟s lives, a laugh is a sign of a healthy body.”

“In people‟s lives, laughing is a sign of a healthy body.”

“In people‟s lives, to laugh is a sign of a healthy body.”

Example 2:

The Vietnamese sentence “Người có đầu óc hài hước thường dễ tạo được sự
cảm thông của người khác.” is incorrect to be translated into English as “People
with sense of humor easily make others sympathy.” (Nguyễn Thành Đức, 2009)

In the example, the English sentence is incorrect because of the word

“sympathy” which is a noun. In English, it is incorrect to use the structure “to make
+ somebody + noun” as in the sentence, but it has to be written as the structure “to
make + somebody + adjective”. Therefore, the noun “sympathy” must be changed
into the adjective “sympathetic”, and the correct sentence is “People with sense of
humor easily make others sympathetic.”

The grammar errors which are related to the misuse of the part of speech occur
when the translators do not remember the part of speech of words, the grammar
structures, or they do not fully comprehend the meaning of the sentences that needs
to be translated.

As can be seen from the examples mentioned above, some translators focused
on the structures of the source language - Vietnamese - so much that they fail to
convey all the implicit meaning of the target language - English. In fact, it is not
necessary to keep the form at all. The most important thing is that the translations
must be done on the basic of the target language grammar that is familiar to the
readers. This principle suggests that the translator should not depend largely on the
structures of the source language but break them to convey the meaning as much as
possible in an appropriate structure in the target language.
 40

1.6.3 Cultural errors

Culture could be understood as the total set of beliefs, attitude, customs,

behavior, social habits, etc. of the member of a particular society. In the broad sense,
it includes mode of production, production activities, community organization,
spiritual life, knowledge of nature and society, emotions, and moral conceptions.
Language is regarded as both a component of a culture and network through which
other elements of culture operate. Language therefore uses almost all other cultural
elements so as to perfect its universal and self-sufficient nature. It could be said that
we will not translate from this to that language perfectly unless we know its relation
to its culture.

It is commonly known that “ao dai” is a traditional costume of the Vietnamese

women and we never find an equivalent word in English to translate “ao dai”.
However, some translators translated mechanically “ao dai” into “a dress”. How
funny it is! It would be preferred to writing down “ao dai” to express the cultural
feature to making foreign people misunderstand “ao dai” as “a dress”. For
example, “Trang phục truyền thống của người phụ nữ Việt Nam là chiếc áo dài,
tượng trưng cho sự duyên dáng.” should be translated into English as “The
traditional costume of the Vietnamese women is „„ao dai‟‟ which symbolizes the
grace.”

Translation is a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two

languages and two cultural traditions. As this statement implies, translators are
permanently faced with the problem of how to treat the cultural aspects implicit in a
source text (ST) and of finding the most appropriate technique of successfully
conveying these aspects in the target language (TL). These problems may vary in
scope depending on the cultural and linguistic gap between the two (or more)
languages concerned.
 41

The cultural implications for translation may take several forms ranging from
lexical content and syntax to ideologies and ways of life in a given culture. The
translator also has to decide on the importance given to certain cultural aspects and
to what extent it is necessary or desirable to translate them into the TL. The aims of
the ST will also have implications for translation as well as the intended readership
for both the ST and the target text (TT).

Considering the cultural implications for a translated text implies recognizing

all of these problems and taking into account several possibilities before deciding on
the solution which appears the most appropriate in each specific case. Before
applying these methods to the chosen text, this essay will examine the importance of
culture in translation through a literature review. The different general procedures of
treating the cultural implications for translation will be examined as well as
analyzing the ST and the aims of the author. The translation process will also be
treated using specific examples found in the ST before discussing the success of
aforementioned theoretical methods applied to the TT.

Although corresponding to cultural categories examined, the title will be

considered separately in order to determine the pertinence of conserving,
highlighting, or excluding certain aspects. Due to these considerations, the title will
be considered after the other aspects as all other cultural implications need to be
examined before reaching relevant conclusions.
 42

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this chapter is to present the methodology used in this thesis. It
includes research questions, research participants, data collection instruments and
research procedure.

2.1 Research questions

To obtain the above stated purposes, the study has to answer the following
questions:

1. What are common errors on verb tenses and word choices which the second-
year English majors often make in the process of translating Vietnamese texts
into English?

2. Which causes lead to the mistakes?

3. What should be done to avoid the errors in order to make Vietnamese-English

translating be smoother and more fluent?

2.2 Research participants

2.2.1 The researcher

The study is implemented by Huynh Thanh Thuy, the fourth-year student of

English 2008A, Foreign Language Department, Dong Thap University.

2.2.2 The subjects

The subjects are the second-year students of English majors (2010-2014

curriculum) at dong Thap University. They had 2 periods of translation per week.
Their main study materials are the selected texts for translation, which are edited by
their teacher. The teacher who teaches translation for these students is also the
supervisor of this thesis.

2.3 Research procedure

 43

It took about three month to finish the study at Dong Thap University. First, the
researcher started to choose the topic, then collected the related previous studies,
materials from the Internet and reference books from the supervisor to figure out the
outline, after that the questionnaire was designed and delivered; the interview
questions were also designed and implemented interviewing as well as the test
papers were on statistic to collect data for the study. Finally, the study was
implemented to find out the common errors on verb tenses and word choices in
Vietnamese-English translation by the second-year English majors at Dong Thap
University and some suggested solutions were given as well.

2.4 Data collect instruments

2.4.1 The test papers analysis and statistic

There were two sources of doing statistics in the study. Firstly, the researcher
did the statistics on the final test papers on Vietnamese-English translation which
were taken by classes‟ English 2010 students who are the second-year English
majors at Dong Thap University. Secondly, the statistics were done by analyzing the
extra test papers consisting of ten short passages of different topics in Vietnamese,
which were edited by the researcher, translated into English by the students. In
statistic process, the researcher classified the common mistakes to get the basing for
suggesting solutions to the problems.

All the previously referred test papers consist of 100 final test papers for
English classes, including 2010-2014 curriculum for the students of university
academic standard and 2010-2013 curriculum for the students of college academic
standard, and 105 extra test papers done by the students. Totally, there are 205 test
papers.

2.4.2 The questionnaire

The questionnaire is considered a very common mean or instrument used to

collect data on phenomena, which are not easily observed such as attitude,
 44

motivation and self-conceptions, or in other words, those in social science.

Therefore, to seek for information about the students‟ views on Vietnamese-English
translation course, their recognition of difficulties, errors in translating Vietnamese
texts into English as well as the ways they improve their translation skills, the
researcher used the questionnaire to investigate the students. The questionnaire, in
some extent, can help to find out necessary information for the study and suggest
appropriate solutions as well.

In the study, the questionnaire consists of 16 questions. The one hundred

copies of questionnaire in English were given to the students in classes English
2010, and all were collected. The aims of the question can be described as follow:

Question (1) and (2) were used to find out the students‟ attitude towards translation
subject in general. Question (1) was designed to get their thought of the importance
of translation and question (2) was for seeking their feelings of learning translation
whether it is easy, difficult, interesting or not.

