VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE
VƢƠNG THỊ THANH NHÀN
TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE OF TERMS IN QUAN HO
BAC NINH FOLK SONGS

(Tương đương trong dịch thuật ngữ dân ca Quan Họ Bắc Ninh)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15

Hanoi - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE

TABLE OF CONTENTS.. iv
LIST OF TABLES.viii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
PART A: INTRODUCTION1
I. Identification of the problem and rationale for the study1
II. Aims of the study2
III. Scope of the study3
IV. Significance of the study3
V. Organization of the study4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT .5
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5
I. Translation equivalence 5
1. Definitions of translation 5
1.1. From linguistic approach5
1.2. From cultural approach .6
2. Different theories of translation equivalence8
2.1.  8
2.2. -11
3. Translation of culture-specific concepts16
3.1. Different views on culture-specific concepts16
3.2. Translation strategies for culture-specific concepts17
II. Terms in Quan Ho Bac Ninh folk songs as culture-specific concepts.24
1. Description of Quan Ho Bac Ninh folk songs 24
1.1. Origin of 24
1.2. Performance 25
1.3. Quan Ho 26
1.4. Quan Ho si27
2. Outstanding features of Quan Ho Bac Ninh folk songs27
2.1. From artistic aspect27
v

II. .61
vi

III. .62
REFERENCES64
APPENDICES I vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS


Table 2: English equivalents of QHBN terms
Table 3: QHBN terms translated by literal translation
Table 4: QHBN terms translated by reduction
Table 5: QHBN terms translated by cultural equivalents
Table 6: QHBN terms translated by descriptive equivalents
Table 7: QHBN terms translated by couplets
Table 8: Glossary of key terms in QHBN folk songs 1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
I. Identification of the problem and rationales for the study
Quan Ho Bac Ninh singing was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage
of humanity at the fourth session of the UNESCO International Committee
for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage, which took place in Abu Dhabi,
UAE, from September 28 to October 2, 2010. After that, Vietnam snapped
into action to protect its indigenous art form. In October 2011, the Ministry of
Culture, Sports and Tourism claimed that Quan Ho singing had been listed as
a cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. Among the measures taken
to preserve and promote the heritage, introducing Quan Ho Bac Ninh

“Translation Equivalence of Terms in Quan Ho Bac Ninh Folk Songs”.
The study is hoped to be a modest contribution to the field.

II. Aims of the study
The study is firstly aimed at examining the problem of non-equivalence
caused by culture-specific concepts like Quan Ho Bac Ninh terms so that
solutions to overcome the difficulties will be worked out. Then, the study will
highlight a number of strategies to deal with Quan Ho Bac Ninh terms as
culture-specific items. Finally, several suggested translations of key terms in
Bac Ninh Quan Ho folk songs will be given.
In brief, these aims can be summarized into two research questions as follows:
- What are the strategies to form equivalents of terms in Quan Ho Bac
Ninh folk songs?
3

- What are the suggested equivalents of terms in Quan Ho Bac Ninh folk
songs?

III. Scope of the study
Within the limitation of time and reference materials, the study will address
the problem of non-equivalence rather than stretching efforts in other differnt
aspects of translation equivalence. In addition, the researcher will not focus
on all the terms used in Quan Ho singing documents. Only some key terms
related to the following points will be discussed:
- Quan Ho singing origin and social practice (with major focus on
several customs)
- Quan Ho singing forms
- Quan Ho singing tunes
- Quan Ho singing techniques
- Quan Ho singing outfits
5

Part B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter explores the present state of knowledge regarding the topic under
discussion. A critical review of major works on translation will be given. An
investigation of s     
 - -   
             
could be clearly identified, creating reasonable grounds for the study.
I. Translation equivalence
1. Definitions of translation
1.1 From linguistic approach
It has been long taken for granted that translation deals only with language.
Cultural perspective, however, has not yet been brought into discussion. The
first definition presented by Catford (1965: 20) refers to translation as the
         
              
equivalence. Culture was not taken into account.
Next, Nida and Taber (1969) explain the process of translating as follows:
Translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest
natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning


According to Snell-Hornby (1988: 39), however, the exclusion of cultural
aspect from the discussion of translation theory is due to the view of the
traditional approach in linguistics which draws a sharp dividing-line between
language and "extralinguistic reality" (culture, situation, etc.). The
contemporary approach, according to her, sees language as an integral part of
culture.
In 1964, Nida discussed the problems of correspondence in translation,
conferred equal importance to both linguistic and cultural differences between
the SL and the TL and concluded that differences between cultures may cause
more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language
structure. It is further explained that parallels in culture often provide a
common understanding despite significant formal shifts in the translation.
According to him cultural implications for translation are thus of significant
importance as well as lexical concerns.
In his discussion of translation theory, Toury (1978) considers translation as
ich inevitably involves at least two languages and two
        
faced with the problem of how to treat the cultural aspects implicit in a ST
and of finding the most appropriate technique of successfully conveying these
aspects in the TL.
          
conveying messages across linguistic and cultural barriers. Venuti (1995)
claims that the aim of translation is to bring back a culture as the same, the
recognizable, even the familiar with the source one.

8

2. Different theories of translation equivalence
2.1. “Equivalent effect” in translation

          
natural equivalent to the source-
The two types of equivalence by Nida are crucial in introducing a receptor-
based (or reader-based) orientation to translation theory. However, the
principle of equivalence is heavily criticized for a number of reasons.
Lefevere (1993) claims that equivalence is still overly concerned with the
word level, while Van De Broeck (1978) and Larose (1989) considers

whom? how can a text possibly have the same response in two different
cultures?).

