CAN THO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

***

ERRORS IN TRANSLATING ENGLISH
RELATIVE CLAUSES INTO VIETNAMESE BY
THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS
AT CANTHO UNIVERSITY
B.A Thesis
Supervisor

Researcher

Truong Nguyen Quynh Nhu, MA

Tran Thi Ngoc Vien
Student ID: 7062935
Class: NN0652A1
Course: 32

Can Tho, May 2010


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, I would like to express my great gratitude and appreciation to
my supervisor, Ms. Truong Nguyen Quynh Nhu who gave me valuable instructions,
advice and feedback on the drafts of chapters in my study. Actually, I could not finish
my thesis without her assistance. She always gave me encouragement and
recommended references me relating to translation field. Thank to these references, I

2.1 Translation……………………………………..…………………... 4
2.1.1 Definition of translation………………………………… 4
2.1.2 Translation process………………………….................... 5
2.1.3 Translation methods………………………….................. 6
2.1.4 Translation errors……………………………………….. 7
2.2 English Relative Clauses…………………………………................ 8
2.2.1 Types of relative clauses…………………………..........10
2.2.2 Punctuating relative clauses………………………….... 11
2.3 Related studies…………………………………………………… 11
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………... ……………....13
3.1 Research questions…………………………………….. …………13
3.2 Hypotheses…………………………………………….. …………13
3.3 Research design………………………………………….. ………13
3.4 Participants………………………………………………. ……….14
3.5 Research Instrument……………………………….......... ………14
3.6 Procedures………………………………………………….. …….14
3.6.1 Test development………………………………..……...14
3.6.2 Test administration..........…………………………… …16
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS……………………………………... ...……………17
4.1 Type 1 error: incomplete sentence…………………........... ………19
4.2 Type 2 error: misunderstanding of the original sentence…………. 20
4.3 Type 3 error: mistranslation………………………………………. 20
4.4 Type 4 error: addition………………………………...................... 21
4.5 Type 5 error: omission……………………………………………. 21
4.6 Type 6 error: word choice………………………………................ 22
4.7 Type 7 error: too freely translated………………………................ 22


4.8 Type 8 error: too literal, word for word translation……................. 23
4.9 Type 9 error: ambiguity………………………………….... ...……23

Table 4.1.5 Frequencies of type 5 error: omission
Table 4.1.6 Frequencies of type 6 error: word choice
Table 4.1.7 Frequencies of type 7 error: too freely translated
Table 4.1.8 Frequencies of type 8 error: too literal, word for word translation
Table 4.1.9 Frequencies of type 9 error: ambiguity
Table 4.1.10 Frequencies of type 10 error: grammatical structure.
Table 4.1.11 Frequencies of type 11 error: using "mà”
Figure 1 Nida‘s model of translation process


ABSTRACT
This thesis deals with the English – Vietnamese translation in terms of English
relative clauses. The research is conducted to investigate the errors that students made
in translating sentences with relative clauses, to come up with suggestion of some
ways to avoid these errors and to suggest that students should pay attention to
translating sentences with relative clauses. The participants of the study are 50
students from a course of Translation and Interpretation in Practice 2 at Can Tho
University. The data was collected from a translation test consisting of 20 singlesentence items. This is a descriptive, qualitative and quantitative research, in which
the data were treated by Statistics Package for the Social Science (SPSS). The
statistical results showed that students made all of the following translation errors: (1)
incomplete sentences, (2) misunderstanding of the original text, (3) mistranslation, (4)
addition, (5) omission, (6) word choice, (7) too freely translated, (8) too literal, wordfor-word translation, (9) ambiguity, (10) grammatical structure, (11) using ―mà‖.
Among these, 86% of the students made Type 2 error: misunderstanding of the
original text and 84% of the students made Type 10 error: grammatical structure. 14%
of the students made Type 9 error: ambiguity. On the basis of the findings, the
researcher proposed suggestions to help student translators to improve these errors.
The suggestions include: (1) clause splitting, (2) using compound sentences (3) using
noun apposition, (4) translating the relative clause as an adjective and (5) using
communicative translation.



INTRODUCTION
This chapter will present rationale and the aims of the research. Significance and
organizations of the research are also included in the chapter.