Question (3) was to find out the students‟ views on what the translation subject
supports their language learning.

Question (4) was to find out the difficult type of translation texts, whether they
feel Vietnamese-into-English translation is difficult or not.

Question (5) and (6) were designed to get information about the students‟
difficulties and mistakes in translating Vietnamese-to-English texts.

Question (7) was applied to know what the students do to deal with new
Vietnamese words or phrases in translation texts.

Question (8) was used to know the ways which the students improve their
Vietnamese-to-English translating skills.

Question (9) and (10) was designed to know whether topics of translation texts
influence on their translating or not. Question (9) was to find out their thought of
topics of the translation texts, whether the students think they themselves choose
 45

texts to translate is effective or not. Question (10) was for seeking the ideas of the
students about topics of translation texts which they are interested in.

Question (11) was to clarify what the students do to improve their grammar
points relating to verb tenses.

Question (12) was applied to know their views on the factors which play
important roles in Vietnamese-English translation.

Question (13), (14) and (15) were related to the students‟ self-study translation
subject. Question (13) was about types of translation texts which are frequently
chosen by the students to practice translation. Question (14) was used to find out the
amount of time the students spend on Vietnamese-English translation self-study per
week. Question (15) was to know their opinions of how much time is enough for
them to self-study translation per day.

Question (16) was to find out whether the students use reference books or not
in learning translation and what kinds of books they have used.

2.4.3 The interview questions

In order to make the study more reliable, the interview questions were designed
to get more information about the teacher‟s remarks on the students common
mistakes on verb tenses and word choices in Vietnamese-English translating, the
possible ways to improve the students‟ ability to translate. The researcher
interviewed the teachers who are responsible for teaching translation subject to the
students in this academic year as well as who have taught translation and have many
experiences in teaching translation subject.

Question (1) was to know the students‟ attitude towards leaning translation
subject basing on their teacher‟s comments.

Question (2) was designed to get information about kinds of translation texts
which the teacher focused on during teaching process of translation subject.
 46

Question (3) was made to find out which kinds of translation texts the students
often make mistakes or have difficulties.

Question (4) was to find out kinds of errors relating to verb tenses and word
choices which the students usually make in Vietnamese-English translation texts.

Question (5) was used to find out the possible reasons why the students often
make the above mistakes.

Question (6) was to get information about the teachers‟ ways of improving the
students‟ Vietnamese-English translation skills.

Question (7) was used to know the students‟ consciousness in self-study.

Question (8) was designed to ask about the teachers‟ feedback in translation
lessons.

Question (9) was asked to know difficulties or obstacles which influence on the
teaching and learning process of Vietnamese-English translation.

Question (10) was designed to ask about the teachers‟ advices to help the
students overcome difficulties in improving Vietnamese-English translation skills.

2.4.4 Theoretical analysis

The researcher studied principles, theories which are related to translation

books, textbooks, on the Internet to get the theoretical basis for the thesis.

In short, this chapter is about the aspects of methodology of the study such as
research question; the researchers, the subjects that directly participated in the study;
data collection instruments including the test papers statistics, the questionnaire, the
interview questions and theoretical analysis. The research questions are going to be
solved in next chapter.
 47

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter deals with the collected data, implemented and analyzed statistics
implemented on the responses to the questionnaires as well as the test papers in
order to categorize kinds of errors on verb tenses and word choices in Vietnamese-
English translation by the students of the classes English 2010, who are the second-
year students of English major at Dong Thap University (2010-2014 curriculum),
the possible causes of those errors and the techniques to avoid them and to improve
the students‟ translation skills.

3.1 Results

3.1.1 Results from the questionnaire

A table question containing 16 questions which are closed questions or

multiple choice questions and opened questions which need to be answered basing
on the reader‟s own ideas were prepared with the purpose to seek for information
about the students‟ views on Vietnamese-English translation course, their
recognition of difficulties, errors in translating Vietnamese texts into English as well
as the ways they improve their translation skills.

The 100 copies of the questionnaire in Vietnamese were delivered to the

second-year students of English major (2010-2014 curriculum) at Dong Thap
University and all were collected.

The students’ attitude towards translation subject

Table 1: The students’ attitude towards translation subject

Question 1: People say that learning translation

Percentage
subject is important. Do you agree?

A. yes 97%
 48

B. no 3%

Question 2: What do you think about learning

Percentage
translation?

A. Easy but not interesting 0%

B. Difficult but interesting 88%

C. Difficult and not interesting 7%

D. Easy and interesting 5%

The answers to the question reveal that the number of the students who like
translation subject is obviously more than those who do not like it. It is encouraging
to see that most of them like learning translation subject (97%). The results in the
table also mean that the students interest in learning translation work. Their interest
in the subject they learn will be a motive which helps them try to learn it well.
However, there are 3% of the students who have not found their interest in learning
translation.

From the response of question 2, the researcher can know the students‟ feeling
of learning translation subject. When the students were asked about how they feel
about learning translation, most of them (88%) answered that translation is difficult
but interesting. It can be inferred that although translation is a difficult subject for
them to master, they still feel interested in learning it and thus they will try their best
to learn and practice translation as much as they can.

There are only 5% of the students thought that translation subject is not only
easy but also interesting. The amount may be included students who are much
interested in translation subject and so that they feel translation subject is an easy
subject for them to learn. However, 7% of the students chose the answer English is
both difficult and not interesting. No one thought that translation is easy but not
 49

interesting. From the result, it can be concluded that although there are still small
amount of the students (12%) who were not interested in learning translation, most
of the students expressed their positive attitude toward translation subject. With
those positive attitudes, the researcher hopes that they can learn translation as well
as they can and get much success.

The students’ views on what translation subject supports their

language learning

Table 2: Translation subject supports their language learning

Question 3: In your opinion, studying translation can

Percentage Grade
help you

A. enlarge your vocabulary 15.5% 2

B. use grammar structure more flexibly 14% 3

C. improve language skills 15.5% 2

D. All the above 55% 1

E: others: ____________________________________ 0

From the responses to question 3, advantages of studying translation are

realized by the students. The table shows that 15.5% of the students believe that
studying translation is able to help them enlarge their vocabulary and improve
language skills. 14% of the students think that they will be more flexible in using
grammar structures thanks to studying translation subject. However, more than half
of the students (55%) agreed that studying translation has all the advantages above.
In other words, through studying translation, they are able to enlarge vocabulary, use
grammar structures more flexibly and improve their language skills. Basing on the
result, it can be inferred that most of the students know obviously what advantages
 50

that studying translation brings to their language learning so they are able to find
their motivation for studying this subject so that they can learn it as well as they can
with their own effective ways.

The students’ difficulties and mistakes in translating Vietnamese-to-

English texts

Table 3: Difficult type of translation texts

Question 4: In your opinion, what kind of texts is

Percentage
difficult to translate?

