BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC DÂN LẬP HẢI PHÒNG
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ISO 9001:2015
KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP
NGÀNH: TIẾNG ANH
Sinh viên : Nguyễn Tiến Thành
Giảng viên hướng dẫn: Th.S Đào Thị Lan Hương
HẢI PHÒNG - 2019
BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC DÂN LẬP HẢI PHÒNG
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AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ENGLISH
TRANSLATIONAL VERSIONS OF TRINH CONG
SON’S SONGS IN TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND
SYNTACTIC FEATURES.
KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP ĐẠI HỌC HỆ CHÍNH QUY
NGÀNH: TIẾNG ANH
Sinh viên : Nguyễn Tiến Thành
Giảng viên hướng dẫn: Th.S Đào Thị Lan Hương
HẢI PHÒNG – 2019
BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC DÂN LẬP HẢI PHÒNG
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NHIỆM VỤ ĐỀ TÀI TỐT NGHIỆP
Sinh viên: Nguyễn Tiến Thành
Mã SV: 1312751036
Lớp: NA1801 Ngành: Tiếng Anh
Tên đề tài: An investigation into the English translational versions of
Trinh Cong Son’s songs in terms of semantic and syntactic features
NHIỆM VỤ ĐỀ TÀI
1. Nội dung và các yêu cầu cần giải quyết trong nhiệm vụ đề tài tốt nghiệp
( về lý luận, thực tiễn, các số liệu cần tính toán và các bản vẽ).
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2. Các số liệu cần thiết để thiết kế, tính toán.
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3. Địa điểm thực tập tốt nghiệp.
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CÁN BỘ HƯỚNG DẪN ĐỀ TÀI TỐT NGHIỆP
Người hướng dẫn thứ nhất:
Họ và tên: Đào Thị Lan Hương
Học hàm, học vị:Thạc Sĩ
Cơ quan công tác:Trường Đại Học Dân Lập Hải Phòng
Nội dung hướng dẫn: An investigation into the English translational versions
of Trinh Cong Son’s songs in terms of semantic and
syntactic features.
Người hướng dẫn thứ hai:
Họ và tên:
Học hàm, học vị:
Cơ quan công tác:
Nội dung hướng dẫn:
Đề tài tốt nghiệp được giao ngày
tháng
năm
Yêu cầu phải hoàn thành xong trước ngày tháng
Đã nhận nhiệm vụ ĐTTN
năm
Đã giao nhiệm vụ ĐTTN
Sinh viên
Người hướng dẫn
Hải Phòng, ngày ...... tháng........năm 2019
Hiệu trưởng
GS.TS.NGƯT Trần Hữu Nghị
CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc
PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN TỐT NGHIỆP
Họ và tên giảng viên:
...................................................................................................
Đơn vị công tác:
........................................................................ ..........................
Họ và tên sinh viên:
.......................................... Chuyên ngành: ...............................
Đề tài tốt nghiệp:
...................................................................................................
........................................................... ........................................
Nội dung hướng dẫn:
.......................................................... ........................................
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1. Tinh thần thái độ của sinh viên trong quá trình làm đề tài tốt nghiệp
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2. Đánh giá chất lượng của đồ án/khóa luận (so với nội dung yêu cầu đã đề ra trong
nhiệm vụ Đ.T. T.N trên các mặt lý luận, thực tiễn, tính toán số liệu…)
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3. Ý kiến của giảng viên hướng dẫn tốt nghiệp
Được bảo vệ
Không được bảo vệ
Điểm hướng dẫn
Hải Phòng, ngày … tháng … năm ......
Giảng viên hướng dẫn
(Ký và ghi rõ họ tên)
QC20-B18
CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc
PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN CHẤM PHẢN BIỆN
Họ và tên giảng viên:
..............................................................................................
Đơn vị công tác:
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Họ và tên sinh viên:
...................................... Chuyên ngành: ..............................
Đề tài tốt nghiệp:
......................................................................... ....................
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1. Phần nhận xét của giáo viên chấm phản biện
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2. Những mặt còn hạn chế
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3. Ý kiến của giảng viên chấm phản biện
Được bảo vệ
Không được bảo vệ
Điểm phản biện
Hải Phòng, ngày … tháng … năm ......
Giảng viên chấm phản biện
(Ký và ghi rõ họ tên
QC20-B19
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
During the time of completing this graduation paper, I have received a lot
of help, assistance, guidance, encouragement and contributed ideas from my
teachers, family and friends.
