VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

****** NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN
AN EVALUATION OF THE VIETNAMESE TRANSLATED
VERSION OF “THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY Nguyen
cung ai and vu tuan phuong

Đánh giá bản dịch tiếng việt của tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang
dã” của hai dịch giả Nguyễn Cung Ái và Vũ Tuấn Phương MINOR M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15


MINOR M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
Supervisor: Pham Thi Thanh Thuy (Ph.d) Hanoi - 2012
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract 
Acknowledgements 
Table of content
List of abbreviations
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rational for the study
2. Objective of the study
3. Scope and method of the study
3.1 Scope of the study
3.2 Method of the study
4. Organization of the study
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 Translation theory

1.3.2.1 Julianne House and her model
1.3.2.2 
      


2.1 A brief analysis of the Source Language text 
2.2 
2.3 Comparing the translation with the original
2.4 An evaluation of the translation
2.4.1         
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8
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vi


TQA: Translation Quality Assessment
ST: Source Text
TT: Target Text
SL: Source Language
TL: Target Language viii LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND TABLES

Tables and diagrams
Pages

6


people all over the world. Nowadays, in the inevitable trend of globalization and
integration, not only the professional translators but also many people working in
different fields such as health care, economy, politics, etc, are concerned about the
quality of translation. However, in fact, to have a high-quality translation version,
especially in the field of literature, is not an easy task and it involves a lot of skills from
the translators. According to the translator Thuy Toan(1993), to have a good translation
version, the translator must not only love his job and literature but also be good at their
mother tongue, know foreign languages, have a thorough knowledge of culture, work
cautiously and be industrious at consulting. From his point of view, it is clear that
translation is a challenging job, which requires the translator both the knowledge of the
language and the background knowledge of the culture which the literary works
belongs to. Sometimes, due to lack of either of the     
carelessness, the translated version may not be concise enough. Even more seriously, it
can transfer the wrong message that is attached in the literary works. At present, in
Vietnam, works of literary translations are growing rapidly , even uncontrollably in
quantity for commercial purposes ; however, there has been no popular criterion for a
good and valuable translated version . Besides the successfully -translated masterpieces
such as Wuthering Heights (), Harry Porter, Noruwei no mori (

),
The Centaur in the Garden (





 ), there still exists ones of bad
quality, for example,  (



Law of
the writer has had
access to this chapter since she was a fourth year student. At that time, she had chances
acts her a lot.
Moreover, this is a moving chapter about the process in which the dog adapts itself to
3

the new harsh environment and rude owners. Therefore, the writer decides to make a
comparison between the original version and the translated one to see whether the
translators can transship both the connotative and denotative meaning of the source text
into the target text or not.
a. Method of the study

     guyen Cung Ai and Vu Tuan Phuong. To reach this goal, I
decide to have an insight into various translation quality assessment models by

for assessing the Vietnamese version of this masterpiece because of its strong points in
terms of application, that is, it is easy to follow. During the assessing process,
Contrastive Analysis approach will be applied to compare and evaluate the translated
version against the original one.
This assessing process will be carried out as follows. First, the original text will
be read thoroughly and comprehensively, then the source text will be compared to its

there are five main steps towards TQA and the researcher is going to strictly follow
them:
 Step 1: A brief analysis of the SL text stressing its intention and its functional
aspects
            

 Step 3: A selective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 TRANSLATION THEORY
1.1.1 Definition of translation
Translation has a long history and plays an important role in linguistics as Kelly,
L.G- 

a translation is that it has become a controversial topic so far. Within the scope of this
thesis, just some famous viewpoints around this topic of some outstanding researchers
will be mentioned to illustrate this.
The first is the definition made by Newmark, a well-known researcher who has
made a great deal of important contributions to the development of translation.
According to him, “Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written
message and statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in
another language). This definition is quite evident and easy to
understand.
Sharing a similar viewpoint     The
replacement of textual material in one language (source language) by an equivalent
textual material in other language (target language)
Along the same line, Hartman and Stork (1972:713) also gave their own
       Translation is the replacement of a
representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a
second language.

Translation is the expression in
another language (or Target Language) of what has been expressed in another, Source
Language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences    
6

   Translation consists of producing in the receptor language the
closest natural equivalence to the message of the source language, first in meaning and

the distance with the source language and the target language but also the features of
the translation product created by a respective method: whether it is more alike to the
source language or the target language (Le Hung Tien, 2006). For example, word-for-
word translation method creates the product characterizing the most features of source
language and adaptation give birth to a translation version which is the most alike to
the target language.
Each method can briefly explained by Newmark as follows:
Word-for-word translation: The SL word-order is preserved and words translated singly by
their most common meaning, out of context.
Literal translation: The SL grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest TL
equivalents but the lexical words are translated singly, out of context.
Faithful translation: attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original
within the constraints of the TL grammatical structures.
Semantic translation: takes more account of the aesthetic value of the SL text than faithful
-lay or
repetition jars in the finished version. Therefo
intuitive empathy with the original.
Adaptation: In adaptation, the themes, characters, plots are preserved, and the SL culture is
converted to the TL culture and the text is rewritten.
Free translation: is usually a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called

Idiomatic translation
meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where these do not exist in the original.
Communicative translation: attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original
in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the
readership.
(Newmark, 1988: 45-7)
8