A. English-to-Vietnamese 9%

B. Vietnamese-to-English 91%

The result of responses to question 4 is obviously showed the students‟

evaluation about what kind of translation is difficult for them to translate. From the
table, it demonstrates that most of the students (91%) suppose that Vietnamese-to-
English translation is more difficult for them to translate rather than another one.
However, the rest of the students, only 9%, think that English-to-Vietnamese
translation is more difficult to translate. The difficulty of translating a kind of
translation texts reflects the students‟ common mistakes in this kind of texts. It also
means that they feel difficult to translate Vietnamese-to-English texts because they
often make mistakes in translating this kind of texts. What difficulties they have as
well as what mistakes they often make in translating are revealed in table 4 below
with question 5 and 6.
 51

Table 4: The students’ difficulties and mistakes in translating Vietnamese-

into-English texts

Question 5: What is your difficulty in translating

Percentage
Vietnamese-into-English texts?

A. Choosing appropriate vocabulary in the English 22%

language.

B. Finding suitable grammar structures in the target 57%

language to transfer the ideas effectively.

C. Analyzing word orders in Vietnamese texts. 7%

D. Understanding special phrases in the source text. 14%

Question 6: Which mistakes are your Vietnamese- Percentage

English translating texts corrected by your teacher?

A. Choice of appropriate English word 12%

B. Choice of the suitable English grammar structures 10%

relating to verb tenses

C. Both A and B 74%

D. Others 4%

The table shows that more than half of the students (57%) have problem in
grammar points; specifically in finding suitable grammar structures in the target
language, English to transfer the ideas in the source language, Vietnamese,
effectively. 22% of the students revealed that vocabulary is their difficulty in
translating Vietnamese-into-English texts. They usually confuse in choosing
appropriate vocabulary in the English language. Unlike those students, it is not easy
 52

for some students (14%) to understand special phrases in the source text. It means
that these students‟ knowledge of their mother tongue, Vietnamese, is quite limited.
In contrast, the rest of the students, only 7%, have trouble in analyzing and
understanding word order in Vietnamese texts to translate into English exactly. The
result prove that vocabulary or choosing words of English language are the big
problem, and using English grammar points is also challenge of the students in the
process of translating Vietnamese-English texts.

The students‟ common mistakes in Vietnamese-English translation texts

corrected by their teacher are shown through question 6. As the table reveals, 12%
of the students often make mistakes in choosing appropriate English words to
translate Vietnamese ideas into English exactly. Unlike those students, there are
10% of the students have problems in using suitable grammar structures relating to
verb tenses for translating ideas in Vietnamese texts. Most of the students, more than
half of them (74%), have difficulties in both word choices and verb tenses when
translating Vietnamese-into-English texts. The rest of the students, only 4%,
answered that they have troubles in other aspects. From the result, it is able to
conclude that word choices and verb tenses are two big problems of most of the
students (96%) in their translating texts from Vietnamese into English. It requires
some effective and possible ways to help them overcome the problems in order to
make their Vietnamese-English translation smoother and get more success.

What the students do to improve translating

Table 5: How the students improve their translating

Question 7: What do you do when you encounter new

Percentage
Vietnamese words or phrases in translation texts?

A. Look up Vietnamese dictionary 52%

B. Ask friends or teacher 3%

 53

C. Guess from the context 42%

D. Others: ___________________________________ 3%

Question 8: What do you do to improve your

Percentage
Vietnamese-to-English translating skills?

A. learning vocabulary 10%

B. learning grammar 9%

C. reading translation texts in reference books 10%

D. reading Vietnamese texts, articles, etc. 8%

E. practicing translating from newspapers, magazines, 63%

articles

F. Others: ___________________________________ 0

How and what the students do to improve their translating are shown in table 5.
The responses to question 7 show how the students solve problems about
vocabulary. When encountering new Vietnamese words or phrases in translation
texts, 52% of the students often look up Vietnamese dictionaries; 3% of them
usually ask their friends and teacher; 42% of the students can guess the word
meanings from the context; the rest of them, only 3%, apply other ways, but they did
not present what ways they use. The result indicates that more than half of the
students still belong much to dictionaries to get the meanings of new Vietnamese
words or phrases, and most of others feel effective to guess the meanings through
the contexts. Looking at dictionaries can help the students know the words‟
meanings quickly when translating, but it will be more exact and effective for their
translating if they try to guess the words‟ meaning from contexts because in
 54

dictionaries, a word has many meanings, so it is hard to know choose suitable

meaning to transfer the ideas. Therefore, they also need improve their ability to
guess words‟ meanings basing on the context.

Whether topics of translation texts influence on their translating or not

Table 6: The students’ thought of choosing texts to translate by themselves

whether effective or not

Question 9: Do you think that it is effective if you

Percentage
yourself choose texts to translate?

A. yes 58%

B. quite effective 35%

C. no 7%

Basing on answers for question 9, there are more than half of the students
(58%) who suppose that it will be effective if they themselves choose texts to
translate. 35% of the students believe that it is quite effective for them to choose
translation texts by themselves. Only 7% do not think they will translate texts which
they choose by themselves effectively. The result shows that most of the students
agreed that topics of the translations texts are able to influence on the effectiveness
of their translating. It will be more effective for them to translate texts whose topics
they feel interested in rather than the others whose topics they are not interested in
and know much information. Specifically, topics which the students are interested in
are going to be shown in table 7 below through question 10.
 55

Table 7: Topics of translation texts that the students are interested in

Question 10: Which topic(s) of translation texts are

Percentage Grade
you interested in?

A. entertainment 19% 2

B. politics 4% 5

C. science 4% 5

D. economy 10% 4

E. education 19% 2

F. lifestyle 30% 1

G. health 14% 3

H. others: _____________________________________ 0

entertainment
politics
science
economy
education
lifestyle
health

Chart 1: Topics of translation texts which the students are interested in

From the data in the table 7 and the figure 1, it is demonstrated that the topic
which the students are interested in much is “lifestyle” because of 30% of the
 56

students chose it. 19% of the students pay much attention to “entertainment” and
“education”. 14% of the students find their interest in the topic “health” and 10% of
them like the aspect “economy”. Only 4% of the students chose “politics” and
“science”. It can be included that most of the students are not interested in topics
relating to political and scientific aspects. In contrast, topics relating to “lifestyle”,
“education” and “entertainment” are their interest so they are able to translate texts
related to these topics effectively.

What the students do to improve their grammar points relating to verb

tenses

Table 8: The students’ learning grammar points relating to verb tenses

Question 11: What do you do to improve your

Percentage
grammar points relating to verb tenses?

A. Reading grammar books relating to verb tenses and 19%

doing exercises

B. Searching and studying online on the internet 6%

C. Both A and B 75%

D. others: ___________________________________ 0

The result shows that the students pay much attention on to improving their
grammar points relating to verb tenses and have applied many ways to be more
flexible in using English grammar points in translating. From the table, there are
19% of the students who have read grammar books and practice exercises about
verb tenses. 6% of the students have applied searching and studying online on the
Internet. Almost students (75%) have used the two ways as well. It is obviously to
see that most of the students nowadays know how to combine traditional way,
reading books, with the high technique of the Internet to improve their learning in
 57

general and their language learning. In fact, it will bring many benefits to them in
language learning if they know how to apply the high technique of the Internet well
combined with reading reference books.