I wish, first of all, to express my deepest gratitude and indebtedness to my
supervisor – Ms.Dao Thi Lan Huong, M.A - who has always been most willing
and ready to give me valuable advice, inspiration and supervision to finish this
study.
My sincere thanks are also sent to the teachers in the English Department
of Haiphong Private University for their useful lessons and whole-hearted
advice during four years studying here.
Last but not least, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to my family
and my close friends, to whom I have never got enough words to express my
great gratitude for their encouragement and support.
This graduation paper is my sincere thanks to all of you.
Haiphong, November 1st 2018
Nguyen Tien Thanh
I
LIST OF ACRONYMS:
SL Source language
TL Target language
ADJAdjective
ADVAdverb
NNoun
NPNoun phrase
ProPronoun
PrepPreposition
QWQuestion word
SLSource language
ST
Source text
TLTarget language
TT Target text
V
Verb
VPVerb phrase
II
LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1: The tokens and percentage of semantic strategies
37
Table 4.2: The tokens and percentage of syntactic strategies
47
III
LIST OF CHARTS
Chart 4.1: The percentage of semantic strategies ..........................................38
Chart 4.2: The percentage of syntactic strategies ..........................................48
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................... I
LIST OF ACRONYMS: ..................................................................................... II
LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................ III
LIST OF CHARTS ............................................................................................ IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................... V
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 1
1.Rationale of the study: ...................................................................................... 1
2.Aims of the study ............................................................................................. 2
3. Scope of the study: .......................................................................................... 3
4. Design of the study .......................................................................................... 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT................................................................................ 4
CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ........ Error!
Bookmark not defined.
1.1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.............................................................. 4
1.1.1 Translation definitions ............................................................................... 4
1.1.2 Equivalence in translation .......................................................................... 6
1.1.3 Types of equivalence .................................................................................. 8
1.1.4. Literary translation .................................................................................. 14
1.1.5. Vietnamese – English translation ............................................................ 15
1.2 TRANSLATION METHODS AND PROCEDURES ................................. 17
1.2.1. Translation procedures ............................................................................ 17
1.2.2. Translation methods ................................................................................ 22
1.2.3. Song translation ....................................................................................... 23
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ..................................................................... 25
2.1 Design of the study ...................................................................................... 25
2.2 Target .......................................................................................................... 25
2.3. Research methods ....................................................................................... 26
V
2.4. Data collection and description .................................................................. 26
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................... 27
3.1 SEMANTIC FEATURES OF WORDS AND PHRASES IN TRINH CONG
SON 'S SONGS. ................................................................................................ 27
3.1.1.Using omission to translate....................................................................... 27
3.1.1.1 Full omission ......................................................................................... 27
3.1.1.2. Partial omission .................................................................................... 30
3.1.2. Translation by using a more neutral/less expressive word ....................... 32
3.1.3. Translation by using a more general word ............................................... 33
3.1.4. Translation by using expansion................................................................... 35
3.1.5. Translation by using meronymy ......................................................................... 36
3.2. FREQUENCY OF SEMANTIC TRANSLATION STRATEGIES ........... 37
3.3. SYNTACTIC FEATURES......................................................................... 39
3.3.1. Structural – shifts..................................................................................... 39
3.3.2. Intra-system shifts ................................................................................... 42
3.3.3. Class – shifts ............................................................................................ 43
3.4. FREQUENCY OF SYNTACTIC TRANSLATION TRATEGIES ............ 46
3.5. Summary .................................................................................................... 47
PART III: CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 48
1. Summary of findings ..................................................................................... 48
2. Translation implications ................................................................................ 50
3. The study limitations ..................................................................................... 53
REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 54
APPENDIX ....................................................................................................... 56
V
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.
Rationale of the study:
Trinh Cong Son (28 February 1939 - 1 April 2001) is a Vietnamese
musician. He is considered one of the great musicians of pop music, New
Vietnamese music with many popular works. There is currently no accurate
record of his work (estimated at no less than 600 songs) . However, his songs
are widely known for 236 songs (both lyrics and music). Trinh Cong Son's
music is performed by many singers, but most successful are Khanh Ly and
Hong Nhung. In addition, he is considered a poet, painter, singer and amateur
actor.
