Assessment on Vietnamese-English translation of object labels at Vietnamese women’s museum through foreign tourists’ perspectives

P. T. Trang, T. P. Linh / VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol.36, No.6 (2020) 150-167

150

ASSESSMENT ON VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH

TRANSLATION OF OBJECT LABELS AT VIETNAMESE

WOMEN’S MUSEUM THROUGH FOREIGN TOURISTS’

PERSPECTIVES

1

2

*

Pham Thu Trang , Tran Phuong Linh

1. School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences,

University of Edinburgh, UK

2. Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International

Studies, Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam

Received 5 December 2019

Revised 5 June 2020; Accepted 18 November 2020

Abstract: Translation of culture-speciﬁc items has posed many diﬃculties to translators as it requires

thorough knowledge of both languages and cultures. This study aims to investigate the assessment of foreign

tourists on the translation of object labels at Vietnamese Women’s Museum and to shed light on tourist’s

preferences for cultural word translation procedures. In order to fulﬁl these objectives, a mixed-method

research was conducted in which questionnaire and interview were used as the primary data collection

instruments. The model proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (2000) was applied to analyze the procedures

of the cultural word translation. The ﬁndings showed that the translation at Vietnamese Women’s Museum

generally came up to tourists’ expectation and successfully helped them understand the majority of

Vietnamese culture exhibited at the museum. However, some contents relating to religion or Vietnamese

customs such as Mother worshipping, consecration ritual, 13 celestial Mothers full-month ceremony and

traditional outﬁts such as fabric-making or fabric-dyeing methods, names of traditional costumes caused

some challenges to the readers. Suggestions from tourists were valuable for both translators and the museum

to improve their translation and display at the museum.

Keywords: translation, tourists’ assessment, culture-speciﬁc items

1

1. Introduction

to translators’ failure in response to readers’

expectations and cultural confusion among

visitors. Although various studies on TQA on

tourism-relating texts from the translator’s

point of view were conducted (Toury, 1995;

Pierini, 2007; Terestyényi, 2011; Narváez &

Zambrana, 2014; Rezaei & Kuhi, 2014), there

are limited still number of studies on TQA

from readers’ perspectives. Because readers

are the end-users of the translating process,

their evaluation would be a potential means to

measure the quality of a translation. Therefore,

this study aims to investigate the assessment

of foreign tourists who are popular end-users

of the process on the translation of culture-

Translated

tourism

texts

like

brochures, museum objects’ descriptions or

advertisements present as a bridge connecting

local culture to foreign visitors (Muñoz, 2011,

p. 45) and a necessary means to stimulate

the tourism industry of the host country.

Tourism text translation in Vietnam, however,

has not been evaluated by any standardized

quality assessment framework. The lack

of adequate and proper translation quality

assessment (TQA), to a certain extent, has led

*

Corresponding Author: Tel.: 84-357344870

Email: [email protected]

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151

speciﬁc items at the Vietnamese Women’s

Museum (Hanoi).

attention to the quality of a text which was

translated from one language to another. Their

research focused on the question “what is a

good translation?”. Nida (1964) pointed out

the closest natural equivalent in which the

quality of translation can be evaluated by the

maximum equivalent relationship between

the forms and contents when language A

translated into language B. Meanwhile, in The

Theory and Practice of Translation, Nida and

Taber (1974) tested the translation based on

the extent of verbal correspondence as well

as the amount of dynamic equivalence. This

means not only the verbal consistency in

translation but also how the public possibly

responds to it must be accounted for in TQA.

Vietnamese-English translation of object

labels in Vietnamese Women’s Museum

was chosen to be assessed in this study for

two reasons. Firstly, the museum has a wide

range of Vietnamese multi-cultural features

including more than 1000 materials, photos

and objects which are displayed in the

permanent exhibition to show a signiﬁcant

role of Vietnamese women through separate

yet connected sections. In other words, the

museum can provide an equivalent source

for the data collection and analysis stage.

Secondly, due to its reputation as a tourist

attraction in Hanoi, this place often welcomes

a large number of foreign tourists, which

would allow the researchers to access and

conduct interviews with the tourists easily.

Diﬀering from Nida and Taber’s TQA

approach, Steiner (1975) evaluated the

translation from the opposite direction. By

posingthequestion“whatisabadtranslation?”,

Steiner described “a bad translator” as the one

that was inadequate to source text because the

translator might misconstrue the origin, have

limited linguistic ability in his language, or

make the stylistic or psycholinguistic mistakes

and inappropriate sensibility. Thanks to an

overview of bad translation, translators can

be aware of translation-related mistakes and

avoid them to be good translators.