The students’ views on the factors which play important roles in

Vietnamese-English translation

Table 9: The students’ thought of the factors which help their translating
Vietnamese-to-English texts

Question 12: In your opinion, which of the following

factors can best help your translating Vietnamese-to- Percentage Grade
English texts?

A. grammar 18% 3

B. vocabulary 25% 2

C. mother tongue 2% 6

D. context 13% 4

E. background knowledge 30% 1

F. topic of the source text 12% 5

G. others: ____________________________________ 0
 58

grammar
vocabulary
mother tongue
context
background knowledge
topic of the source text

Chart 2: Factors influencing on the students’ Vietnamese-English

translating

From the result of question 12, obviously, there are many factors involved in
Vietnamese-to-English translating. 18% of the students admitted that “grammar”
plays an important role in their Vietnamese-into-English translating. “Vocabulary”
is considered an important factor by 25% of them. There are 13% of the students
chose “context” and 12% of them chose “topic of the source text”. However, 30% of
the students suppose that background knowledge is the factor which can best help
them translate successfully. Only 2% of the students think “mother tongue” is
important. It can be included that most of the students disregard the effects of their
mother tongue, Vietnamese, on the process of Vietnamese-English translating.

The students’ self-study

Table 10: The students’ choosing types of translation texts to practice and
amount of self-study time

Question 13: When you learn translation as self-study,

Percentage
you usually practice translating

A. English-into-Vietnamese texts 15%

 59

B. Vietnamese-into-English texts 7%

C. First English-Vietnamese, then Vietnamese-English 61%

D. First Vietnamese-English, then English-Vietnamese 17%

Question 14: How much time do you spend on self-

Percentage
study on Vietnamese-English translation per week?

A. never 0

B. about 2 hours 62%

C. about 4 hours 24%

D. others: _______________________________ 14%

Question 15: In your opinion, how much time is

Percentage
enough for your self-study on translation per day?

A. 30 minutes 28%

B. 1 hours 38%

C. 2 hours 34%

D. 3 hours 0

Basing the responding to question 13, it is obviously to know what types of

translation texts which are frequently chosen by the students to practice translation.
The result shows that when practicing translation, there are 15% of the students who
choose English-into-Vietnamese texts but only 7% of the students practice
Vietnamese-into-English translation when they self-study. However, most of the
students (61%) self-study translating of both two types of texts, first English-
 60

Vietnamese, then Vietnamese-English. The rest of the students (17%) first practice
Vietnamese-English translation, then English-Vietnamese.

Self-study is very important to the students‟ studies. The answers to question

14 show that more than half of the students (62%) spend about 2 hours per week on
self-study Vietnamese-English translation. However, more frequently, 24% of the
students spend about 4 hours per week on practicing Vietnamese-English
translation. 14% of them chose the answer “others” but they did not refer how much
time they self-study. No one answered “never” practice translation at home. It can
be concluded that most of the students expressed their positive attitude towards self-
studying Vietnamese-English translation as well as learning translation subject in
general.

Looking at the result of question 15, there are 28% of the students think that 30
minutes per day is enough for them to self study translation. 38% of them suppose
that it is about 1 hours, In contrast, 34% of them think self-studying translation need
about 2 hours per day. No one chose 3 hours per day.

Whether the students use reference books or not

Table 11: The students’ using reference books relating to translation

Question 16: Do you use any reference books? Percentage

A. yes 45%

B. no 55%

If yes, could you please list some of them?

1. Luyện dịch Việt Anh – Anh Việt

2. Articles in translation books

3. English compositions
 61

Through question 16, it is clear to see the amount of the students who have
used reference books relating to translation subject. From the table, more than half
of students (55%) have not used any reference book. It can be inferred that they still
have not paid much attention on studying translation subject so they do not find out
and read some more extra documents to improve their translation skills. As the
result, they cannot be successful in learning translation subject. In contrast, nearly
half of the students (45%) have used reference books. Some of them are referred in
the table like “Luyện dịch Việt Anh – Anh Việt”, “Articles in translation books” and
“English compositions”.

3.1.2 Result from the interview questions

In order to make the study more reliable, the researcher interviewed the
teachers who are responsible for teaching translation subject to the students in this
academic year as well as who have taught translation and have many experiences in
teaching translation subject. Here are the questions used in our interviews

1. Would you like to give some comments about your students‟ attitude
towards learning translation subject?

2. What kind of translation texts do you focus on during your teaching process
of translation subject?

3. Which kind of translation texts do the students often make mistakes or have
difficulties?

4. What kinds of errors relating to verb tenses and word choices in Vietnamese-
English translation do your students often make?

5. Would you like to state the reason why the students often make the above
errors? What are they?

6. What do you do to improve your students‟ translation skills?

7. Are your students conscious in self-study?

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8. How can you give feedback to the students‟ translation products in class?

9. In your opinion, what are difficulties or obstacles which influence on the

teaching and learning process of Vietnamese-English translation?

10. Would you like to give some advices which help your students overcome
difficulties in improving Vietnamese-English translation skills?

From the teachers‟ responses, it can be included that most of the students
have positive attitude towards learning translation, most of them go to class
regularly and all prepare for the lesson at home by reading and translating texts
which the teacher asked in the previous lesson. About type of translation texts, the
teachers said that they have not focused on English-Vietnamese translation or
Vietnamese-English one, so the students have to translate both Vietnamese-English
and English-Vietnamese kind of texts in each topic. The teachers also said that the
students often have difficulties and make mistakes in Vietnamese-English
translation rather than English-Vietnamese one. The result is totally true with the
result from the questionnaire for the students; most of the students suppose that
Vietnamese-English texts are difficult for them to translate. As mentioned above, the
results from the questionnaire show that the students usually make mistakes on
vocabulary relating to word choices and grammar points about verb tenses in their
Vietnamese-to-English translation texts. It is also proved via the responses to
question 4 answered by the teacher. About word choices, the students use English
words to transfers Vietnamese ideas incorrectly and inexactly. They do not read the
whole text to understand the true meaning of the text and just transfer word by word
a Vietnamese text into English. Especially in using synonyms of words, words they
used are not suitable with the context of the translation text, so it makes funnies
sentences which are called English for the Vietnamese. Choosing prepositions to use
is also their language weaknesses. When using grammar structures, the students also
have many mistakes relating to verb tenses. The teacher said that their students lack
of knowledge about usages and forms of grammar structures relating to verb tenses.
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The tenses they used are sometimes are unsuitable with the context and even the
structures or forms of verb tenses they used incorrectly. The teachers stated that the
reasons of those weaknesses are their weaknesses of vocabulary and grammar
points, their limitation of mother tongue - Vietnamese, their background knowledge
of the society and especially cultural barriers or the differences between English and
Vietnamese culture about language. To improve the students‟ translation skills, the
teacher asks their students regularly attend translation class, read and translate the
texts which they asked at home and present their products of translation on the board
in class to be corrected by other students in the class and the teacher. In addition, the
teacher focuses on the way to correct mistakes. The students are introduced different
words and structures which are suitable with the context to translate one idea.
Moreover, the teacher introduced reference books, WebPages for them to self study
in order to improve their vocabulary and grammar as well as translation skills.
According to the teachers‟ opinion, self-study is very important. However, the
teacher commented that many students have not taken the chance of self-study
seriously. It also means that their attitude towards self-study translation is not
positive as the teachers expected. As mentioned above, difficulties or obstacles of
teaching and learning process of Vietnamese-English translation are about the
students‟ vocabulary and English grammar, knowledge of their mother tongue –
Vietnamese- and of aspects in the society, what they know about English culture in
language and one more important factors that is about their attitude towards self-
study translation. In order to help the students improve their translation skills as well
as get more success in teaching translation subject, the teachers advised that the
students should self practice grammar, learn vocabulary through reading reference
books, articles in English, read more about English and American culture in using
language, and especially improve their mother tongue in order that they are able to
know obviously the differences between the two languages in using language.