Son’s songs will be immortal in people’s hearts not only in Vietnam but
also in many countries like: France, Japan and America, etc. People love to sing
his songs. Many of those songs have been translated into many languages, most
of them are in English, French and Japanese with different versions. For
examples:
+ Biết Đâu Nguồn Cội (Unknown origin)
+ Lặng Lẽ Nơi Này (The quiet world of mine / So silent here)
+ Một Cõi Đi Về (My own lonely world / A realm of return / A place for
leaving and returning)
+ Cát bụi (Dusty sand / Sand and Dust)
+ Đời gọi em biết bao lần (Life has called you many times)
+ Em đến từ nghìn xưa (You’ve come a long time)
+ Gần như niềm tuyệt vọng (Something like despair)
+ Lời buồn thánh (Sad Sunday eve)
+ Tuổi đời mênh mông (In too large life)
As a fan of Trinh Cong Son’s music, I find it very interesting to study the
English translations of Son’s songs. However, up to now, just a few researches
on the lyrics of the English translational versions have been found.
1
It is clear that there are many difficulties for translators to translate Trinh
Cong Son’s songs into English. Practically, clarifying the syntactic and semantic
features helps us have a clear view about Son’s songs and their English
equivalences and find out another better way to translate Trinh Cong Son’s
songs with full ideas of writer obtained.
Theoretically, more than 70 of his songs were translated into English, and
many studies in the lyrics and melodies of Trinh Cong Son’s songs have done so
far. However, researches on the syntactic and semantic features of English
versus Vietnamese versions of Trinh have not been carried out. Therefore, it is
necessary to do a research on this matter to have a total view about translating
Trinh Cong Son’s songs into English. “A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH
TRANSLATIONAL VERSIONS OF TRINH CONG SON’S SONGS IN
TERMS OF SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC FEATURES” has been carried
out for the reasons listed above.
In theory, more than 70 of his songs have been translated into English, and many
studies on the lyrics and melody of Trinh Cong Son's songs have been
performed so far. However, studies on the syntactic and semantic features of
English compared to the Vietnamese version of Trinh have not been performed.
Therefore, we need to study this issue to get an overview of the translation of
Trinh Cong Son's songs into English.
2.Aims of the study
Starting from the framework based on the semantic features of lexicon and
syntactic features of phrases and sentences between English and Vietnamese,
this research will take Trinh Cong Son’s English translated versions versus their
originals in Vietnamese to investigate the similarities and differences when
those songs are translated from Vietnamese into English in order to come to the
generalizations of how the translating methods are rendered.
2
3. Scope of the study:
This study deals with investigating the procedures used in translating
the semantic features of lexicon and the syntactic features of phrases and
sentences in Trinh Cong Son’s songs taken from Trịnh Công Sơn – The
collection of everlasting songs. Music press 1997. (Trịnh Công Sơn –
Tuyển tập những bài ca không năm tháng. Nxb Âm Nhạc 1997) and
website http://www.tcs-home.org/songs-en/songs.
4.
Design of the study
My graduation paper is divided into three parts :
The first part is the Introduction, including: the rationale, aims, scope, method
and design of the study.
The second part is the Development with 3 chapters:
Chapter I: Theoretical background: It focuses on the concepts of
translation, terms relating to songs, including the popular construction of
terms and some strategies applied in translation
Chapter II: Methodology: This chapter was aimed to clarify the
methodology of the research which includes two interrelated phrases. In
this chapter, the design of the study, the sample description, the methods
and procedures of data collection and analysis would be fully explained .
Chapter III: Finding and discuss: this chapter is divided into 2 parts:
+ Section 1: The semantic features of lexicon in Trinh Cong son’s
songs when being translated from Vietnamese into English.
+ Section 2: The syntactic features of phrases and sentences in Trinh
Cong Son’s songs when being translated from Vietnamese into English.
The last part is the Conclusion in which the author summary what have been
discussed in chapter 4 with some comments on the limitations of this study and
make suggestions for future studies.
3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1.1 Translation definitions
Translation has many different definitions. We can find the simplest way
is to transfer text from language A into B language.
Over time, this
understanding has started to become wider and deeper depending on the position
of the researchers, though. Usually, although not by any means, it is expressing
the meaning of the text into another language in the way that the author intended
the text. General psychology tells us that this should be simple, because one
must be able to say something in this language as well as another language.
The translation is primarily discussed in terms of conflict between free
and literal translation, and the contradiction between its inherent impossibility
and its absolute necessity. A translator must be an interpreter or an orator. A
good translation is one in which the merit of the original works is completely
translated into another language to be understood and strongly felt by a native
speaker of the language in which the language belongs. . of original work.
Proposed literal translation of the syntax as well as the words, it is said that this
sentence is a wall to prevent the language of origin, while the word to translate
words is arcade.
