Tài liệu The quality of google translate’svietnamese translations of english idioms with words denoting time

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY VÕ MỸ THƯ THE QUALITY OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE'S VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONS OF ENGLISH IDIOMS WITH WORDS DENOTING TIME Field: English Linguistics Code: 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: Dr. Le Nhan Thanh BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN VÕ MỸ THƯ CHẤT LƯỢNG DỊCH CÁC THÀNH NGỮ CHỨA TỪ •• CHỈ THỜI GIAN TỪ TIẾNG ANH SANG TIẾNG VIỆT CỦA GOOGLE TRANSLATE Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS. LÊ NHÂN THÀNH i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby confirm that the thesis entitled “The quality of Google Translate's Vietnamese translations of English idioms with words denoting time” is the result of my work except for the reference mentioned in the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other institutions. Quy Nhon, October,2020 Performer Võ Mỹ Thư ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The fulfillment of this thesis is thanks to the encouragement and efforts of many people to whom I would like to pay my gratitude to. First and foremost, I would like to sincerely express my innermost gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Le Nhan Thanh, who I am deeply indebted for the continuous support, patience, immense motivation, and valuable guidance to accomplish this work. Without his persistent help, this study could not have been possible. The knowledge and experience gained from doing the MA course have been priceless to my studying and career. Besides, I wish to express my special thanks to all the lecturers who are in charge of training for the 21st MA course at Quy Nhon University for having transmitted immense knowledge and creating a friendly and constructive environment during the course. I am also extremely thankful to my close friends and colleagues who always give encouragement and energy to overcome difficulties during the time I attended the MA course. Last but not least, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my warmhearted family members for their love, care, and support which are sources of motivation for me to attempt to complete this thesis. ABSTRACT Google Translate is the most pervasive online translation tool used in the current time. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in evaluating the quality of GT in different genres. However, far too little attention has been paid to GT’s quality in idiom translation; this study aims to investigate the quality of GT’s Vietnamese translations of English idioms with words denoting time in terms of translation errors. Accordingly, the study examined the translation error types committed by GT and their corresponding frequency. In an attempt to achieve this aim, both the qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed to analyze the data. GT’s Vietnamese translations of 128 English idioms with words denoting time were analyzed based on the conceptual framework on translation error proposed by Nord (1997) including four types of translation errors: pragmatic errors, cultural errors, linguistic errors, and text-specific errors. The translation errors found in GT translations and their occurrences are used for translation quality assessment. The results indicate that GT could not achieve the expected accuracy in translating pure and semi idioms with figurative meanings, and GT shows better quality in translating literal idioms than pure idioms. In addition, among the four translation error types, pragmatic errors are the most common error committed by GT in Vietnamese translations of English idioms. Some suggestions and implications are proposed for teachers and students majoring in translation, translators, and researchers who are interested in the related field. TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ................................................................ i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................................ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................iii ABBREVIATIONS......................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................ 1 1.1. RATIONALE ......................................................................................... 1 1.2. AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.......................................... 3 1.2.1...............................................................................................................Ai m ...................................................................................................................... 3 1.2.2.Objectives ........................................................................................... 3 1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................... 3 1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY ...................................................................... 4 1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ....................................................... 4 1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY .................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................... 7 2.1. Translation .............................................................................................. 7 2.1.1. Definition ......................................................................................... 7 2.1.2. Translation process .......................................................................... 9 2.1.3. Types of translation .......................................................................... 11 2.1.4. Machine translation......................................................................... 14 2.1.5. Google Translate............................................................................. 16 2.1.6. Translation errors ............................................................................. 19 2.1.7. Translation Quality Assessment ....................................................... 25 2.2. Idioms ..................................................................................................... 27 2.2.1. Definitions of idioms ....................................................................... 27 2.2.2. Classification of idioms ................................................................... 29 2.2.3. Idioms denoting time ....................................................................... 