i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

TRAN THUY HANG
A STUDY ON THE TRANSLATION
OF ADVERBS IN “HARRY POTTER AND THE
PHILOSOPHER’S STONE”
FROM ENGLISH INTO VIETNAMESE
(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC CHUYỂN ĐỔI CÁC TRẠNG TỪ TRONG TÁC
PHẨM “HARRY POTTER VÀ HÒN ĐÁ PHÙ THỦY” VỀ TƢƠNG
ĐƢƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)
M.A. THESIS
Field: English Language
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van

HANOI - 2013
ii DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been
copied or reproduced by me from any other‟s work without
acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under
strict guidance of my supervisor.
Hanoi, 20 - 11 - 2013

complete the current paper.
I am particularly grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân, who
generously spent his precious time on insightful guidance and earnest help all
through the searching, analysis and paper-writing stages, and kindly sent his
valuable and detailed comments on it.
My sincere thanks also go to Dean and all the lecturers at Faculty of Graduate
Studies for their constructive ideas and assistance.
I surely would express my sincere thanks to all friends and workmates who
have offered their helping hands whenever I am in need of help. I‟m so
grateful to their understanding of my improper appeal for their aid and their
kindness towards the inconveniency I have often put to them.
To my fiancé, thank you for always having faith in me, for tolerating my
temper and being extremely supportive in every way possible. To my dear
friends, Hạnh and Ng. Hạnh, you have been a rich source of encouragement
and love for me, I am truly grateful to have all of you in my life.
Finally, I am deeply indebted my parents for their great encouragement and
support during my study at Hanoi Open University. Thank you for the great
love and pray in my life.
Trần Thúy Hằng
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii
LIST OF TABLES viii

CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND PROCEDURE 39
2.1. Aims of the Research 39
2.2. Research Design 39
2.3. Method of Research 40
2.3.1. Data Source 40
2.3.2. Method and Technique of Collecting and Analyzing Data 41
2.4. Research Procedures 42
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 44
3.1. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of
Manner in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 45
3.1.1. Adverbs of manner translated as adjective + verb into the TL 45
3.1.2. Adverbs of manner translated as verb into the TL 46
3.1.3. Adverbs of manner translated as phrases into the TL 47
3.1.4. Adverbs of manner are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 48
3.2. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of
Frequency in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 50
3.2.1. Adverbs of frequency translated as adverbs of frequency into the TL 50
3.2.2. Adverbs of frequency are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 51
3.3. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of Place
in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 53
3.3.1. Adverbs of place translated as phrases into the TL 53
3.3.2. Adverbs of place translated as adverbs of place into the TL 54
3.4. The Strategies used in English-Vietnamese Translation of Adverbs of Time in
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” 55
3.4.1. Adverbs of time translated as Noun into the TL 56
3.4.2. Adverbs of time translated as adverbs of time into the TL 57
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3.4.3. Adverbs of time are not translated (zero translation) into the TL 58
3.5.1. Adverbs of degree translated as adverbs of degree into the TL 60

V
Verb

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating
adverb of manner
Table 3.2: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating
adverb of frequency
Table 3.3: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating
adverb of place
Table 3.4: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating
adverb of time
Table 3.5: The tokens and percentage of strategies used in translating
adverb of degree

1

PART I: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

1. Rationale of the study
Words are ubiquitous. In a literate society words are everywhere and
unavoidable. Every day people read, write, speak, and hear words. Words can
be readily found in books and magazines. They can also be found plastered
on signs, engraved on buildings, scrawled on food, printed on clothing, and
they often even reside on the tips of our tongues. Obviously, ideas, notions
and feelings are actually universal but the way we describe them in different
languages is very unique. Therefore, translation plays a crucial role in

specifically, the adverbs in this book are a challenge for the translator. This
novel was chosen to be the object of the present study also because it was
published rather recently, in 1997, and thus is can be regarded as a very good
example of popular literature of the end of the 20
th
century. Furthermore, the
novel has provoked many controversial thoughts and lively discussion among
its readers and in the media because of its rather delicate issues and themes
Besides, the novel contains many data that are relevant with the problem
discussed and analyzed in this paper.
Because of reasons mentioned above, my thesis is entitled “A Study on The
Translation of Adverbs in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” from
English into Vietnamese”. I hope this thesis will help students and all
concerned understand and translate English adverbs more easily.