1.1 Rationale
Communicating with people from different countries is becoming more and more
important. Overcoming the language barrier is thus becoming one of the most critical
issues of current time. In this context, translation serves as a universal effective means
of communication (Newmark, 1988). No one can deny the importance of translation in
human‘s communication system at the present era of globalization, except those who
are interested in learning to use a foreign language rather than understanding the
intention of the communication through an apparent translation. However, it is
impossible for one to learn all of different languages in use because there are a great
number of languages in the world.
Translation is a demanding and challenging task; it requires the translator‘s
linguistic knowledge of both the source language and the target language, the
appropriate choice of translation method, professional translation skills, cross-culture
perspectives and translation evaluation skills (Newmark, 2001). Translation would be
a far more difficult task in the context in which source language and target language
do not share similar grammar and syntax. This is the case of English Vietnamese
translation.
In English grammar, relative clauses are very complex and have many principles
to follow. Also, both Celce-Murcia and Larsen Freeman (1999) state that the
acquisition of relative clauses are important because of their complex form and
function, high frequency in both spoken and written texts. Conversely, relative clauses
are non-existent in Vietnamese. There are even no specific concepts of relative clauses
in Vietnamese grammar. According to Nguyễn (1999), a relative clause is defined as
―một tổ hợp gồm hai trung tâm nối liền với nhau bằng quan hệ tường thuật”(p.148) (a
group consisting of two parts connected in terms of the descriptive relation).

target language (i.e., Vietnamese). Third, suggestions to improve the quality of
translation can serve as a useful reference for English students, as well as novice
translators.
1.4 Organization of the research
The thesis consists of 6 main chapters.
Chapter 1 Introduction provides the rationale, aims, hypothesis and organization
of the research.
Chapter 2 Literature review covers the theory of translation consisting of
definition of translation, translation process, translation methods and translation
errors. Besides, theory of English relative clauses and an overview of research studies
are also presented in this chapter.
Chapter 3 Research methodology reports the research method employed in my
study including the descriptions of research questions, research design, research
instruments, participants and procedures.
Chapter 4 Results presents summaries of data collected from the test and
analyzes the statistic results.
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Chapter 5 Discussions, Recommendations and Pedagogical implications discusses
findings to the two research questions. Suggestions to improve translation errors and
pedagogical implications also reported in this chapter.
Chapter 6 Limitations and Suggestions for further research addresses limitations
of the study and suggestions for the further research.

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CHAPTER 2


translation is adequate when equivalence is set up between two sets of forms from
different languages, which are sentences and structural adjustment in a sentence is
another important strategy for achieving equivalence. Similarly, Bell (1991) states that

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to shift from one language to another is, by definition, to alter the forms. The
alteration of form may mean changes of categories, word classes, and word orders.
In addition, structural adjustment that is also called shift (Catford, 1965) or
transposition (Vinay & Darbellnet, 1977) or alteration (Newmark, 1988) refers to a
change in the grammar from source language to target language (Newmark, 1988).
Structural adjustment, according to Nida (1964), has various purposes, including: 1) to
permit adjustment of the form of the message to the requirements of structure of the
receptor language, 2) to produce semantically equivalent structures, 3) to provide
equivalent stylistic appropriateness, and 4) to carry an equivalent communication load.
In summary, from these views, it can be concluded that translation is not simply
to rewrite the source language text into the target language text. In the process of
translation, such linguistic elements as lexicon communication situation, cultural
context and grammatical structure may affect the translation. Therefore, transferring
meaning in translation is an extremely important task. In order to produce a good
translation, translators should find appropriate equivalences ranging from
lexical level, sentence level to the level of discourse. Besides, correspondence in
meaning can be given the priority over correspondence in form (Munday,2001).
2.1.2 Translation process
Nida (1964) and Suryawinata (1982) consider the translation process as consisting of
three types of activity: 1) the analysis of the source language text, 2) the transfer of
content, meaning or message, and 3) the restructuring in the target language.
Figure 1 Nida‟s model of translation process


procedures. He writes that translation methods relate to whole texts but translation
procedures are used for sentences and the smaller units of language. He suggests 8
methods of translation as follows:
 Word-for-word translation: in which the SL word order is preserved and the
words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context.
 Literal translation: in which the SL grammatical constructions are converted to
their nearest TL equivalents, but the lexical words are again translated singly,
out of context.
 Faithful translation: attempting to produce the precise contextual meaning of
the original within the constraints of the TL grammatical structures.
 Semantic translation: differing from 'faithful translation' only in as far as it
must take more account of the aesthetic value of the SL text.
 Adaptation: being the freest form of translation, and is used mainly for plays
(comedies) and poetry; the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the
SL culture is converted to the TL culture and the text is rewritten.
 Free translation: producing the TL text without the style, form, or content of
the original.
 Idiomatic translation: reproducing the 'message' of the original but tends to
distort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where
these do not exist in the original.