31 2.2.4. Idioms translations .......................................................................... 31 2.3. Previous studies....................................................................................... 33 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY ................................................................. 37 3.1. Research methods ................................................................................. 37 3.2. Data collection ...................................................................................... 39 3.3. Data analysis ......................................................................................... 43 CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ........................................ 46 4.1. Translation errors in Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of English idioms.................................................................................................46 4.1.1. No translation errors ........................................................................47 4.1.2. Pragmatic translation errors .............................................................50 4.1.4. Cultural translation errors ................................................................57 4.1.5. Text-specific translation errors ........................................................62 4.1.6. Special cases in translation errors.....................................................65 4.2. Frequency of translation error types in Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations according to idiom types..............................................................68 CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS......................... 71 5.1. Summary of findings .............................................................................71 5.2. Limitations..............................................................................................73 5.3. Implications ............................................................................................74 5.4. Suggestions for further research ............................................................75 REFERENCES APPENDICES ABBREVIATIONS CE cultural translation errors GT Google Translate IT idioms with words denoting time LE linguistic translation errors LI literal idioms MT Machine Translation NE no error PE pragmatic translation errors PI pure idioms SI semi-idioms SL source language TE text-specific translation errors TL target language TQA translation quality assessment LIST OF TABLES Number Names of tables Table 2.1 109 languages supported by Google Translate (Google 2020) Table 2.2 Identifiable characteristics of translation errors Table 2.3 Types of idioms (McCarthy and O’Dell, 2003, p.6) Table 3.1 Sample Data Storage (English Idioms and Vietnamese translations from Google Translate in sentences) Table 3.2 Translation errors for analyzing with reference examples Table 3.3 The numbers of errors translation in each idioms types committed by GT Table 4.1 Occurrences of translation errors types committed by GT Table 4.2 The number of occurrences of no translation errors in each idiom type Table 4.3 The number of occurrences of the pragmatic errors in each idiom type Table 4.4 The number of occurrences of linguistic translation errors in each idiom type Table 4.5 The number of occurrences of cultural errors in each idiom type Table 4.6 The number of occurrences of the Text-specific translation errors in each idiom type Table 4.7 The number of translation errors in each idiom type committed by GT Page 18 25 30 42 44 45 47 47 50 55 58 63 68 LIST OF FIGURES Number Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Names of figures Translation process (Larson, 1984, p. 4) Timeline of MT evolution (Maucec & Donaj, 2019) Google Translate graphical user interface Classification of translation errors (Vilar et al., 2006, p. 699) Figure 4.1 Occurrences of translation errors according to idioms types Page 9 14 17 21 69 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale Along with the globalization and technological advances, the need for international understanding is considerably increasing. However, language barriers hinder most people from understanding the messages from native speakers. Translation, therefore, is considered as a key role to bridge the communication gap in various fields such as education, science and technology, literature, tourism, trade and business. Translation can be understood as a process of transferring the content of a text from the source language (SL) into the target language (TL). With the growing requirements in translation, many translation tools have become the top priority for most people when encountering problems in communicating. Many automated translation applications have been proposed. Among these, Google Translate (GT) is the most popular machine translation used since it can translate tremendous amounts of information in a second with low cost and security. The term Google Translation refers to a translation service developed by Google in April 2006. It translates multiple forms of texts and media such as words, phrases, and webpages. Today Google Translate supports over 100 languages at various levels. This advanced tool makes it possible for global communication. Although GT is extensively used, the quality of GT output has always been a great concern. Due to the linguistic and cultural differences between languages, the practice of translation has shown the limit in generating target sources naturally, fluently, and comprehensibly especially when dealing with idiomatic expressions. Amir (2012) explained that since the meaning of idioms cannot be understood from the superficial meanings of the single words 2 constituting them, there are some problems in both processes of understanding and translating them. Therefore, the quality of GT outsources in idioms translations need to be paid more attention. Recently, researchers have shown an increasing interest in investigating the quality of GT. For example, Jimmy Cromico (2015) examined Translation quality of English-Indonesian by using Google Translate with the results that Google Translate cannot determine suitable techniques to produce a quality translation in translating sentences found on scientific articles. Also, Aiken and Balan (2013) conducted a study on An analysis of Google Translate accuracy and found that translations among Western languages by GT are typically better than those in