291 macro-level translation errors, which referred to those regarding cohesion, coherence and style, were found in students‟ papers. Chart 4.7 compares the proportions of translation error types at macro level.
42%
33%
25%
Macro-level translation errors
Cohesion errors Coherence errors Style errors
Chart 4.7 Proportion of macro-level translation errors
Errors of cohesion accounted for 42% (=122 errors). Cohesion, which is the system of lexical, grammatical, and other correspondence, produces formal connections between different parts of a text. The lack of using cohesion devices and week grammatical constructions were causes of those errors. Thus, those ones made the text a bit hard to follow. To illustrate this point, the following example is extracted.
Student 22’s translation (in test 3)
“This forum is evaluated particularly important, because it took place in the context of the European countries are strongly affected by the world financial crisis. This is seen as an opportunity for Vietnam businessman overseas exchanges and exchange of experiences.”
All of the students did not use cohesion devices (also, additionally, etc.) to connect the two sentences. To make the two sentences more cohesive, the translated could be revised as follows “This event was considered particularly significant due to the fact that it took place in the context of European countries being under the great impact of the global financial development depression. Also, it was regarded as an
opportunity for overseas Vietnamese business people to meet and to swap experiences with one another.”
In comparison with cohesion, coherence accounted for more than one third of the total (=97 errors). As mentioned before, coherence refers to the connection of ideas at the idea level. However, students did not do that well in translation texts, especially in the translation text number five. To illustrate this type of error, the students‟ translation is extracted as below.
Students’ translation
“[1] (NLĐ) Date 12 June at Ho Chi Minh city, ACE Insurance company (members of ACE Insurance Group) officially launched the product “Global Travel Insurance” and signed a cooperation contract with Amadeus Viet Nam.
[2] Accordingly, ACE Insurance Company will provide travel insurance product through deputation of Amadeus Viet Nam, TransViet Group and travel agency network around the globe are using the system to sell the tickets of Amadeus.
[3] This a cooperation will bring to our customers are travel insurance program with increase benefits, such as medical support services at competitive prices.
[4] ACE Travel Insurance provides insurance scope on the globe and support passenger in the event of an emergency such as accident, sickness, loss of documents or luggage when traveling…”
As we can see from students‟ translation, the information conveyed in the first sentence is about “Global Travel Insurance” and “a cooperation contract”.
Clearly, the fourth sentence contains ideas that can make that phrase “Global Travel Insurance” more clearly in the first one. Also, the third sentence includes information that supports for “a cooperation contract”. In order to make the translation text more coherent, the first and fourth sentences could be linked by using relative clause to postmodify “Global Travel Insurance”. Then the information about “a cooperation contract” in the first sentence is moved to the third one. Relative clause and cohesion device can be used to link the ideas from the
two sentences. Finally, the second sentence can be divided into two sentences to express ideas more clearly. The revised version illustrates this point clearly.
“A product (namely) viz “Global Travel Insurance”, which provides insurance worldwide and passengers with support in emergencies such as accidents, illness, loss of papers and luggage on their travel, was officially launched by ACE- an affiliated company of ACE Insurance Group - in HCM City on June 12.
In addition, a cooperation contract between ACE and Amadeus VN that offers travel insurance program and additional benefits like health support service at competitive prices to the client was signed.
Accordingly, ACE‟s insurance products are required to be provided via the representative of Amadeus in VN.
Similarly, Amadeus‟ air ticket-booking system has been used by Transviet and its worldwide travel agency network.”
As can be seen from the revised version, the order of four sentences in this text was changed to make the information and ideas logically organized. Students might not carefully analyze the source text before translating. Additionally, they used word-for-word translation method. For those reasons, students did not attempt to overcome source language text‟s defects in order to make their translation more natural and accurate.
The last error type at macro level, which occupied one fourth of total (=72 errors), was style. As mentioned before, distinctive text types have different style.
In this study, errors related to style arose when there were mismatches between the source text‟s style and target text‟s one. There were six translation tests which were in form of flyer, email, and article. Generally speaking, flyer and email belong to operative text type and article belongs to informative text type. As mentioned in chapter two, operative text type is the type which aims to appeal or persuade the reader or receiver of the text to act in certain way. This text type is appellative- focused. Therefore, translation methods applied in this text type should be adaptive
and equivalent effect to closely preserve positive encouragement and the effectiveness of the translated original text. Firstly, for the flyer, it aims to promote the Japan tour, to get people excited about it and to call them to book. Therefore, students should use catchy words, keep those in the active voice and avoid passive voice. Secondly, a business email, which is to persuade a customer to choose one of writer‟s suggestions. Thus, the email should be professional and convincing. Also, sentences in translated version should be short and simple. Finally, once again, as discussed in chapter two, informative text type which simply conveys facts such as information, knowledge, opinions, facts. This text type is mainly focused in the content of topic of communication. In addition, passive voice is usually used. The language dimension applied to transmit the information is logical or referential.
Articles in translation tests are to officially inform readers about some events;
therefore, language used in those articles must be formal and understandable. In addition, translators should avoid any language that is overly positive or negative or statements that could be construed as support or criticism. Besides, ideas and events should be arranged chronologically and logically. Passive voice should be used to emphasize facts and events. Translation methods applied in this type of text are Nida‟s mix of formal-dynamic equivalence approach, and Newmark‟s communicative approach. However, students failed to follow those text styles in their translation. For example, when beginning the email, students did not use the appropriate way of thanking, they tended to write “We thank you for” instead of
“Thanks for”/ “I would like to express my sincere thanks for”/ “I am deeply grateful for”. Also, other common errors when translating email were about the agreement of salutation and sign off. For example, when translating “Trân trọng.”
with name known, students tended to use “Respect” or “Yours faithfully” instead of
“Yours sincerely”. A possible explanation for this might be that student translators did not have full understanding of text type of the source text, which might be the result of failing to analyze the source text or the lack of the knowledge of text types.
As a result, students choose inappropriate translation methods for each text type.
The result suggests that to enhance translation quality, it is necessary for translators to fully grasp the knowledge of text types and text-type oriented translation approach.
Average errors per texts
The chart 4.8 illustrates the average errors per texts. The results, as shown in the chart, indicate that the percentage of errors in test 6 was the highest one (896/3378, 27%). The next one was text 5 which accounted for 22% (=743 errors).
Text 4 came second with 17% (=559 errors). Text 3 presented 14% (477 errors).
Following this, text 2 occupied 12% (=427 errors). Finally, the percentage of errors in text 1 was only 8% (=276 errors). The results also revealed that students‟
translation failed to meet Pham Vu Phi Ho‟s 7-ifs (2016). Text type and style of translated version were in Vietnamese-English not in English.
Remarkably, from the data, it should be carefully noted that article text type with higher percentages of students‟ errors were difficult text type for students to translate. The number of errors in article text type is much higher than that of email and flyer owing to level of its difficulty. Those difficulties caused by a large number of vocabulary and long sentences and text style. The lack of wide knowledge regarding vocabulary and grammatical structure made students feel hard to translate this type of text. Besides, they were confused when dealing with long sentences because they did not carefully analyze source texts. More importantly, students lacked knowledge about text type and translation method for each one. Therefore, they used word-for-word translation for all six translation tests.
8%
12%
14%
22% 17%
27%
Average errors per texts
Text 1 (Flyer) Text 2 (Email) Text 3 (Article) Text 4 (Article) Text 5 (Article) Text 6 (Article)
Chart 4.8 Average errors per texts