translation performance was the result of translation course at DNTU not the combination of DNTU and somewhere else.
Next, question number three was put to know what students thought about
findings from the response to this question, it is a positive sign that 80% the respondents gave a positive answer. This proved that they can properly evaluate the significance of translation. They explained that good translation skills could help them to get a good job since nowadays most of jobs required good English translation skills. Specially, student 1 commented that with the help of translation he quickly gained the knowledge and expanded his vocabulary bank. This is good news because once students recognize the importance of translation; they could have motivation for learning it. Besides, two students denied the important role of translation. Interestingly, student 30 said that according to his opinion, English would be widely popular so that everyone would use English to communicate every day in the near future, which is the reason why it was not necessary to translate from Vietnamese into English. Another interviewee, student 15 explained that she did not like jobs related to translation out of its terrible bore. In general, the majority of participants thought that Vietnamese-English translation played a central role in their future careers.
Question four asked for the students‟ interest towards the translation subject.
Noticeably, nine out of ten students reported that they did not find this subject interesting. Also, they admitted that they even did not like it. One student said that Vietnamese-English translation was actually his nightmare. Four students confessed that they honestly attended this class simply because it was mandatory. Particularly, when the researcher asked for the reason, she got the same answer that was how boring it was for them to go to class, get the source texts which were usually articles, translate then and then copy the teacher's suggested versions. When asked whether they tried to translate all the source texts or not, 80% of the respondents told that they usually translated some easy sentences then waited until the teacher gave her the suggested version and copied it. Remarkably, some students admitted falling asleep all the time before waking to copy the teacher's suggested version. On the contrary, only one out of ten students shared that translation was an interesting
from Vietnamese into English accurately, which was just like solving a problem that him feel excited when finished at the same time. All in all, students‟ attitude towards the translation subject came both positive and negative reactions from respondents, of which negative attitude (90%) were outnumbered than positive ones.
The result is not compatible with the result of question two. The reason of that might be related to teaching and learning activities in classroom. This finding might explain why students had translation performance which was not as satisfactory as expected notwithstanding their awareness of significance of translation.
Question number five aimed to collect information concerning common difficulties in Vietnamese-English translation. The result showed that common problems, which students encountered when translating, were vocabulary and grammar. For example, student 22 reported that to find and use a correct word for the context of a text was the most challenging part in translating any text from Vietnamese into English due to his lack of knowledge of language to express himself in English. Additionally, the student 8 confessed that how ashamed she felt to admit that she always had troubles with using grammatical structures correctly although she had been learing grammar for more than ten years. Similarly, student 17 reported that the reason for the difficulties was because of the lack of technical terms and poor grammar despite the fact that he had already learnt those terms from the teacher. Also, he commented that names of some organizations are too long for him to translate into English. Another difficulty mentioned by students were text style, which were raised in question six. According to eight out of ten students, the most difficult type text to translate is newspaper article. The students explained that those articles included many technical terms, long names of organizations, long sentences. In addition, in their opinion, knowledge of the text topic could help them translate the text easier. General speaking, most of the students faced with problems related to vocabulary, grammar and expression style. The reasons of those difficulties are the lack of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, culture and the topic
To examine students‟ attitude towards the necessity of reading the whole text before translating, question seven were designed. As a result, nine students, accounting for 90%, agreed and did it because they found that it was easier to translate the text when they understood and got the main ideas of the text. Also, they believed that this step helped them know context of the text and choose the right method to translate. This proved that students understood that reading the whole text would benefit them. Differently, student 11 stated that she has never read the whole text before translating because it was easier to translate sentence by sentence without reading the whole text before. She gave the interestingly explanation that if she read the whole text, she would be despondent when she saw so many new words, which usually made her give up so she thought it was better for her to start to translate without reading the whole text. On the whole, most of students read the whole text before translating. Nevertheless, results from translation tests showed that errors was posed owing to the lack of understanding the source text. Therefore, students did not carefully read the source text and analyzed it.
Finally, question 8 aimed to find out how often the students practice translation outside class because practice is an indispensable factor in translation improving progress. The pattern of the responses displays that only two out of ten participants practiced Vietnamese-English translation twice a week outside class while eight students said that translation was quite boring, thus they did not want to deal with it outside class. It appears so lucid that the number of the students who frequently practice translation is low. Others only practice as required. Moreover, it seems that practicing twice a week is not enough. This is because students‟
awareness of the importance of self-practice in translation is insufficient. According to Thornbury (2002), “practice makes perfect”. Also, Pham Vu Phi Ho (2016) claims that “if you want to translate well, practice it frequently”. Thus students could not improve their translation if they lack of frequent translation practice.
therefore, the more students practice translation, the more they enhance problem- solving skills which can aid students in dealing with difficulties in translation. In brief, a minority of participants (20%) indicated that they practiced translation at home. This result was quite consistent with poor translation performance of those students in six translation tests.
Generally, although most of the students were aware of the crucial role of translation in their future careers, they did not really interest it. Therefore, they just translated several easy sentences then waited to copy the teacher‟s suggested version. Also, the majority of them did not practice translation at home. Finally, most of the students encountered problems related to vocabulary, grammar and expression style owing to the lack of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, culture and the topic of the texts.