Before, people thought that translation is the replacement of a textual
material in one language (source language – SL) by equivalent textual material
in another language (target language – TL). The equivalent here is the
grammatical factors between the SL and the TL. Therefore, at the time with this
4
view the grammatical equivalent became one of the criteria for assessing the
quality of a translation.
Later, according to Newmark (1980) [17, p7], “translation is a craft
consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one
language by the same message and/or statement in another language”. So, the
textual material now changes into the message – more communicative.
Based on the generalized grammatical translation theory, translators need
to go beyond clear text structures and should see the text as a mere comparison
of the respective structures. This leads to another important awareness, language
is really a general device, helping translators form in their minds the technique
of text analysis. This is not only a technique used to decode source text but also
a procedure to select the appropriate structures that are appropriate in the target
language.
In addition, translation is a term covers on three distinguishable meanings.
That is “translating”, the process (to translate), the activity rather than the
tangible object. “A translation” is the product of the process of translating (e.g.
the translated text), and the “translation”, the abstract concept which
encompasses both the process of translating and the product of that process. [1,
p13]
Furthermore, translation is also a communication bridge of two languages.
Obviously, language is various and different from country to country as the
sameness cannot exist between two languages.
Danica Seleskovitch (2009) [7], a brilliant interpreter and writer, has said:
“Everything said in one language can be expressed in another one - on
condition that the two languages belong to cultures that have reached a
comparable degree of development”. The condition she makes is false and
misleading. Translation is an instrument of education as well as of truth
precisely because it has to reach readers whose cultural and educational level is
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different from, and often “lower” or earlier, than, that of the readers of the
origin. Beside that, translation has been instrumental in transmitting culture,
sometimes under unequal conditions responsible for distorted and biased
translations, ever since countries and languages have been in contact with each
other.
As a means of communication, translation is used for multilingual notices,
which have at least appeared increasingly conspicuously in public places; for
instructions issued by exporting companies; for tourist publicity, where it is too
often produced from the native into the “foreign” language by natives as a
matter of national pride; for official documents, such as treaties and contracts;
for reports, papers, articles, correspondence, textbook to convey information,
advice and recommendations for every branch of knowledge. As a technique for
learning foreign languages, translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the
special purpose for demonstrating the learner’s knowledge of the foreign
language, either as a form of control or to exercise his intelligence in order to
develop his competence.
1.1.2 Equivalence in translation
Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) view equivalence-oriented translation as a
procedure which replicates the same situation as in the original, whilst using
completely different wording.
With regard to equivalent expressions between language pairs, Vinay and
Darbelnet claim that they are acceptable as long as they are listed in a bilingual
dictionary as full equivalents. However, later they note that glossaries and
collections of idiomatic expressions can never be exhaustive. They conclude by
saying that the need for creating equivalences arises from the situation, and it is
in the situation of the SL text that translators have to look for a solution. Indeed,
they argue that even if the semantic equivalent of an expression in the SL text is
6
quoted in a dictionary or a glossary, it is not enough, and it does not guarantee a
successful translation.
Roman Jakobson's (1959) [12] study of equivalence gave new impetus to
the theoretical analysis of translation since he introduced the notion of
'equivalence in difference'. On the basis of his semiotic approach to language
and his aphorism 'there is no signatum without signum' [12, p232], he suggests
three kinds of translation:
Intralingual
(within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrase)
Interlingual
(between two languages)
Intersemiotic
(between sign systems)
Jakobson claims that, in the case of interlingual translation, the translator
makes use of synonyms in order to get the ST message across. This means that
in interlingual translations there is no full equivalence between code units.
According to his theory, translation involves two equivalent messages in two
different codes. Jakobson goes on to say that from a grammatical point of view
languages may differ from one another to a greater or lesser degree, but this
does not mean that a translation cannot be possible, in other words, that the
translator may face the problem of not finding a translation equivalent. He
acknowledges that whenever there is deficiency, terminology may be qualified
and amplified by loanwords or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts,
and finally, by circumlocutions. Jakobson provides a number of examples by
comparing English and Russian language structures and explains that in such
cases where there is no a literal equivalent for a particular ST word or sentence,
then it is up to the translator to choose the most suitable way to render it in the
TT.
There seems to be some similarity between Vinay and Darbelnet's theory
of translation procedures and Jakobson's theory of translation. Both theories
stress the fact that, whenever a linguistic approach is no longer suitable to carry
out a translation, the translator can rely on other procedures such as loan7
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