In general, the teachers‟ responding to the interview questions are quite

corresponding to that the researcher collected from the questionnaire.
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3.1.3 Result collected from the test papers

205 test papers including 100 final test papers of the students in English classes
2010 borrowed from their teacher and 105 extra test papers edited from the
researcher, delivered to the students and all collected. The table below shows the
results collected.

Common errors Grammar errors Vocabulary errors

related to verb tenses related to word choices

Having-mistakes test 175/205 182/205

papers/total test papers (85.4%) (88.8%)

Grammar errors about verb tenses

This part only focuses on analyzing the errors which are related to verb tenses.
Errors which are related to other points of grammar and vocabulary will not be
analyzed in detail in this part. Vocabulary errors will be mentioned in next part.
There are about 30 test papers which were done fairly well and had few minor and
acceptable mistakes. The grammar errors related to verb tenses found in 205 test
papers are shown in the chart below.

Grammar errors about verb tenses The number of Percentage

errors (%)

 Misuse of verb tenses 88 50.3%

 Misuse of verb forms 22 12.6%

 Incorrect structures 65 37.1%

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Misuse of
verb tenses
Misuse of
verb forms
Incorrect
structures

Chart 3: Grammar errors relating to verb tenses

Misuse of verb tenses
Most of the students often have mistakes in using verb tenses which is not
suitable and correct with the context in translation texts. Common errors are
specifically shown in the following examples.
Example 1: the Vietnamese sentence “Ngày 22-11, tại khu di tích Nguyễn Sinh
Sắc (thành phố Cao Lãnh), tỉnh Đồng Tháp long trọng tổ chức Lễ giỗ lần thứ 82 cụ
Phó Bảng Nguyễn Sinh Sắc, thân sinh chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh.” was translated by the
students:
(i) “On November 22nd at Nguyen Sinh Sac relic (Cao Lanh city), Dong Thap
province organize the 82nd death anniversary of Nguyen Sinh Sac who is Ho Chi
Minh‟s father formally.”
(ii) “On November 22nd in Nguyen Sinh Sac relic (Cao Lanh city), Dong Thap
province has been solemn organized celebration of Nguyen Sinh Sac who is Ho Chi
Minh‟s father at the 82nd times.”
(iii) “On November 22nd in Nguyen Sinh Sac relic (Cao Lanh city), Dong Thap
province are being organized solemn celebration of Nguyen Sinh Sac who is Ho Chi
Minh‟s father at the 82nd times.”
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While the key is: “On November 22nd at Nguyen Sinh Sac relic (Cao Lanh
city), Dong Thap province solemnly organized the 82nd death anniversary of Nguyen
Sinh Sac who is Ho Chi Minh‟s father.”
Because the sentence is about an event which occurred already in the past, it is
not correct to use simple present tense as the sentence (i) and the passive voice of
present perfect tense in (ii) which is just used to describe an action in a period in the
past leading and lasting up to the present. Furthermore, it is not exact for the
students to use the passive voice of present continuous tense as in (iii). In the
sentence (iii), there are three errors. First is using incorrect tense which is
mentioned. Using “are” is the second error because the subject Dong Thap province
is singular, so it is not appropriate to use “are”. The third error is the word “solemn”
which is an adjective. After the word “organized”, it has to be an adverb
“solemnly”. The error is also occurred in the sentence (ii) when the students used
“solemn” before the word “organized”, so it has to be changed into “solemnly” in
this position.
Example 2: The source sentence “Tuy công nghệ mới đang được thử nghiệm
nhưng Giáo sư Clark lạc quan về tiềm năng tương lai của nó trong việc chế biến tất
cả chất thải thành nhiên liệu sinh học.” was translated by the students as follow:
(i) “Although new technique are trying, Professor Clark is optimistic of its
future potential to processing all waste into biology fuel.”
(ii) “New technique is trying, but Professor Clark is optimistic about its future
potential in processing all waste into biology fuel.”
(iii) “Although new technique will be tested, but Professor Clark is optimistic
about its future potential that processing all waste run into biology fuel.”
Whereas the key is ““Although new technique is being tried/tested, Professor
Clark is optimistic about its future potential in processing all waste into biology
fuel.”
In the sentence (i), there are three errors. The first is that it is not appropriate to
use active voice present continuous in this situation because the subject “new
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technique” is not able to “try” by itself. The second error is that it is incorrect to use
the word “are” for the subject “new technique” which is singular form. Moreover,
it is not exact for the students to write “to processing” in this sentence because to
express purpose of using the technique here it is a rule to write “to process”. It is
also acceptable to change this into “in processing” or “about processing”.
In the sentence (ii), the students used incorrectly the tense present continuous‟
active voice like in (i). The students did not realize that the subject “new technique”
has to be “tried” by people or professors. Therefore, it is suitable and appropriate to
use passive voice.
There are three errors in (iii). The first is using passive voice of simple future
to express the idea. Because the action of trying the technique is occurring in the
present, so it is incorrect to write “will be tried”. The second error is that the
students used both “although” and “but” in the sentence. In order to express the
idea “Tuy … nhưng…” or “mặc dù …nhưng …” , it is a grammar rule to use just
one of them as “Although …, …” or “…, but …”. The third mistake is the phrase
“that processing”. It is unclear to know what the students mean to use “that” here.
As mentioned above, it is suitable to use “in/about processing” in this position.
Example 3: the sentence “Bộ đội lẫn vào đây thì mất hút, địch chẵng lần ra
dấu.” was translated by the students as “Soldiers hide in here, so the enemy will lose
their marks.” In both two clauses the students used incorrect verb tenses. The
situation here is about a past event. Therefore, it is not appropriate to use simple
present tense in the first clause and simple future tense in the second clause. To
express the idea in the source sentence, simple past tense is the best choice, so the
suggested translation sentence is “when soldiers hid here, the enemy failed to find
any traces of them.”