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

Communicative translation: attempting 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
Among these translation methods, semantic and communicative are assumed as

Neubert & Shreve (1995) depict translation errors in the following statement:
―What rightly appears to be linguistically equivalent may very frequently qualify as
'translationally' nonequivalent. This is so because the complex demands on
adequacy in translation involve subject factors and transfer conventions that typically
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run counter to considerations about 'surface' linguistic equivalence.
This statement partially describes the complication and difficulty in defining and
identifying translation errors. Translation errors are different from errors that would
occur in spontaneous native language production. In translation, working with a
source text induces errors under the influence of source language morphology,
whereas in spontaneous second language production, native morphological system of
language learner tends to interfere with knowledge of the second language system. In
the case of second language learners, identifying translation errors is tricky as
translation errors may be mixed up with linguistic errors.
Gile (1992, as cited in Melis and Albir, 2001) assumes errors in translation
are made due to three main causes: lack of knowledge (extra-linguistic, in the SL and
the TL); lack of methodology; and lack of motivation. However, how to classify
translation errors remains controversial for there is no unified framework of error
classification until now.
Newmark (1995) simply classifies most of the ‗mistakes‘ into two types:
referential and linguistic. In his classification, referential mistakes refer to all mistakes
relating to facts or information in the real world. Linguistic mistakes, on the other
hand, result from the translator‘s lack of proficiency in the foreign language.
Linguistic mistakes include words, collocations, and idioms.
Meanwhile, American Translation Association (ATA) suggests a list of 22 types
of errors that should be used as criteria for marking errors and evaluating work done
by professional translators:
1) Incomplete passage, 2) Illegible handwriting, 3) Misunderstanding of the original

& Larsen Freeman, 1999). An adjective clause is introduced or marked by a relative
pronoun, which can function as the subject, direct object, indirect object, object of the
preposition, predicate noun or possessive determiner of the adjective clause and has
coreference to the antecedent (Quirk et al., 1985). Celce-Mucia and Larsen-Freemen
(1999) call this ―relative pronoun substitution or relativization‖. Relative pronouns
are critical to the formation and usage of relative clauses. Quirk et al. (1985) define
relative pronouns as ―having the double role of referring to the antecedent (which
determines the gender selection, e.g. who/which) and of functioning as all of, or part
of, an element in the relative clause (which determines the case form for those items
that have case distinction, e.g. who/whom.)‖
Quirk et al. (1985) also divide relative pronouns into two series:
 wh-pronouns: who, whom, whose, which. This series contrasts between people
(who) and things (which). It also contrasts case depending on the function in
the clause: subject (who), object and object of a preposition (whom), and
possession (whose).
 that and zero (deletion or omission of the relative pronoun). That, omission of a
relative pronoun, and which do not contrast number or between people and
things.
I‟d like to see the car [which, that, Ø] you bought last week

Quirk et al. (1985) summarizes the functions of the relative pronouns as well as the
forms and uses of the two series in the following table

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Table 2.2 The functions, forms, uses of the relative pronouns
Function in Relative Human
Clause
Subject Noun Phrase

Restrictive relative clauses provide a post modifier, which is essential for the
identification of the antecedent. If it were omitted, the addressee might well ask
―which girl?‖ Such clauses are called ‗restrictive‘ because they restrict the referent of
the antecedent noun. The following is an example of restrictive relative clauses:
The girl that you met yesterday is my younger sister. (Garnant, 1991)
2.2.1.2 Non-restrictive relative clauses
The relative clauses give additional information, which is not essential for the
identification of the NP. The referent is already identifiable on other grounds. Such
classes are called ‗non-restrictive‘. Non-restrictive relative clauses are typically
(though not necessarily) used with nouns with an anaphoric definite article, nouns
with (contextually) unique referents, and proper nouns. The example below illustrates
the case:
The Prime Minister, who is usually very calm and self-assured, seemed to be
embarrassed on that occasion. (Garnant, 1991)

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2.2.2 Punctuating relative clauses
English learners find it difficult to decide when to use a comma before a relative
clause and when this is unnecessary, but the rule is really rather simple.
If a relative clause defines or identifies the noun it modifies, no comma is
required as in the following sentence:
The woman who is sitting next to me wants to ask a question.

In this sentence, the clause who is sitting next to me identifies a particular woman
(the one sitting next to me).
If the relative clause adds additional information or facts about the noun, then the
clause must be set off from the rest of the sentence by commas.
2.3 Related studies

of translation, translation process, translation methods and translation errors. Besides,
theory of English relative clauses and three related studies were also presented in the
chapter.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, details of how the study was conducted are described. The description aims
to prove the appropriateness of the research method used and the reliability and the validity
of the study‟s findings. There are five parts in this chapter: research questions, research
design, participants, research instruments, and procedure.