In his books of        
      -oriented line,
           
between emphasis on source language and target language will remain as the


  the former aims at rendering as closely
as       
          

9)

However, Newmark has been criticized for his strong prescriptivism, and the
-

10

while transla



2.2. “Non-equivalence” in translation
The concept of Equivalence has had its share of criticism and challenges. If
equivalence is considered the essence of translation, the next question is what
about cases of non-equivalence in translation? Snell-Hornby (1988) criticized
the concept of equivalence by comparing the meaning of the word
         -
          



on-
         
parallel corpus can be used to investigate the consistency of translation
equivalence across the two languages in a parallel corpus. The particular
issues addressed are the bi-directionality of translation equivalence, the
coverage of multi-word units, and the amount of implicit knowledge
presupposed on the part of the user in interpreting the data. Non-equivalence
is a fact among languages.

As Baker (1992) puts it, the difficulty and problem in translating from one
language into another is posed by the concept of non-equivalence, or lack of
equivalence. This problem appears at all language levels starting from the
word level up till the textual level. Baker discusses various equivalence
problems and their possible solutions at word, above word, grammatical,
textual, and pragmatic levels. She takes a bottom-up approach for pedagogical
reasons. Baker proceeds with her equivalence discussion from word to further
12

upward levels. She clai

languages share the same linguistic structures, social or, cultural aspects.
Instead, he proposes the use of the term 'adequacy' for the 'appropriate'
translation, that is," a translation that has achieved the required optimal level
of interlanguage communication under certain given conditions."

conveyable in any existing langu      
        
therefore works mostly in messages, not single code units
Different forms of non-equivalence can be found in several typologies of
equivalence proposed by Catford (1965), Kade (1968), Monia Bayar (2007)
under various terms such as “untranslatability”, “nil-equivalence” “null-
equivalence”, “zero-equivalence

Catford (1965) distinguishes two kinds of untranslatability, that is, linguistic
untranslatability and cultural untranslatability.
 Linguistic untranslatability, occurs when there is no lexical or
syntactical substitute in the target language for a source language
item.
 Cultural untranslatability is due to the absence in the target
language culture of a relevant situational feature for the source text.
Kade (1968) and other translators (Arntz 1993, Hann 1992) on lexical
equivalence, in particular in the area of terminology, combine the qualitative
14

distinctions with a quantitative aspect that categories equivalence
relationships according to following types:
 One–to–one equivalence; when a single expression in the TL for a
single SL expression is used.
 One–to–many equivalence; when more than one TL expression for a
single SL expression is used.

problem. Poor translation occurs when the translators are unable to
transfer the ST goals into a readable TT and in an obvious way that
helps the reader grasp them easily.
 Mistranslation: in mistranslation the TT neither is readable nor
keeps the super-ordinate goal of the ST.
 Zero equivalence or translation: zero equivalence occurs when there
is no one to one equivalent between the ST and the TT. According
to Bayar, this happens when the translator deals with texts that
contain many culturally bound words or expressions.
In general, equivalence in translation can be measured by degrees that range
from optimal equivalence to zero equivalence. These degrees might be
measured by the levels of nearness or distance from the ST 'superordinate
goal'. While optimal equivalence is considered as the highest level in
equivalence, or the most nearest degree from the ST, zero equivalence is
related to the lowest degree of equivalence or the most distant degree from the
ST goal.
16

One of the explanations for the problem of non-equivalence is due to culture-
specific concepts. The study will take a closer look at the nature of those
items.
3. Translation of culture-specific concepts
3.1. Different views on culture-specific concepts
It is not always clear which words and expressions should be considered
culture-specific items, even in the literature of translation several names exist
for these items: realia, culture-specific concepts, culturally bound items, etc.
Vlahov and Florin (1980) (cited by Tellinger 2003) speak of realia and
categorize these items as follows: 1) geographical (geographic formations,
man-made geographical objects, flora and fauna that is special to a certain
place); 2) ethnographic (food and drink, clothing, places of living, furniture,

feature in a ST which presents a problem for the translator because there is an
intercultural gap between the SL and the TL. Such a gap is found where an
item in the ST does not exist in the TL culture, or the TL has no word for that
item.
3.2. Translation strategies for culture-specific concepts
      -specific concepts we can
find some similarities with Newmark's point of views which are mentioned
above. His classification for translation of culture-specific concepts is as
follows:
18

 Equivalence by modifying a generic word: This strategy is helpful to
analyze the source word to discover its generic component functions
of the words in its context.
 Equivalence by modifying a loan word: This strategy is used to
translate names of people, geographical areas, etc.
 Equivalence by cultural substitute: This strategy can be applied
when the source language lexical items can be translated by using
the words for things or events which are not exactly the same but
occur in the receptor language (Larson 1984, p. 170).
According to Newmark (1988) two translation procedures are normally used
for translation of cultural words: first transference which usually in literary
texts offers local colour and atmosphere. Although transference is brief and
concise, it blocks comprehension, it emphasizes the culture and excludes the
message and does not communicate. The other procedure is componential
analysis, the most accurate translation procedure in Newmark's point of view
which excludes the culture and highlights the message. It has also some
shortcomings. It is not economical and has not the pragmatic impact of the
original. He also believes that in translation of novels, cultural words are often
transferred from SL to TL to attract the reader (p.96). In the classification of