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2. Aims of the study
The aim of the research is to shed light on
 To find out the types of adverbs occurring in the English novel
 To describe how adverbs in the SL novel are translated into the TL
novel.
 To find out the procedure and strategy used in the process of
translation.

3. Research questions
Consequently, three questions will be investigated:
1. How are adverbs in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s stone”
translated from English into Vietnamese?
2. What procedures and strategies are used in the process of

preliminaries on the translation theory, the definitions and classification
of adverbs in English and Vietnamese.
Chapter Two includes an overview of the data as well as the
methodology that were used in analyzing the translation of adverbs in
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” by J.K. Rowling, and how
they are collected and investigated.
Chapter Three reports the results of the study and presents
some discussion of the major findings. The results will be presented based
on the research questions that guide the current study.

5

Part 3: Conclusion consists of the conclusion of the whole
study, the implications for the translation and for the teaching and
learning. Limitations in doing the research and suggestions for further
studies are also mentioned in this chapter.
actually employed in translating.
7

About adverb and adverbial in English and Vietnamese, Võ Huỳnh Mai
(1973) Bàn thêm về phạm vi của trạng ngữ trong tiếng Việt focuses on the
study on function of adverb in Vietnamese.
Nguyễn Hồng Cổn (2001) Về vấn đề tương đương trong dịch thuật focuces
on how to translate single words in English into Vietnamese effectively.
Nguyễn Ngọc Toàn (MA Thesis, 2010) Khảo sát thuật ngữ kinh tế trong
Văn kiện Đại hội Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam và sự chuyển dịch tương ứng
sang tiếng Anh (từ văn kiện Đại Hội IX - X ) investigates economic terms
used in the ninth and tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of
Vietnam and their equivalence in English.
Hà Thành Chung (MA thesis, 2007) Cú phân từ định ngữ, trạng ngữ tiếng
Anh và các kết cấu tương đương trong tiếng Việt is a contrastive study of
commonly-used adverb and adverbial in English and Vietnamese.
In brief, many researches dealing with translation from English into
Vietnamese in different aspects but no one focus on the translation of
adverbs and adverbial. On doing this research, the writer has followed the
viewpoint of linguistics in doing an investigation into common ways for
translating adverbs from English into Vietnamese and found out the main
approaches taken by translators in translating adverbs from English into
Vietnamese.
1. 2. Theoretical Background
1.2.1. Theory of Word
1.2.2.1. Word in English
a. Word Meaning
As we all know, communication becomes more and more a crucial
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beautiful, gentle, compassionate, sensitive, and hard-working.
iii. Stylistic meaning
Stylistic meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the social
circumstances of its use. In this style of meaning, a word can be recognized
by the typical dimensions: Individuality (the language of Mr X, of Mrs Y,
and so on); Dialect (the language of a geographical region or of a social
class); Time (the language of the eighteen century, etc); Style (the language
of poetry, the language of journalism, and so forth); Singularity (the style of
Dickens, of Hemingway, etc ).
iv. Affective meaning
According to Leech (1977) affective meaning is often explicitly conveyed
through the denotative or connotative content of the words used. He also
claims that affective meaning is largely a parasitic category in the sense that
to express our emotions we rely upon the mediation of other categories of
meaning – denotative, connotative, or stylistic.
v. Reflected meaning
Reflected meaning is the meaning which arises in case of multiple
conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to
another sense.
vi. Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires on account
of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment. For
example: pretty and handsome share common ground in the meaning of
good-looking, but may be distinguished by the range of nouns with which
they are likely to co-occur or collocate: pretty girl, boy, flower, garden, etc.
and handsome boy, man, car, vessel, etc.
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vii. Thematic meaning
Thematic meaning is what communicated by the way in which the