This study was conducted to answer the

two following questions:

Research question 1: How did foreign

tourists assess the translation quality of object

labels at Vietnamese Women’s Museum?

Research question 2: What are their

preferences for the translated object labels at

Vietnamese Women’s Museum?

The ﬁrst research question is to ﬁnd

out the tourists’ assessment on how object

labels at Vietnamese Women’s Museum were

translated. The ﬁndings can present the tourists’

understanding of the conveyed message and to

what extent the museum can express Vietnamese

culture to the foreigners. Moreover, the research

also sheds light on tourist’s preferences for

cultural word translation procedures and their

suggestions for better translation if there are

through the second question.

UnliketheoriesfromNidaandTaber(1974)

and Steiner (1975), Newmark (1988) did not

focus merely on the equivalence of source text

(ST) and target text (TT), but developed the

evaluation of translation from various criteria,

including both internal and external elements

aﬀecting assessment on translation. In the

Textbook of Translation, Newmark (1988)

indicated that translation criticism was a vital

component of the translation process as it

helped translators improve their competence,

expand their knowledge and understanding

as well as suggested various options for later

2. Literature review

2.1. Translation assessment

Nida (1964) and Nida and Taber (1974)

were well-known researchers who paid

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translation. Accordingly, he suggested that

translation evaluation should cover:

in criticizing translation. The assessor should

consider factors like translators’ intentions,

social contexts, translation’s purpose and

possible responses from readers to choose

an appropriate model or a set of assessment

criteria for the assessing process. In this

research, readers’ assessment on translation

quality was the main focus. The readers who

are foreign tourists visiting the Vietnamese

Women’s Museum have some knowledge

of Vietnamese culture and expectations for

understanding further. They, therefore, would

be the objective examiners on how good the

translation quality in the museum was.

1. Analysis of ST, focusing on intention and

functional aspects;

2. Interpretation of ST’s purpose, the

translator’s method, and the potential readership;

3. Selective but representative detail

comparison of TT to the original;

4. Evaluation of translation from the

translator or critic who can be a university

teacher or an examiner;

5. Assessment of translation when it is

placed in TT culture or discipline.

There are two new things in Newmark’s

approach. Firstly, readership was pointed out

as one of the criteria for translation assessment.

In other words, readers’ perspectives could

be applied in translation quality assessment.

Secondly, Newmark also proposed that the

assessment should be concerning culture and

discipline in TT.

2.2. Cultural translation

2.2.1. Deﬁnition of culture-speciﬁc items

There have been diﬀerent deﬁnitions

of culture-speciﬁc items in the history of

translation studies. The deﬁnition of culture-

speciﬁc items or cultural words was introduced

by Newmark (1988) as “words that denote

a speciﬁc material cultural object”. Four

years later, Baker (1992, p. 21) extended the

concept and claimed that it could be “abstract

or concrete… and may relate to a religious

belief, a social custom, or even a type of

food…”. However, it is indisputable that

one of the functions of culture-speciﬁc items

is to reﬂect the culture within the language.

Therefore, it can be deﬁned as “elements of

the text that are connected to certain concepts

in the foreign culture (history, art, literature)

which might be unknown to the readers of the

target text” (Aixela, 1996, p. 14).

Steiner (1998) assessed a translation based

on register theories and argued that not only

metafunctional equivalences (i.e. experiential,

logical, interpersonal, textual meaning, and

understood pragmatic meanings by non-

functional linguists) but also the register,

the context that the text was put in, needs to

be considered. Three register components

that Steiner provided were: ﬁeld, tenor, and

mode. In the aspect of ﬁeld, the assessment

had to consider the subject matter, the goal

orientation, and social activities. Tenor refers

to agentive role, social role, social distance

(level of formality and politeness), and eﬀect

were paid attention. Last but not least, in the

aspect of mode, language role (constitutive

and ancillary), the channel of discourse and

medium of discourse need to be examined.

In terms of categorization of culture-

speciﬁc items, Newmark (1988) divided them

into ﬁve categories as follows:

•

Ecology

From all the approaches above, it

could be seen that a translated text can be

evaluated through several diﬀerent criteria

and no ﬁxed model was suﬃcient to apply

This category comprises animals, plants,

local winds, mountains, and plains among

others. All these words can be translated

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literally, with the additional culture-free

There are usually non-linguistic features

which can be found in the form of names of

regular behaviors and movements. It should be

noted that words in this category often create

ambiguity due to diﬀerences between function

and description in gestures and habits among

cultures can create. For example, kissing

ﬁngertips for greeting or praising or spit for

blessing occurs in one culture and not in others.

explanation text where they cannot be

understood denotatively or ﬁguratively. Here

are some examples of ecology terms found

in Vietnamese Women’s Museum: Cành cây

Mày me-Tree branches, Lúa nước-Aquatic

rice, Rễ cây Móc May-Root of the Moc May

tree, etc.