Misuse of verb forms

The grammar errors which are related to verb forms in tenses can be typically
found in the following examples:
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Example 1: “Although new technique are trying, Professor Clark is optimistic

of its future potential to processing all waste into biology fuel.”

As discussed above, in this sentence there are two mistakes related to verb
forms. The first is the word “are” and the second is the word “processing”. The
form of the verb “are” must be “is” because the subject “new technique” is singular.
“To processing” is incorrect English form, so the word “processing” after “to” must
be changed into “process” to express purpose of using the technique here.

Example 2: the Vietnamese sentence “Vụ Đông Xuân 2011-2012, tỉnh Kiên
Giang có kế hoạch xuống giống hơn 285000 ha.” was translated by the students as:

(i) “In 2011-2012 winter-spring crop, Kien Giang province has planed to plant
over 285000 ha.”

(ii) “In winter-spring rice crop 2011-2012, Kien Giang province have plant
over 285000 ha.”

In the sentence (i), the error is the word “planed” which must be changed into
“planned” to form past participle following the word “has” for the present perfect
tense here. The students forgot that the word “plan” contain the consonant “n”
following the vowel “a”, so in its past participle form, it is a rule to add an “n”
before adding “-ed” like “planned”.

There are two errors on verb forms in the sentence (ii). The first is the word
“have”. The subject “Kien Giang province” is singular, so it is correct to use “has”
instead of “have”. The second mistake is the word “plant”. The students used
present perfect to express the idea, so after the word “has”, it must be past participle
form of the verb “plant”. For that reason, “plant” must be changed into “planted”.

Example 3: The sentence “Nghệ thuật tỉa củ đã tạo cái nhìn bắt mắt và thèm
ăn cho khách.” was translated by the students as “Art of vegetable pruning have
created eye-catching look and appetite for customers.” The error is the word “have”
because the subject here is singular form. Therefore, “have” must be changed into
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“has”. In the sentence, the way the students used the word “eye-catching” is also
incorrect and suitable with the meaning of “bắt mắt”, but it will be discussed later.

Example 4: The students translated the sentence “8 triệu tấn vỏ cam bị vứt bỏ
mỗi năm có thể được dùng để chế tạo ra hóa chất, nguyên liệu hay nhiên liệu.” into:

(i) “8 million tons of orange peels which are threw-away each year can be
used to produce chemicals, raw materials or fuel.”

(ii) “8 million tons of orange peels throwed-away each year, can be used to
produce chemicals, raw materials or fuel.”

(iii) “8 million tons of orange peels which are throw-away each year can be
use to produce chemicals, materials or fuel.”

The three examples above are mistakes about regular and irregular verb forms.
In the sentence (i), after the word “are”, it needs a past participle to form the
passive voice. However, “threw-away” is just past form of the verb “throw-away”
which means “ném đi” or “vứt đi” in Vietnamese. In the sentence (ii), the students
confused regular form and irregular form. The verb “throw” is an irregular verb, so
it is totally unacceptable to write “throwed”. In the sentence (iii), there are two
mistakes about verb forms. The first is the verb “throw-away” following “are”. As
discussed above, after “are” it must be past participle form – “thrown-away”-
instead of present form “throw-away”. The second error in this sentence is the word
“use”. Because in this case it is the passive voice of the modal “can”, after “can
be” it must be past participle “used”. Suggested translation sentence is “8 million
tons of orange peels which are thrown-away each year can be used to produce
chemicals, raw materials or fuel.”

Incorrect structures

When using English tenses to describe ideas in Vietnamese, the students had
problems. They did not use correctly and appropriately tenses. The following
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examples which are extracted from the tests papers contain incorrect structures of
tenses used by the students.
Example 1: The students‟ translation for the sentence “Are harvesting,
everyone busy with farm works.” is wrong English sentence. Firstly, the phrase “are
harvesting” is not accepted in this position because it does not make sense. To make
sense it needs a subject. Secondly, “busy” is an adjective, so it is incorrect to directly
follow the subject “everyone”. Therefore, it is necessary to insert the word “is”
between “everyone” and “busy” to make sense for the sentence. Because the
situation is about past event, so it is suitable to use past tense and suggested sentence
is “Because it was in harvest season, everyone was busy with farm work.”
Example 2: The students translated the sentence “Tên địch nào lọt vào đây thì
đừng hòng quay trở ra.” into “The enemy was not return when they came here.” In
this sentence “was not return” is incorrect English structure. Because “return” is a
verb, it must be used “did not” instead of “was not” to express negative point.
Example 3: the sentence “Nơi đây từng tiếp đón các tàu buôn tơ lụa, gốm xứ
đến mua bán.” was translated as “This place welcame silk and ceramic merchant
vessels.” The error here is the way the students used “welcame” which is not exist
in English because “welcome” is a regular verb. Therefore, the word “welcame”
must be changed into “welcomed”.

Vocabulary errors – Word choices

This part only focuses on analyzing the vocabulary errors related to word
choices. Errors which are related to grammar points and others points of vocabulary
will not be analyzed in detail in this part. The percentage of the test papers which
contained vocabulary errors related to word choices is 88.8%.

Lack of vocabulary causes many problems in Vietnamese-English translation

process. Frequently, they could not choose the right word in the context. In the test
papers made by the students of English 2010 classes, there are some mistakes about
word choices as example below:
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Example 1: there was a phrase “Khu di tích Nguyễn Sinh Sắc” and most of the
students translated the phrase it with incorrect and inexact phrases as “Nguyen Sinh
Sac vestiges”, “Nguyen Sinh Sac vestiges zone”, “Nguyen Sinh Sac relic district”,
“Nguyen Sinh Sac relic region”, “Nguyen Sinh Sac vestiges region”, “Nguyen Sinh
Sac tomb” or “Nguyen Sinh Sac mausoleums” while the key is “Nguyen Sinh Sac
relic area”. In this case, most of the students had mistakes about misuse of
synonyms when translated “khu” into “zone”, “region”, “areal” and “district”, and
the word “di tích” into “vestiges” and “relic”. They did not realize that although
those words have some near points about meaning in dictionaries, they are only used
suitably in some certain situations.

Example 2: The Vietnamese word phrase “dòng tộc Nguyễn Sinh” was
translated by the students as “Nguyen Sinh line”, “Nguyen Sinh family line”,
“Nguyen Sinh lineage”, “Nguyen Sing descent”, “Nguyen Sinh kinship” or “Nguyen
Sinh relative”, “the same clan of Nguyen Sinh” whereas the key is “Nguyen Sinh
ancestry”. It is nearly like with the example 1, the students had mistakes about
misuse of synonyms when they used “line”, “lineage”, “descent”, “relative”,
“kinship” and “clan” to translate the word “dòng tộc” into English. However, the
real meaning of those words is totally inappropriate with this case, so the most
suitable word is “ancestry”.

