STRATEGIES TO TRANSLATE ENGLISH EXCLAMATIONS INTO VIETNAMESE

Abstract

The thesis is conducted with the hope of figuring out the strategies which are normally used by the Vietnamese translators under investigation to translate English exclamations into Vietnamese, and recommendating some advisable tactics to translate exclamations between the two languages. The data for analysis in this study are principally gathered from the English classical novels by the prominent authors in the 19th century and the Vietnamese translated versions of those works. Likewise, the forms of exclamations in both English as the source language and Vietnamese as the target language are cited, making the base for the data samples of exclamatory expressions to be sorted out into dissimilar categories and sub-categories. The frame for analysing the data is of the fundamental theory of equivalence through translation strategies by the prestigious linguists of translation studies. In particular, the remarkable strategies of translation are significantly identified in the literature review – namely, “word-for-word” vesus “sense-for-sense” translations; translation shifts by Catford; direct and oblique translation by Vinay and Darbelnet; formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence by Nida and Taber; and equivalence at various levels by Mona Baker. Among those translation strategies, the data are mainly analysed under the translation theory of equivalence by Mona Baker (1992). Meanwhile, previous studies on English exclamations both in Vietnam and abroad are briefly presented for the sake of considering well-studied aspects of exclamations in the two languages. Of course, the notion of translation as intercultural communication is one of the crucial considerations. As a result, the findings describe translation by paraphrasing as the technique that the Vietnamese translators under investigation frequently make use of to transfer the illocutionary forces of the speakers’ emotions and feelings. Apart from that, the study recommends making a reference to Vietnamese interjections, particles, and adverbs in translation of exclamatory utterances from English into Vietnamese, in order to find the translated variants more natural and affecting.