•

Material culture

2.2.2. The problem of untranslatability of

culture-speciﬁc items

Concepts like food, clothes, housing,

transports, and communications all belong to

the category “material culture”. In Vietnamese-

English translation, these words are often

translated using transference procedure and

descriptive equivalent for the purpose of

both corresponding to the general readership

and educating readers in case there is a new

technology or knowledge. The following

examples are taken from the translation at the

Vietnamese Women’s Museum: Cốm-Young

sticky rice, nem-Vietnamese Springroll, Váy

ống-Tubular skirt, Váy xếp ly-Pleated skirts, etc.

Culture-speciﬁc items, in many cases,

cannot be translated because there is no

equivalence in terms of linguistic or cultural

aspects or both in source language (SL) and

target language (TL). According to Catford

(1965), ‘linguistic untranslatability’ occurs

when “the functionally relevant features

include some which are formal features of

the language of the SL text. If the TL has no

formally corresponding feature, the text, or the

item, is (relatively) untranslatable”. However,

the key often lies in the cultural-concept

discrepancies between SL and TL or cultural

untranslatability. “What appears to be a quite

diﬀerent problem arises, however, when a

situational feature, functionally relevant for

the SL text, is completely absent in the culture

of which the TL is a part” (Catford, 1965,

p. 99). Take the term ‘áo bà ba’ in Vietnamese

as a typical example, it is nearly impossible

to ﬁnd an equivalent translation of it in

English because of the cultural gap between

Vietnamese and English cultures.

•

Social Culture: This is a group of

works and leisure terms like names of human

labor, entertainment, hobbies, or sports.

•

Organizations, customs, activities,

procedures, concepts

This category consists of political, social,

legal, religious, and artistic aspects which may

refer to the institutional terms of the political

and social life of a country. Like others, this

category has a variety of terms which cannot

be easily translated into English. As a result,

they are often translated as the two following

examples: The title for the head of state like

‘Quan Lớn Tuần Tranh’ could be translated in

two ways: being kept in its original version for

educated readership or ‘Great Mandarin Tuan

Tranh’ for a general one. Or religious activities

‘Lễ cúng Mụ’ is known in translated document

as ‘The cult of the celestial mothers, Cung Mu’.

Because of that, Bhabha (2012) claimed

that cultural translation could be deﬁned as

a process in which there were no restricted

texts, and the focus was on general cultural

processes rather than ﬁnite linguist products.

This could give an overview of the translation

at Vietnamese Women’s Museum as the

content of the displayed exhibition is

•

Gestures and habits

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exclusively characterized for Vietnamese

cultures including terms in cultivation and

daily life activities, household tools related

to agriculture identity, religious practices,

national social features, customs and history.

adopted to minimize the strangeness of the

foreign text for TL readers. As Domestication

is applied, the translator has to risk imposing

his or her voice, abolishing some messages in

terms of culture, style and description of the

original author (LaPlante, 2008). On the other

hand, Foreignization refers to a target text

produced in a way that deliberately breaks

target conventions by retaining something of

the foreignness of the original (Shuttleworth

& Cowie, 1997). Foreignization is suitable

for target audiences who prefer a source-

oriented translation. Those are somehow

knowledgeable about the SL culture and want

to understand cultural references and foreign

traits of the text.

2.2.3. Vinay and Darbelnet’s (2000)

translation procedures for translating culture-

speciﬁc items

According

to

Newmark

(1988),

translation procedures are regarded as

methods applied by translators when they

formulate an equivalence to transfer elements

of meaning from the Source Text (ST) to the

Target Text (TT). In contrast to translation

strategies, which are usually understood as the

translators’ global approach or plan of action

on a given text, based on their intention,

translation procedures are used for sentences

and smaller units of language within that text.

The two translation strategies have

been used by various researchers, including

Georges (1998), Laviosa-Braithwaite (1998)

and Vinay and Darbelnet (2000). In their

study, Vinay and Darbelnet (2000) proposed

seven translation procedures which translators

could apply when translating culture-speciﬁc

items as following:

When it comes to cultural translation,

Venuti (1995, 2008) proposed two major

strategies: Domestication and Foreignization.