Example 3: The Vietnamese phrase “Làng ẩm thực Việt Nam” was incorrectly
translated by the students into English as follow:

 “Vietnam eating circles”

 “Cuisine Village of Vietnam”

 “Village of Vietnam‟s culinary”

 “Culinary industry in Vietnam”, etc.

The suggested translation phrase is: “Vietnamese cuisine”

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Most of the students did not clearly understand that “làng” in the Vietnamese
phrase means an aspects or a field. It does not mean “village”- “làng” or “xã” in
Vietnamese. Furthermore, it is incorrect to use the word “industry” – “ngành công
nghiệp” – or the word “circles” which does not make any sense in this case.

Example 4: When the students translated the sentence Từng món ăn được
trang trí rất đẹp, bắt mắt và tốn nhiều công sức đúng nghĩa “nem công, chả
phượng” into English, they translated the phrase “nem công, chả phượng” as
follow:

 “Meat roll, fermenting pork roll”

 “Delicacies, choice dishes”

 “Grilled rolls of phoenix”, etc.

Basing on the context, “nem công, chả phượng” is used to express delicious
foods, so it is the most suitable to translate the phrase into the word “delicacy”
which has enough meaning for this case. Because most of the students just translated
basing on the two nouns “nem công” and “chả phượng”, they translated incorrectly
like phrases above.

In brief, most of the students of 2010 classes still have some problems about
using verb tenses and choosing words suitably in translating Vietnamese texts into
English. In verb tenses, the students are confused in using tenses and their structures
or forms of verbs. The students also had difficulties in transfer Vietnamese words
and phrases into English as the above example. Therefore, there is an urgent demand
to find causes of problems and techniques or suggestions in order to help them
improve their Vietnamese translation skills.

3.2 Discussion

Basing on data collected from the questionnaire, the interview questions and
the test papers, there are some causes of problems in Vietnamese-English translation
of the students found as follow:
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Causes of grammar errors related to verb tenses

From the errors mentioned above, it can be seen than some students focused on
the structures of the source language – Vietnamese – so much that they failed to
convey all the implicit meaning of the target language – English. In fact, it is not
necessary to keep the form at all. The most important thing is that the translation
must be done on the basis of the target language grammar points. One of the big
reasons of this problem is that the students have not realized the different between
the two languages. The concept about tenses does not exist in Vietnamese, but in
English there are strict rules of uses and forms of verb tenses. They did not pay
attention to the forms of the verbs which they used and the function of the words in
a sentence. All of that are their weaknesses about grammar structures as well as the
uses of tenses in English.

Causes of errors on word choices

Some students mechanically have used word-by-word translation and depended

largely on the meaning of words in dictionaries. They also picked out the synonyms
without paying much to the context. In reality, the pairs of synonyms just share at
least one sense in common but do not the same all their senses. Therefore, the
students must recognize that a word is only suitable in some certain cases and in
these cases other words can not be used appropriately although they have near
meanings. In other words, to some extent, they are able to hardly substitute for each
other and most of the synonyms just have the same meaning in certain context. For
those reason, if the students use synonyms without basing on the context, they can
make their translation funny and nonsense. Their weaknesses about background
knowledge and the mother tongue are also the difficulties in choosing suitable and
appropriate words for Vietnamese-English translating.

Besides the causes above, one of the reasons which cause the problems is that
most of the students spent little time on self-study and did not seriously focus on
studying translation subject.
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CHAPTER 4: SUGGESTION AND CONCLUSION

4.1 Suggestion

4.1.1 Suggestion on improving grammar points related to verb tenses on

To improve English grammar about verb tenses, they should find out some
reference books which contain not only uses and forms of all tenses in English but
also many exercises of each tense for the learners to practice. If they try to read and
do exercises regularly, their knowledge of verb tense in English will be better. There
are some grammar books which are suitable for every level of learners as “English
grammar in use – Ngữ pháp tiếng Anh thực hành - 136 đề mục ngữ pháp” (Raymond
Murphy), “English grammar in use” (Raymond Murphy), “Collins Cobuild English
grammar”, “Văn phạm tiếng Anh thực hành” (Trần Văn Điền), “The grammar book”
(Marianne Celce, Diane Larsen – Freeman) and “the good grammar book” (Oxford).
It is a strong hope that these suggested grammar book can help the students to
improve grammar easily and quickly.

Other way of improving grammar for the students is using the Internet. There is
lots of information about English grammar on the Internet and it is really easy for
the students to learn and get the information just by simple clicks. The learners just
type some letters in search boxes like that of Google (www.google.com or
www.google.com.vn). There are a lot of various kinds of WebPages with clear
explanations which help the students to learn grammar rules and do more exercises.

One more effective way is that the students should prepare a notebook to
summarize English grammar points in the students own arrangement. The way can
help the students easy to remember the points of English grammar as well as review
the point quickly in their own notebook.

In addition, the students should read and apply strategies for translation which
are referred in Chapter 1: Literature review. The researcher hopes that these
strategies are useful for their translating.
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4.1.2 Suggestion on improving vocabulary

The students must enlarge vocabulary by studying whenever and wherever

they can. The most effective way to learn new words is reading. It is necessary for
the students to try to form a habit of regular reading newspapers, magazines articles
or news on the Internet like Thanhniennews, Saigontimes, Vietnamnews which will
supply much knowledge about vocabulary, grammar and ways of translation.
Thanks to reading them, they not only enlarge their vocabulary but also have more
background knowledge about aspects or fields which are strange with them so far as
well as learn some new ways or techniques of translation and then choose a suitable
way for themselves. In addition, there are some techniques to avoid misuse of
synonyms of words. The students should carefully take the synonyms into
consideration before using them. It would be better for them to consider the
differences of the pairs of synonyms when translating. The meaning of the word
which is found in Vietnamese-English dictionaries needs to be checked in English-
English dictionaries before using it in the translation text. They should use reliable
English-English dictionary as “Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary” or “Oxford
Learner‟s Pocket Dictionary” to look up the words which they are not sure how to
use them appropriately in each context.

Although Vietnamese-English translation is really not easy, the students are

able to be good at this when they practice more. Texts in some WebPages can be
translated such as www.newstimes.com, www.tratu.vn, www.voanews.com, and
www.english.us. In addition, the students can watch the program “A path to
translation” on VTV2 to learn more about translation.

Furthermore, before translating a Vietnamese text into English, it is better for

the students to apply steps below, which are extracted from the book “Translation
1&2” (Nguyễn Văn Tuấn, 2006).

Steps in a translation project

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Before translating a Vietnamese text into English, it is important for the

students to have in mind the total translation project and what is involved in
producing a good translation.

Step 1: Exegesis

Exegesis is used to refer to the process of discovering the meaning of the

sentences of a Vietnamese text which is to be translated into English. The
Vietnamese text must be fully understood. Once the students comprehend the
Vietnamese text, they can use proper language to translate the text into English.