Asian languages. Another study published by Shao et al. (2018) evaluated Machine Translation Performance on Chinese Idioms with a Blacklist Method, the results proved that GT generates relatively poor quality in Chinese idioms translations and literal translation error is a common error type. Although several attempts have been made to evaluate GT quality, most of them have tended to focus on investigating the quality of GT in the whole text among pairs of languages having nearly the same linguistic features. There are only a few that evaluate GT performances in specific terms like idioms in the language pair English and Vietnamese. Since idioms make part of figurative expressions in language, they are frequently used in daily conversation, school materials, newspapers, media, etc. Despite recent development in the field of translation theory and application, idiomatic expressions still pose a serious challenge for translators as well as machine translation. This study seeks to obtain data that will help to address these research gaps. My interest in this area developed while I usually encounter idiomatic 3 expressions in the reading academic materials and the mass media. The strengths of idioms in better-expressing emotions and contextual meanings have inspired me to explore this field. With the aim to give insights into the quality of idioms translation committed by GT, this study attempts to identify the errors performed by GT when it translates English idioms with words denoting time. The quality of GT is then explored. This is the reason why I decided to do the research on: “The quality of Google Translate's Vietnamese translations of English idioms with words denoting time.” 1.2. Aim and objectives of the study 1.2.1. Aim This study aims to examine the quality of Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of English idioms with words that denote time. 1.2.2. Objectives To achieve this aim, the researcher collected and analyzed data to fulfill the following objectives: - Identify the errors committed by Google Translate when it translates English idioms with words denoting time into Vietnamese, - Classify the errors according to translation error types, and - Examine the frequencies of the errors in terms of translation error types. 1.3. Research questions Based on the background of the research, the researcher attempted to answer to the following questions: 1. What errors can be found in Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of the English idioms with words that denote time? 2. What kinds of errors can be found in Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of these English idioms? 4 3. What is the frequency of each of the translation error types found in Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of these English idioms? 1.4. Scope of the Study This study focuses on investigating the errors found in idiomatic expressions translation results committed the online translation tool - Google Translate. In this study, 128 English sentences containing idioms with words denoting time were collected from the reliable paper dictionary “Oxford Dictionary of Idioms” (Siefring, 2004), and four online dictionaries https://www.theidioms.com, https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/, https://dictionary.cambridge.org, and https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, This research was restricted to English idioms that contain words pertaining to time expressions with their corresponding Vietnamese translations by GT. Other linguistic types of idioms without time-related meaning are excluded to be examined in the research. With regard to reliability, the reference source for collecting data, as mentioned above are all prestigious supply with a vast amount of idioms available. Idioms with words denoting time (IT) were the criteria for collecting since time concept is predominant in Western culture. Therefore, its popularity in idioms gives a possible corpus for this study. 1.5. Significance of the Study The results of the study will be of great benefits in two aspects. Theoretically, the findings of the study will hopefully provide knowledge about the quality of GT’s translations of English - Vietnamese idiomatic expressions. Moreover, this research also provides references for errors made by GT for other researchers to conduct further related researches. In terms of practice significance, the results of the study suggest some 5 implications for teachers, students, and especially those working in the translation field. Specifically, it helps teachers to figure out translation errors of GT in idioms translations, so they can avoid such problems and be more selective when utilizing GT. At the same time, they can train students in translating idioms as well as using GT in effective ways. As regards students, this study gives insights into idioms and idioms translation by humans and GT. Knowledge about idioms makes them more flexible in linguistic skills in school performances as well as daily conversations with foreigners. In addition, it also gives the references for linguists and computer experts to improve Google Translate’s quality in idioms translations by building the parallel corpora for bilingual English-Vietnamese idiomatic expressions of statistical machine translation in the future. 1.6. Organization of the study The six chapters in this dissertation are organized as follows: Chapter 1: Introduction - presents the rationale for the study, aim, and objectives of the study, the research questions, and the scope of the study. Chapter 2: Literature review - focuses on introducing important concepts of translation, Machine Translation, Google Translate, Translation Errors theory, and idioms relevant to the topic of the study; presents the theoretical framework for later data analysis and reviews the previous studies related to the topic of this thesis. Chapter 3: Methodology - presents the chosen research method and research procedures for carrying out the study. Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion - examines, identifies, describes and analyzes the types of errors; reports and discusses the results of data analysis Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications - summarizes the main findings of the study and provides some implications for English translations, English 6 learning and teaching. This chapter also includes the limitations and suggestions for further researches. CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter provides a brief overview of the theoretical background including translation, machine translation, Google Translate, translation errors, translation quality assessment, and idioms. A review of previous studies related to the topic is mentioned in this chapter as well. 2.1. Translation This section covers the theory about translation consisting of the definition of translation, translation process, types of translation, machine translation, Google Translate, translation errors, and translation quality assessment. 