Abstract
Translation of English passive constructions into Vietnamese has been of interest to scholars and researchers worldwide. However, not much research has been done into translation equivalence of the English passives in Vietnamese. This paper aims to explore into the translation equivalence of English passive constructions in Vietnamese in literary discourse. To reach this aim, data were collected from classic works of American and English literature and their translations in Vietnamese. The data were further analysed and classified, applying Widdowson’s (1979) trichotomy of translation equivalence. The research findings show five strategies for translating the English passives into Vietnamese with this order of frequency: activization, passivization, ergativization, adjectivalization, and copularization, and the translation equivalence includes both structural and semantic. The paper also attempts to explain the reasons behind the preference of activization strategy.
Highlights
Translation of English passive constructions into other languages has been of interest to scholars and researchers worldwide
This paper aims to explore into the translation equivalence of English passive constructions in Vietnamese in literary discourse
There have been a number of studies on translation of English passives into other languages, such as German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese (Baker, 1992), Arabic (Farghal & Al-Shorafat, 1996; Nahar Al-Ali & Alliheibi, 2015); Farsi (Abbasi & Arjenan, 2014), or Vietnamese (Luu, 2010; Hoang, 2015)
Summary
Translation of English passive constructions into other languages has been of interest to scholars and researchers worldwide. There have been a number of studies on translation of English passives into other languages, such as German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese (Baker, 1992), Arabic (Farghal & Al-Shorafat, 1996; Nahar Al-Ali & Alliheibi, 2015); Farsi (Abbasi & Arjenan, 2014), or Vietnamese (Luu, 2010; Hoang, 2015). 107) points out differences in frequency of using passive voice in English, German, Russian, as well as in the use of passives in Asian languages, namely Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. In these Asian languages, the passive has the connotation of unpleasantness „even the event depicted is not normally seen as unpleasant‟.
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