Step 2: Transfer and initial draft

After a careful analysis of the Vietnamese text, as indicated above, the students
should begin drafting. The transfer results in the initial draft. In preparing this draft,
the students are transferring the content of the text from Vietnamese into English.

Step 3: Evaluation

The purpose of evaluation is to avoid spelling and grammar errors, which are
caused by the student‟s carelessness.

Step 4: Revise

After evaluation is done carefully, the first draft will need to be revised.

In short, this chapter has just pointed out the common errors on verb tenses and
word choices in Vietnamese-English translation made by the students of the classes
English 2010, who are the second-year students of English major at Dong Thap
University (2010-2014 curriculum) in the final tests on translation and some extra
test papers whose topics are edited by the researcher. Those errors are related to both
grammar related to verb tenses and vocabulary about word choices. The grammar
errors related to verb tenses include misuse of verb tenses, misuse of verb forms and
incorrect. Most of the students chose incorrect and inappropriate words when they
translated Vietnamese phrases in the texts as the examples mentioned above. These
 77

errors occurred because these students use literal translation – word-by-word

translation, and they did not pay careful attention to vocabulary and grammar when
translating. Some suggestions to avoid those errors have also been made in this
chapter.

4.2 Conclusion

No one can deny the importance of translation in the “global village”.

Especially Vietnamese-English translation, since its beginning, translation has not
ceased to play an indispensable role of transferring messages across the two
languages, Vietnamese and English, and cultural barriers. Thanks to that people
understand each other more in the process of diplomatic relations and economic
cooperation and other fields in today‟s era when the two countries tend to integrate
for the whole development. For those reason, issues related to Vietnamese-English
translation are the objectives and the focuses of the thesis. What the researcher
attempt to do in this thesis is to contribute my humble study to that great research
work by pointing out the second-year English majors‟ common mistakes on verb
tenses and word choices in Vietnamese-English translation.

The thesis is divided into four main chapters. The literature review on basis
concepts discussed in the thesis is mentioned in chapter one, including the
definitions of translation, the importance of translation, some types of translation,
strategies for translation, the factors influencing translation process and common
errors in Vietnamese-English translation. This chapter provides the readers
fundamental theories critical to the analysis of the study. The research methods
applied in the study are discussed in chapter two named Methodology, including
research questions, research participants, research procedure, and data collect
instruments. The researcher collected, analyzed and did statistics on the responses to
the questionnaire, the interview questions as well as Vietnamese-English translation
test papers including the final tests papers and the extra tests papers edited by the
researcher for the students of 2010 English classes who are the second-year students
 78

of English major at Dong Thap University (2010-2014 curriculum). Chapter 3 has

identified and analyzed the results from the data collection instruments about
common errors on verb tenses and word choices in Vietnamese-English translation
made by the students. Causes of those errors have also been included in this chapter.
Chapter 4 deals with some suggestions to help them avoid those errors. Although,
translation work is considered a complicated process, it is suggested that the
students have to focus on their ways of self-study and applying the strategies for
translation as much as possible so that they will find their own suitable ways for
learning translation effectively. Moreover, literal translation – word-by-word
translation- which is a big problem of most of the students can only avoided by
careful analysis of the source language and by understanding clearly the message to
be communicated. It will be easier and smoother in their Vietnamese-English
translating if the students take the time to study carefully the source language text, to
write analysis of it, and then to look for the equivalent way in which the same
message is expressed naturally in the receptor language. At that time their
translation texts will become adequate and appreciate translation texts. One of their
important goals must be to avoid literalisms and to strive for a truly idiomatic
receptor language text.
The researcher would like to contribute the study to developing the quality of
learning and training at the school. It is a strong hope that it can be considered as a
useful companion of all people who are interested in translation subject and want to
improve their translation skills.
Nevertheless, there are some limitations in this thesis that may affect the final
results. Due to the limited time of the research, a survey to investigate the influences
of those mistakes on the reader was not carried out. In addition, because of the
researcher‟ limited knowledge about linguistic aspect and translation studies,
mistakes in the course of analysis are unavoidable. However, the researcher‟s strong
hope that the study, in its scope, is able to contribute its usefulness to the students of
 79

English 2010 in particular and the students of English major at the school in general
as well as readers who are interested in Vietnamese-into-English translation.
 80

REFERENCES
English

1. Bell, R. (1991), Translation and Translating: Theory and Practice, Longman,

New York.

2. Wilss, 1982, in Noss.

3. Tu Anh (2005), English-Vietnamese translation techniques, (p.10-16).

4. Newmark (1998), Approach to Translation.

5. Newmark, Peter (1989), A Textbook of Translation, Printice Hall

International, Herfordside.

6. Nguyen Van Tuan (2006), Translation 1&2, Hue University, Hue.

7. Bui Tien Bao and Dang Xuan Thu (1997), Interpreting and translation
coursebook, Hanoi University of Foreign studies, Hanoi.

8. Le Phuong Lan, (2006), Unnaturalness in English-Vietnamese translation:

causes and cures, Hanoi, Vietnam.

9. Duong Thi Thuy Hang and Nguyen Thi Cam Xuyen (2010), Common
mistakes in learning translation subject by the second-year English majors at
Dong Thap University.

10. Nguyen Ngo Minh Tri and Le Thi My Duyen (2010), Problems in
Vietnamese-English translation of the second-year students of English major
at Dong Thap University: Causes and Solutions.

11. The Merriam (1974), Webster Dictionary.

12. Hornby, A. (2005), Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary, Oxford

University Press.

13. Victoria Bull, Fourth edition, Oxford Learner‟s Pocket Dictionary, Oxford
University Press.
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14. LAC VIET mtd2002-EVA dictionary.

Vietnamese

Nguyễn Thành Đức (2009), Giáo trình Thực hành Biên dịch Việt Anh 2,
Trường Đại học Cần Thơ.

Đại học Đồng Tháp: Hướng tới “Chất lượng - Hiệu quả - Uy tín - Chuyên
nghiệp - Hiện đại”

Trần Văn Diệm (1998), 57 bài luận Anh văn, Dong A Language School, Nhà
xuất bản trẻ TP. Hồ Chí Minh.

WebPages

1. http://www.translationdirectory.com/article634.htm

2. http://web.hanu.vn/en/file.php/1/moddata/forum/70/396/Unnaturalness_in_E
nglish_Vietnamese_translation_-_causes_and_cures.pdf

3. http://form.wordreference.com/

4. www.tratu.com

5. www.vdict.com

6. http://www.baocantho.com.vn/?mod=detnews&catid=74&p=&id=88416

7. http://www.baocantho.com.vn/?mod=detnews&catid=80&p=79&id=87967

8. http://www.baocantho.com.vn/?mod=detnews&catid=81&p=79&id=87541

9. http://giaoduc.edu.vn/news/giao-duc-phat-trien-728/dai-hoc-dong-thap-
huong-toi-chat-luong-hieu-qua-uy-tin-chuyen-nghiep-hien-dai-174680.aspx