HE VIETNAMESE “SẼ” AND ITS EQUIVALENTS IN THE TRANSLATED ENGLISH TEXTS OF ‘SỐ ĐỎ’ BY VŨ TRỌNG PHỤNG AND ‘NỖI BUỒN CHIẾN TRANH’ BY BẢO NINH

Abstract

The expression of future is a common concept in human life. However, in a multitude of human languages and their closely related cultures, the actual expressions of future are not exactly the same. The most common expression of future in the Vietnamese language is sẽ, which simply refers to an event or action that is expected to happen in the future. Its widely accepted equivalent in the English language is will the two main meanings of which are future with intention and future with prediction. To make the issue a bit more complicated, would or be going to replaces will on particular contexts. The study done for and reported in this M.A. thesis analyzes the expressions of future in the Vietnamese clauses with or without sẽ via the two literary texts named ‘Số đỏ’ by Vũ Trọng Phụng (1936) and ‘Nỗi buồn chiến tranh’ by Bảo Ninh (1990). It then compares and contrasts these expressions with those in the two English translations respectively named ‘Dumb Luck’ by Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm (2002) and ‘The Sorrow of War’ by Phan Thanh Hảo (1994). The study’s results indicate that the Vietnamese sẽ can be translated as either will or would, based on specific contexts. Likewise, the source text clauses that do not include sẽ can certainly convey the future meaning, and be translated by the employment of either will, would or be going to. This depends on the specific elements of the source text clauses. In spite of its limited data, this study hopefully contributes something to the current Vietnamese-English corpus, as far as the expressions of future are concerned. Although this study is only involved in translation studies, its findings does assist in introducing to the world the Vietnamese language as well as the culture and literature of the people who have been using it as their mother tongue