Grammatical cohesionin “ The Wind in the Willow” by Kenneth Grahame and their equivalents in Google Translate’sVietnamese Translations

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

LÊ THỊ NGỌC THẢO

GRAMMATICAL COHESION IN “THE WIND IN THE

WILLOWS” BY KENNETH GRAHAME AND THEIR

EQUIVALENTS IN GOOGLE TRANSLATE’S

VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONS

FIELD: English Linguistics

CODE: 8.22.02.01

Supervisor: LÊ NHÂN THÀNH, Ph.D.

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

LÊ THỊ NGỌC THẢO

LIÊN KẾT NGỮ PHÁP TRONG “GIÓ QUA RẶNG LIỄU”

CỦA KENNETH GRAHAME VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG

TRONG BẢN DỊCH 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 confirm that the thesis “Grammatical cohesion in “The Wind in the

Willow” by Kenneth Grahame and their equivalents in Google Translate’s

Vietnamese Translations” is my work except where reference is made in the text of

the thesis. No other person’s work has been used without acknowledgement in the

thesis.

This thesis has not been submitted elsewhere for the award of any degree or

diploma.

Binh Dinh, 2021

Lê Thị Ngọc Thảo

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis was completed with the support of many people. First and

foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Le Nhan Thanh,

my supervisor, for his patience, guidance and professional advice during the

process of completing this thesis. Without his expertise and encouragement, I

would not have been able to finish this study.

I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to all my lecturers who have

taken part in my MA course at Quy Nhon University and provided me with

useful and interesting knowledge and experience as well as their inspiration

which helped me conduct my research.

Last but not least, I feel deeply indebted to my family members for

their support and motivation whenever I needed to finish the thesis.

iii

ABSTRACT

The study aims to examine the quality of Google Translate’s

Vietnamese translations of the grammatical cohesive devices in “The Wind in

the Willow” by Kenneth Grahame in terms of translation errors. To fulfil this

aim, 10934 reference ties and 770 conjunction ties found in 2306 English

sentences containing the references and conjunctions in “The Wind in the

Willow” and their equivalents in GT’s Vietnamese translations were

examined to classify the translation errors in the Vietnamese translations in

terms of grammatical cohesion using Costa et al.’s (2015) model. The

research employs both quantitative and qualitative content analysis in this

study to collect data and analyze it to answer the research questions. The

results of the study show that GT cannot achieve accuracy in translating the

references with contextual meaning and GT shows better quality in translating

the conjunctions than the references.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ................................................................... i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..............................................................................ii

ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................iii

ABBREVIATIONS......................................................................................... vii

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................... ix

LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................... xi

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1

1.1. Rationale ................................................................................................. 1

1.2. Aim and Objectives................................................................................. 3

1.2.1. Aim ................................................................................................... 3

1.2.2. Objectives ......................................................................................... 3

1.3. Research Questions................................................................................. 4

1.4. Scope of the Study .................................................................................. 4

1.5. Significance of the Study........................................................................ 5

1.6. Organization of the Study ....................................................................... 5

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 7

2.1. The Theory of Cohesion ......................................................................... 7

2.1.1. Definition of cohesion. ..................................................................... 7

2.1.2. Grammatical cohesion. ..................................................................... 8

2.1.3. Previous studies. ............................................................................. 29

2.2. Errors in translation............................................................................... 33

2.2.1. Definition of translation errors ....................................................... 33

2.2.2. Classification of translation errors.................................................. 33

2.2.3. Conceptual Framework................................................................... 36

2.3. Google Translate ................................................................................... 42

v

2.3.1. Machine translation......................................................................... 43

2.3.2. Overview of Google Translate........................................................ 44

2.3.3. Previous studies on Google Translate............................................. 47

CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................ 51

3.1. Research Methods................................................................................. 51

3.2. Data Collection ..................................................................................... 56

3.3. Data Analysis........................................................................................ 60

CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................ 64

4.1. References and Conjunctions in “The Wind in the Willows” and

their Equivalents in GT’s Vietnamese Translations. ................................... 64