Domesticationrelatestotranslationprocedures

in which a transparent and ﬂuent style is

Table 1. Translation procedures proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (2000)

Domestication

Foreignization

Transposition

Borrowing (Transference)

Modulation

Equivalence

Adaptation

Calque (Through-translation)

Literal translation

Four procedures including Transposition,

Modulation, Equivalence, and Adaptation

were categorized into Domestication group.

Transposition refers to the change of grammar

from SL to TL. For example, it can be the

change from singular to plural, the change

when a speciﬁc SL structure does not exist in

the TL, when literal translation is possible but

not appropriate for theTL, and the replacement

of a lexical gap with the grammatical structure.

Modulation is deﬁned as the variation through

a change of perspectives. This procedure can

be (a) abstract for concrete (‘golden heart’,

lòng tốt), (b) cause for eﬀect (‘he walked out

of our sight’, chúng tôi không nhìn thấy anh

ta nữa), (c) one part for another (‘I bought

this shirt for an arm and a leg’, tôi mua cái

áo này với giá cắt cổ), (d) reversal of terms

(‘I lent him my bike’, anh ta mượn xe tôi),

(e) active for passive, (f) space for time (‘at

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primary school’, hồi còn đi học), (g) change

of symbols (‘she is as lazy as a lizard’, cô

ấy lười như hủi), (h) positive and negative.

Equivalence is applied to diﬀerent terms in

the same situation. In a simple way, these

terms refer to notices, familiar alternatives,

phrases and idioms. The last procedure in this

category is Adaptation, which is the use of

recognized equivalent between two situations.

transferring a SL word into a TL text in order

to give the sense of intimacy between cultures

and readers. Literal translation of common

collocations, names of organization, and

components of compounds, or phrases is listed

as Calque or Through-translation. Meanwhile,

Literal translation means SL text is translated

literally into TL as their meanings are

corresponsive to other alternative procedures.

Borrowing or Transference, Calque or

Through-translation and Literal translation

belong to Foreignization group. Borrowing

or Transference procedure is the process of

To make it more straightforward, here are

some examples of the object label translation

at Vietnamese Women’s Museum according

to Vinay and Darbelnet (2000)’s procedures:

Table 2. Translation procedures applied to translate object labels at Vietnamese Women’s

Museum

Vietnamese

translation translation

English

Strategies

Object labels’ Image

The

pregnant

woman

Transposition Mang thai

Modulation

None

Shoulder

pole

Equivalence

Đòn gánh

Domestication

The Mother

Goddess

Pantheon

Hệ thống thờ

Mẫu

Adaptation

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Transference

Calque

Ao dai

Foreignization

None

Belt

Literal

Translation

Thắt lưng

In this study, the authors decided to choose

of the process, and their role in translation

quality assessment does matter. Nida (2001) in

Language and culture: Contexts in translating

pointed out that “What is important is the extent

to which receptors correctly understand and

appreciate the translated text”. This statement

reemphasized Newmark’s (1988) view

when he suggested using a communicative

approach rather than a semantic approach in

vocative text translation for the reason that the

former “conveys the message and eﬀect more

eﬀectively to the readers” (as cited in Lim &

Loi, 2015, p. 8). Additionally, Pinto (2001)

believes that “the quality of translation is a

perception that depends directly on the degree

of satisfaction reached by its readers” (Pinto,

2001, p. 297). He also attaches the importance

of examining readers’ needs and expectations

in formulating translation’s speciﬁc objectives.

One of the most noteworthy studies should be

mentioned here is the one by Hickey (2003)

in which he compared lay readers’ assessment

with that of translation experts. The ﬁndings

of his research concluded that lay readers

can point out “a large array of translation

problems such as translationese, illogicality

and contextual inappropriateness and that their

judgments can provide revealing insights into

Vinay and Darbelnet (2000)’s categorization

for the reasons that the procedures proposed

in this model are concise in the manner and

the items are not overlapped with each other.

As a result, it will be easy to comprehend,

analyze, and apply. Moreover, the taxonomy

of translation procedures provides a closer

look to encourage one to look beyond simple

structural alterations between SL and TL.

The role of the translator, as a result, could

be examined as a creative intermediary

between the original author and his or her

target audience in the process of translation-

mediated communication.

2.3. Translation quality assessment through

readers’perspectives

The term “quality” is deﬁned by European

Organization for Quality Control as “the

totality of features and characteristics of a

product or service that bear on its ability to

satisfy a given need” (Wenger, 1981). Agreed

or not, a translation should be considered as

a product or service which satisﬁes the needs

of understanding and communication of its

customers who, in this case, are readers in

TL. In other words, readers are the end-users

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157

the quality of translation” (as cited in Lim &

Loi, 2015, p. 10).

dynamic interactions among schemata in the

TT reader’s mind via the textual form.