3.1 Research questions
In this research the researcher investigate and answer two questions:
1. Do third-year English majors make errors in translating English relative clauses
into Vietnamese?
2. What types of translation error are made by these students?

3.2 Hypotheses
Basing on the related literature and the research questions, the researcher
hypothesized that (1) the third-year English majors at Can Tho University would make
errors in translation of sentences with English relative clauses into Vietnamese and (2)
these errors would include syntactic structures (i.e., relative clauses), the structure and
function of relative clauses, naturalness (i.e., lexical inadequacies) and
misinterpretations.
3.3 Research design
In this study, the researcher conducted two research activities: (a) designing a

Shohamy, 2000). The data gained from the test responses of 50 participants were
analyzed using descriptive statistics in terms of frequencies to investigate how often
certain types of translation errors occur basing on counting the number of translation
error occurrences.
3.6 Procedure
3.6.1 Test development
Test structure
The translation test was designed with 20 single items that require students to
translate these sentences from English into Vietnamese. All of 20 items contained
relative clauses. In particular, there were 11 items (1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16,
17) with restrictive relative clauses and 9 items with non-restrictive relative clauses (4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 18, 19, 20). They were randomly ordered in the test.
The testing items were chosen from several Grammar reference books which are
available in CTU Learning Resource Centre. To be specific, the testing items were
chosen based on three criteria: (a) They were presented in the chapter of relative
clauses in the Grammar reference books, (b) They contain 8 types of Relative
Clauses: that, who, whom, whose, which, where, when, and why and (c) They have
reliable resources and illustrated in literature review (see Appendix 1 for testing).
Twenty items were categorized into eleven clusters of designed aspects (partly
adapted from American Translation Association (ATA) and Newmark, 1995): (1)
incomplete sentences, (2) misunderstanding of the original text, (3) mistranslation, (4)
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addition, (5) omission, (6) word choice, (7) too freely translated, (8) too literal, wordfor-word translation, (9) ambiguity, (10) grammatical structure, (11) using ―mà”(see
Appendix 1 for the translation test).
Scoring method
Determining procedures for scoring the responses is the final step in the test
development. The responses were scored either right or wrong (i.e., right/wrong
scoring) or in terms of degrees of correctness (i.e., partial credit scoring). Instead, the

identifying and marking errors in the study.
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3.6.2 Test administration

With the assistance of the instructor of Translation and Interpretation in Practice 2,
the translation test was administered in a formal classroom testing. In order for test
taker to have opportunities to perform at their best, I provided them with clear
instructions on the test to let them know exactly what they are expected to do before
they did the test (Bachman& Palmer, 1997). The instructions informed test takers of:
(a) the purposes of the test (i.e. to collect data on errors in translating sentences with
relative clauses, (b) the exact nature of the testing procedure and the testing task (i.e.,
sentence translation), (c) how they were responded to the task, (d) what time limit was
allowed, (e) how their responses were evaluated.
The test lasted approximately 30 minutes. The test responses were then collected
on time and served as the raw data in the study.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS
This chapter reports summary of data collected from the test responses and analysis of
statistical frequencies of errors on translation of sentences with relative clauses.

An English – Vietnamese translation test was delivered to 50 participants; 50 test
responses were collected for data analysis. Each response was carefully studied to
identify the participants‘ errors in translating sentences with relative clauses.

language. For example, a term in the translated sentences might be much
more general or more specific than the original term.
something is inserted that is not clearly expressed in the original sentences.
The tendency to insert ―clarifying‖ material should generally be resisted.
something essential to the meaning is left out. It is permissible to shorten the
ponderous modes of expression that are common in some source sentences,
so long as the meaning does not suffer.

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word choice

in more general texts, the participants might not have selected the most
appropriate word among several that have similar (but not identical)
meanings. Graders will not choose the right word for the participants. Even if
both options are correct, an error will be marked.
Too
freely participants are asked to translate the meaning and intent of the source
translated
sentences, not to rewrite it or improve upon it. The grader will carefully
compare the translation to the source sentences. If a ―creative‖ rendition
changes the meaning, an error will be marked. If recasting a sentence—i.e.,
altering the order of its major elements—destroys the flow, changes the
emphasis, or obscures the author‘s intent, an error may be marked.
too literal,
translations that follow the source sentences exactly may result in awkward,
word-for-word
often incorrect renditions. Translate literally when it works, but not at the
translation