4.1.1. Types of references......................................................................... 64

4.1.2. Types of conjunctions..................................................................... 71

4.2. Types of Translation Errors.................................................................. 78

4.2.1. Semantic errors. .............................................................................. 79

4.2.2. Lexis errors. .................................................................................... 82

4.2.3. Orthographic errors......................................................................... 84

4.2.4. Grammar errors............................................................................... 85

4.2.5. Discourse errors. ............................................................................. 85

4.2.6. No translation errors. ...................................................................... 86

4.3. The Quality of Google Translate’s Vietnamese translations of

English Grammatical Cohesive Devices...................................................... 87

CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION........................................................................ 90

5.1. Summary of the main Findings............................................................. 90

5.2. Limitation of the Study ......................................................................... 93

5.3. Implication of the Study........................................................................ 93

5.3.1. Implication for teachers and students of translation....................... 93

5.3.2. Implication for translators............................................................... 94

vi

5.4. Suggestions for Future Research .......................................................... 94

REFERENCES................................................................................................ 95

APPENDICES

vii

ABBREVIATIONS

(a) Abbreviation

Abbreviation Definition

C.ad Conjunction: additive

C.av Conjunction: adversative

C.ca Conjunction: causal

C.te Conjunction: temporal

DE Discourse errors

DER Discourse errors of references

GE Grammar errors

GEC Grammar errors of conjunctions

GER Grammar errors of references

GT Google Translate

LE Lexis errors

LEC Lexis errors of conjunctions

LER Lexis errors of references

MT Machine translation

NMT Neural machine translation

OE Orthographic errors

OEC Orthographic error of conjunctions

OER Orthographic error of references

R.co Reference: comparative

R.de Reference: demonstrative

R.pe Reference: personal

SE Semantic errors

SEC Semantic errors of conjunctions

viii

SER Semantic errors of references

SMT Statistical machine translation

(b) Conventions

In the text:

ITALICS are used for emphasis, examples or technical terms; BOLD

words are used to mark the first use of technical terms.

In numbered examples:

BOLD and UNDERLINED words in examples are the features under

discussion.

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Number Names of tables Page

Table 2.1 Comparative Reference Items 15

Table 2.2 Summary of the Conjunctive Relation of the Additive

Type 18

Table 2.3 Summary of the Conjunctive Relation of the

Adversative Type

34

Table 2.4 Summary of the Conjunctive Relation of the Causal

Type

23

Table 2.5 Summary of the Conjunctive Relation of the Temporal

Type

26

Table 2.6 Error Categories 35

Table 2.7 The Framework for the Analysis of Reference Items 37

Table 2.8 The Framework for the Analysis of Conjunction 38

Table 2.9 Identifiable Characteristics of Translation Errors 41

Table 2.10 109 Languages Supported by Google Translate 45

Table 3.1

The Sample Table on the Frequencies of Reference in

“The Wind in the Willow” and Their Equivalents in

Google Translate’s Vietnamese Translations

60

Table 3.2

The Sample Table on the Frequencies of Conjunction

in “The Wind in the Willow” and Their Equivalents in

Google Translate’s Vietnamese Translations

61

Table 3.3

The Sample Table on the Frequencies of Each

Translation Error Type of Grammatical Cohesive

Devices

62

Table 3.4

The Sample Table in Translation Errors committed by

Google Translate according to Grammatical Cohesive

Devices

63

Table 4.1

The Frequencies of Reference in “The Wind in the

Willow” and Their Equivalents in Google Translate’s

Vietnamese Translations

65

x

Number Names of tables Page

Table 4.2

The Occurrences of Conjunction in “The Wind in the

Willow” and Their Equivalents in GT’s Vietnamese

Translations

72

Table 4.3

The Frequencies of Each Error Type of Grammatical

Cohesive Devices in Google Translate’s Vietnamese

Translations

79

Table 4.4 The Number of Occurrences of the Four Kinds of the

Semantic Errors

80

Table 4.5 The Number of Occurrences of the Three Kinds of

Lexis Errors 83

Table 4.6 The Number of Occurrences of the Three Kinds of the

Orthographic Errors 84

Table 4.7 Translation Errors committed by GT according to

Grammatical Cohesive Devices 87