Nghiên cứu cách dịch văn bản kỹ thuật trong ngành đóng tàu

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale

Shipbuilding is one of the key industries of our country. The next following years may

see the development in building many kinds of vessels: bulk carriers, oil tankers, container

vessel, car carriers, floating storage and offloading units …. Each kind of vessel has it own

technical specification. And in order to understand the structure, technical characteristic as

well as the operation, the translation of these technical documents has become more

importantly than ever before.

As a translator in a shipbuilding company, the author of this minor thesis days by days

work with technical documents. She is fully aware that the translation of technical document is

a difficult job, it requires the translator to continuously improve basic knowledge on

shipbuilding as well as skill in dealing with situations relating to technical terms, special

expressions, and ambiguous structures…

That is the reason why the author chooses the study on translation of technical texts in

shipbuilding for her MA minor thesis with the hope that the study can provide the translator a

general view on translation of technical texts in shipbuilding industry and the author herself

can improve her job.

2. Aims of the study

The study is implemented with the following aims:

o To clarify some aspects in translation of technical texts in shipbuilding

o To delve into some problems relating to translation of technical texts in shipbuilding

o To put forward some suggestions for solution of difficulty in translation

3. Scope of the study

Technical translation is a huge field, each technical field has it owns characteristic,

therefore, the translator working on any field of technical translation has to try her/ his best to

1

fulfill her/ his job. The translation of technical texts in shipbuilding is not an exception. Within

the scope of this study, a study on the translation of technical texts in shipbuilding is very

exclusive to talk about. However, due to the limitation of time and lack of experience, my

minor thesis is only limited to dealing with some aspects, problems in translating technical

text in shipbuilding.

4. Method of the study

To set up the framework for this study, the author refers to some in-house and foreign

publications. In order to achieve the goal of the study, the main method is quantitative data

analysis. All the considerations, conclusions in this minor thesis are largely based on:

o Reference to relevant publications

o Analysis of collected data

o Personal observations

5. Design of the study

The study consists of three parts:

Part 1, introduction, includes: rationale, aims, scope, method and design of the study.

Part 2 is the development, the focus of the study with three chapters: Chapter 1 is general

theoretical background, it introduces general information about translation theory. Chapter 2

deals with an investigation into translation of technical text in shipbuilding. In this chapter,

some kinds of technical shipbuilding texts, aspects and problems related to translation these

documents are analyzed. Chapter 3 is the implication. This chapter points out some mistakes

the translator often meets in translating and some suggested solutions. Part 3 is the conclusion.

2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1. What is translation?

Translation has been the subject of interest not only to linguists, professional and

amateur translators, language teachers but also to other engineers of other technical fields. A

great number of publications have been written about this matter. However, “What is

translation?” is still a question in need of research.. Barkhudarov (1975) defined translation as

“the transformation of a speech product in one language into that of other language keeping

the content (or meaning) unchanged”, by speech product he meant translation as an act of

communication. Catford (1965) considers translation is an cognitive behavior by saying that

“Translation is the replacement if textual material in one language (source language) by

equivalent textual material in other language (target language)”. For Nida & Taber (1974),

translation “consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closet natural equivalent of

the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style”. Hatim

& Mason (1990) termed it briefly “Translating is a communicative process which takes place

within a social context”.

Different scholars defines translation in different way, seemingly, they have not come up

with a “single valid comprehensive theory of translation”, that is because they seem to look at

translation from different views.

2. Text, discourse and translation

2.1. About text, discourse and translation

Text and discourse sometimes are confused in linguistic. For Windowson, a text is

“sentences in combination”, and discourse is the “use of utterances in combination”. To put it

more clearly, text is a “structured sequence of linguistic expressions forming a unitary whole”

and discourse is a “structured event manifest in linguistic (and other) behavior”. Yet, these

definitions do not satisfy because text and discourse sometimes are used interchangeably, and

text is referred to as “written documents” while discourse as “speech”. Thus, Roger (1991)

3

proposed the following: text is “the formal product of selections of options from the THEME

systems of the grammar; a unit which carries the semantic sense of the proposition (the

propositional content and locutionary force of the speech act) through sentences which are

linked by means of cohesion” and discourse is “ a communicative event which draws on the

meaning potential of the language (and other systems of communication) to carry

communicative value (the illocution force) of speech acts through utterances which are linked

by means of coherence”.

A text is a string of sentences, a unit of language in use. A discourse is a communicative

process by means of interaction and its linguistic product is text. And discourse refers to the

connected speech or writing at supra – sentential levels while text – both written and spoken –

is seen as the representation of discourse.

Discourse analysis is the analysis of language in use and includes in itself the analysis of

the text beyond and above the sentence. Thus, text is one of the core terms in translation.

2.2. Types of text

Type of text is an important factor in translation. It affects on all stages of translation and

translation product. That is the reason why that this matter is always discussed in translation.

According to Newmark (1988), one of the most important function of language is to help

the users to express their feelings, thus equivalent to expressive function of language, we have

expressive text. Imaginative, authoritative statements and autobiography, essays, personal

correspondence are some sub-types of this kind of text.

The very important function of language is informative function. For Newmark (1988),

“the core of the informative function of language is external situation, the facts of a topic,

reality outside language, including reported ideas or theories”. The informative text –type

includes scientific papers, textbooks, popular science or art books, popular journalism.

The third function of language, as Newmark (1988) proposes is to call upon the

readership to act, think or feel in order to react in the way intended by the text, say, vocative

text. This text – type is also called instrumental, operative text aiming at producing a certain

4