2.1.1. Definition Translation has been viewed differently by translation theorists. Translation can be defined as “the replacement of textual material in one language (source language) by an equivalent textual material in other language (target language)” (Catford, 1965, p.20). Catford mentioned equivalence from the linguistic aspect. It means only equivalence on the level of the surface structure of language is emphasized without concerning to the intended meaning, the target reader, or the styles of the translated text. Meanwhile, Nida (1974) defined translation as “a process of reproducing in the target language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of styles”. This view is supported by Bell (1991) who found that translation is the expression in another language (target language) of what has been expressed in another (source language) preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences. With this definition, translation focuses on the response of the receptor. In other words, remaining message or meaning is the principle when rendering from SL to TL. In line with this notion, Newmark (1988) emphasized the meaning element in translation rather than linguistic equivalences. He noted that translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. A broader perspective has been adopted by Bell (1991) who found that translation is the expression in another language (target language) of what has been expressed in another (source language) preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences. This view is supported by House (1977) who explained that translation is the replacement of a text in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the target language. With this notion, the translation process mainly involves semantic and pragmatic aspects. From the definitions mentioned above, it can be concluded that receptors will understand an idea in relatively the same way as the intended messages when the translation process deals with three main principles reproducing, transferring, and maintaining the original message of the source language. Translation is a complicated process, so the quality of target translations may not be evaluated perfectly. To generate a relatively accurate translation, translators are supposed to grasp a huge knowledge of multi-dimension such as society, culture, and linguistics. According to Arnold et al. (1994), a human translator requires five kinds of knowledge: - Knowledge of the source language - Knowledge of the target language - Knowledge of various correspondences between the source language and target language - Knowledge of the subject matter, including general knowledge and “common sense” - Knowledge of the culture, social conventions, customs, and expectations, etc. of the speakers of the source and target language. Therefore, translators are supposed to master knowledge on semantics and pragmatics to maintain the original message of the source language. This section reviews some definitions of translation viewed from different aspects of linguistics as well as required knowledge for a translator. The next part describes the procedures in translation work 2.1.2. Translation process As the process of communication, the translation process involves the transferring of the message from the source language (SL) into the receptor language (RL). Larson (1984) describes translation as a meaning-based process that refers to the usage of both grammatical and choice of lexical items of the receptor language. Larson described the procedure of translation in three steps: (1) examining the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural context of the source language text, (2) analyzing the source language text to determine its meaning, (3) then reconstructing the same meaning by using the lexicon and grammatical structure which is appropriate in the target language and cultural context. The overview of this process is demonstrated in Figure 2.1. Source Language Text to be translated Discover the meaning Receptor Language Translation 1 Re-express the meaning Meaning Figure 2.1. Translation process (Larson, 1984, p. 4) However, the above-mentioned process is a very simple and general overview of the process of translation. This process is definitely complicated. According to Larson (1984, pp.519-526), translation procedure is divided into 8 steps as follows: 1. Preparation: the translator should have trained in linguistics knowledge and translation principle before undertaking the project. Then, preparation steps including reading the entire texts, studying the background material, studying linguistic matters are followed to get familiar with the text. 2. Analysis: the translator should have to take note of any lexical item as the keywords and pay attention to the opening and closing of the text to identify the theme of the original language. 3. Transfer: it is a process of analyzing the semantic structure of the initial draft in the translation. In this process, the translator attempts to find out the lexical equivalence and culture in the receptor language. 4. Initial Draft: the translator had lelt the draft for a certain time to get more reading background for the best equivalent and then back for reworking on them 5. Reworking the Initial Draft: translator checks for accuracy and naturalness with the focus on the meaning of language. After the translators get a second draft and translator might work out again and again to modify the draft until they finish a final draft. 6. Testing the Translation: this step involves testing the translation by translators themselves or with the help of other members who are trained as expert consultants. 7. Polishing the Translation: From the results of, translators should have to check again and polish the translation in order to ensure the accuracy, naturalness, and acceptability in the receptor language 8. Preparing the Manuscript for the Publisher: this is the last step of the translation process. After the final draft is completed, the manuscript is ready to be prepared for the publisher.