Among these methods, Newmark put emphasis on two methods, semantic and

meaning but is not an obvious one-to-one equivalent, by demonstrating first their common and
then their differing sense components."
Synonymy: it is a "near TL equivalent." Here economy trumps accuracy.
Through-translation: it is the literal translation of common collocations, names of
organizations and components of compounds. It can also be called: calque or loan translation.
Shifts or transpositions: it involves a change in the grammar from SL to TL, for instance, (i)
change from singular to plural, (ii) the change required when a specific SL structure does not
exist in the TL, (iii) change of an SL verb to a TL word, change of an SL noun group to a TL
noun and so forth.
Modulation: it occurs when the translator reproduces the message of the original text in the
TL text in conformity with the current norms of the TL, since the SL and the TL may appear
dissimilar in terms of perspective.
Recognized translation: it occurs when the translator "normally uses the official or the
generally accepted translation of any institutional term."
Compensation: it occurs when loss of meaning in one part of a sentence is compensated in
another part.
Paraphrase: in this procedure the meaning of the CBT is explained. Here the explanation is
much more detailed than that of descriptive equivalent.
Couplets: it occurs when the translator combines two different procedures.


As can be seen, in this classification, each procedure is distinguished quite
clearly from each other. However, in real situation of translating a text, it is essential to
use a combination of them flexibly.
1.1.3 Translation equivalence
1.1.3.1 Definition
Translation equivalence is the key concept of translation theory and it is also the
main criterion in assessing the quality of a translation. In the past, translation
equivalence was simply defined as the similarities and the differences between two
10

conversion of linguistic units of L1 into linguistic units of L2” (Ivir, 1996:155). To
have better understanding of this term, it is necessary to have a look at how translation
equivalence is classified into different types.
1.1.3.2 Types of translation equivalence
ent, there are

popular classifications can be identified as follows: Quantity-based, form-based,
meaning-based, and function-based equivalence. Basing on quantitative approach
(quantity-based), Munday (2001) suggests five types of translation equivalence: One-
to-one equivalence, one-to-many equivalence, many- to-one equivalence, one-to-part-
of-one equivalence, nil equivalence. From this categorization, it is noticeable that
Munday mainly focused on the quantity of equivalence rather than meaning
equivalence. Baker (1992) who is in favor of form-based equivalence classifies
translation equivalence into equivalence at word level (number, gender, tense) and
above word level and textual equivalence (equivalence between a SL text and a TL text
in terms of information and cohesion). On the contrary, Nida (1964), who supports
function-based equivalence, distinguishes formal equivalence and dynamic translation
as basic orientations. According to him, formal equivalence is achieved when the SL
and TL words have the closest possible match of form and content and dynamic
equivalence is achieved when the SL and TL words have the same effect on their
effective readers.
As seen above, each author has his/her own reasons for classifying different
types of translation equivalence. However, with respect to three basic factors in
translating: the nature of the message, the purpose of the author and the translator and
the type of audience, the kind of equivalence by Koller(1979) can be considered a
satisfactory approach. Basing on text meaning, Koller (1979) classified equivalence in
translation into five catagories as follows:
12

 Denotative equivalence: the SL and the TL words refer to the same thing in the real world.

1.3.1 Definition
In fact, this 

(1995) 
by Julianne House. Here are some ways of defining this term by some famous
      The assessment of translator
performance is an activity which, despite being widespread, is under-researched and
under-discussed     cited in Williams, 2001). From this
definition, it can be seen that Hatim and Mason have not given a concrete definition of

that time and the necessity of paying more attention to assess translation text seriously
and more critically.
Newmark (1995) also gives his own definition, however, similar to Hatim and
Mason, his focus is not really on what translation assessment actually is but rather on
the importance of translation evaluation as followed: "Translation criticism is an
essential link between translation theory and its practice." (Newmark, p184)
          

aspects:

            
measurement (as in the case of most academic instruments) or on reader response, interviews
a
              
study), formative (measuring progress and giving feedback during a course of study) or

Af        Whether our focus is on products,
performance or competence, we are essentially trying to determine degrees of
14
A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Texts (House, 1997: 108)
In this           

socially established category characterized in terms of occurrence of use, source and a
          
application of her new model enables us to examine a text on four different levels:
Function, Register and Language
According to Le Hung Tien (2006), the model of TQA has a clear linguistically
theoretical base and concrete, detailed steps. However, this model also requires
linguistic knowledge and high occupational skills of the critics and the criticism mainly
Field
Subject
matter and
social action
Tenor
Participant relationship

stance
+ social role relationship
+ social attitude
Mode
+ medium
(simple/complex)
+ participation
(simple/complex)
Individual textual function

transferred to the TL culture.
The third step is the heart of the critique. In this step, the critic has to choose the
most selective and representative examples of the achievements and weaknesses of the
translated version in comparison with the original text. Then he has to group them

17

essential to analyze how the translator has solved the particular problems of the SL
text.
In the fourth step, the critic will evaluate the referential and pragmatic accuracy
of the translation           
as a piece of writing, independently of its original. In the
first two criteria, besides evaluating the achievements of the translation, the critic has
to find out if there is any semantic deficits in the translation and what are the causes of
this. In the last criteria, he has to assess whether the translated version is written in a
natural manner, that is, neat, elegant and agreeable or not.
In the last step, especially in the case of literary works such as a poem, a story
or a novel, it is essential to assess the work's potential importance within the target
  


Again, according to Le Hung Tien(2006), although this model is not as clear and

terms of application. This is due to the fact that these steps are initiated from the
practical experiences of the translators. Moreover, it reflects the problems and the
concerns of the translators in the translation process; therefore, it is easy to be carried
out.
For this reason, in this thesis, the writer decides 
assessing the quality of the translated version of Chapter Two in    