For example: Good/Bad; Fast/Slow are some examples of antonym.
1.2.2. Adverbs in English
1.2.2.1. Grammatical Definitions of Adverbs
Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2010) defines adverb as a word that
adds more information about place, time, manner, cause or degree to a verb,
an adjective, a phrase or another adverb.
According to Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2009)
adverb is a word used for describing a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a
whole sentence. Adverbs in English often consist of an adjective with '-ly'
added, for example quickly, mainly, and cheerfully.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2010) gives the definition of
adverb as a word that adds to the meaning of a verb, an adjective, another
adverb, or a whole sentence, such as slowly in He ran slowly, very in It's very
hot, or naturally in Naturally, we want you to come.
New World Encyclopedia (2013): An adverb is a part of speech. Adverb refers
to any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives
(including numbers), clauses, sentences and other adverbs, except for nouns;
modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives.
Many different kinds of word are called adverbs. We can usually recognize an
adverb by its types, functions, form, and position.
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1.2.2.2. Form of Adverbs
Many adverbs are formed from adjectives and end in -ly.
 The basic rule is that -ly is added to the end of the adjective:

Adjective
Adverb
quick
quickly

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1.2.2.3. Functions of Adverbs
Adverbs are considered a part of speech in traditional English grammar and
are still included as a part of speech in grammar taught in schools and used in
dictionaries. However, modern grammarians recognize that words
traditionally grouped together as adverbs serve a number of different
functions.
Adverbs of manner tell us how something happens. They are usually
placed after the main verb or after the object.
She moved slowly and spoke quietly.
Adverbs of place tell us where something happens.
She has lived on the island all her life.
She still lives there now.
Adverbs of frequency tell how often or how frequently something
happens.
She takes the boat to the mainland every day.
She often goes by herself.
Adverbs of time tell us when an action happened, but also for how
long, and how often.
She tries to get back before dark.
It's starting to get dark now.
She finished her tea first.
She left early.
Adverbs of degree tell us about the intensity or degree of an action, an
adjective or another adverb.
She doesn‟t quite know what she‟ll do after university.
This coffee is too hot.
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Adverb modifies the adjective:
Eg:
Cô ấy rất xinh đẹp.
Adverb modifies the adverb:
Eg:
Anh ta lái xe rất nhanh.
Tiến độ làm thế này thì quá chậm rồi!
Adverb modifies the noun:
Eg:
Một mũi tên trúng nhiều đích.
There are many types of adverbs in Vietnamese:
 Adverb of manner
 Adverb of time
 Adverb of place
 Adverb of quantity
 Adverb of order
 Adverb of condition
 Adverb of opposition
 Adverb of continuation
 Adverb of limitation
 Adverb of interrogation
 Adverb of affirmation
 Adverb of doubt

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1.2.3.1 Function of Vietnamese Adverbs
As stated previously, adverbs can modify themselves, adjectives, verbs and
even nouns.


Eg:
Cháu rất thích ăn kẹo ông à.
- Adverb quá to emphasize a condition beyond one‟s endurance.
Eg:
Bài toán này quá khó với học sinh lớp ba.
- Adverbs of condition or opposition always stand before the verb, or before
the statement.
Eg:
Dầu ai nói ngả nói nghiêng.
Lòng ta vẫn vững như kiềng ba chân.
- Adverbs come after the verbs
Most adverbs or adverbials of direction are after the verb: Adverbs of
directions using: ra, vào, lên, xuống, qua, lại, …
Eg: Cả lớp đi ra sân tập thể dục nào.
Cô giáo vừa bước vào thì cả lớp im bặt lại.
Chúng tôi đi xuống sườn dốc, nhìn lại thấy mình đã leo được một đoạn
khá dài.

d. Adverb modifying noun
Adverbs sometimes modify nouns. They go directly with nouns.
Eg:
Lúc ấy đã chiến tranh lại thiên tai, người dân Việt vô cùng khốn khổ.