The readers always make inferences and

create meaning when dealing with words of

the translated texts; therefore, their evaluation

should be taken into account. Nevertheless,

level, as well as value of the potential

assessment, may depend on the readers’

awareness of “culture, their perceptual

abilities and their schemata, and the ability

to reconstruct the text style according to their

interests and tastes” (Yenkimaleki, 2016,

p. 139). In his study, Yenkimaleki also pointed

out that the readers usually experience two

types of processing when encountering the

text in general and translation in particular.

One is “bottom-up processing’ in which

understanding of the text’s meaning is

almost immediate as the readers are familiar

with vocabulary and structures. In contrast,

understanding the meaning associated with

hypothesizing and delay is involved in top-

down processing when the readers have to deal

with unfamiliar vocabulary and structures.

Obviously, the two processing might widely

vary based on the age, educational level,

familiarity with the subject content and other

features of readers. However, one thing that

can be highlighted here is understanding

readers’ competence is critical for translators

to choose the appropriate translation approach

in order to achieve a good translation. For

example, the choice of domestication or

foreignization translation strategy (familiar

or unfamiliar words) depends on the fact that

who the readers are and what their assumptions

about the context are. Xu (2016) claimed that

the target of any translation is equivalent to

the ST in terms of the reader’s reaction to

the text as a result of interaction between the

reader’s schematic knowledge and the textual

realization. The criterion of translation quality

is then how to construct the closest sets of

In short, the target-text readers who

consume the end product should be considered

as potential assessors to measure the success

or failure of a translation. Their response may

contribute to not only signiﬁcant comments

on the eﬀectiveness of the translation process

but also further recommendations to improve

the translation version. In this study, as the

primary source of visitors to the Vietnamese

Women’s Museum, foreign tourists would be

chosen to the readers for assessment.

3. Methodology

3.1. Research Subject and Participants

The main subject of the study was object

labels displayed at Vietnamese Women’s

Museum in its six major sections, namely

women’s marriage, birth, family life, mother

worshipping, women in history, and women’s

fashion. The ﬁrst part about marriage

and birth includes the objects of wedding

oﬀerings, gifts, bride and groom clothes,

invitation cards, or medications for mothers

from diﬀerent ethnic groups in Vietnam. The

Vietnamese Mother-worshipping religion,

war weapons, daily household goods, items,

clothes or motif techniques are presented in

other parts. All the contents are typically

diverse in culture-speciﬁc items, which makes

them the adequate subjects of this research.

The labels can be divided into two main

types including the short titles in white bold

with the name on the board indicating what

the object was and the long description next

to the short one indicating further information

of the object, its usage, material, ownership,

or related custom. The collected data was

over 700 images of all object labels. A list of

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477 Vietnamese-English translations, which

were short titles in bold and some outstanding

phrases related to sewing techniques of

long titles, were then selected for further

assessment.

Poor

30%

Fair

70%

Forty foreign visitors from English-

speaking countries, including the USA,

England, Canada, Australia, and New

Zealand were invited to be participants in

this study. First, they were all tourists visiting

the Vietnamese Women’s Museum for the

ﬁrst time. This would assure the naturalness

of participants’ interest in the Vietnamese

culture displayed at the museum. Second,

as their Western cultural background would

diﬀerentiate them from Vietnamese culture

knowledge, this might result in signiﬁcant

ﬁndings in their evaluation of object labels’

translation in the Vietnamese Women’s

Museum. It should be noted that these

participants came from diﬀerent working

ﬁelds ranging from education (40%),

business (25%), health care (15%) to art and

entertainment (15%).

Chart 2. Tourists’ self-evaluation on their

understanding of Vietnamese culture

3.2. Data collection instruments

A questionnaire and follow-up interview

were conducted to collect data in this study. The

two-page questionnaire (see Appendix 1 for a

full version of the questionnaire) contained two

parts. The ﬁrst part was to collect participants’

background information, including their

nationalities, occupations, ages and genders.

The second part had ﬁve questions: the

ﬁrst three questions investigating tourist’s

diﬃculties in understanding the translation

and their explanation; the fourth asking about

their overall evaluation for translation quality

at the Vietnamese Women’s Museum and

the last re-checked their self-evaluation on

the understanding of the translation. In order

to answer it, the participants were asked to

interpret ﬁve Vietnamese culture-related words

which had no exact English equivalence.

The survey results, however, could

not show cultural understanding of the

respondents as well as stories behind their

answers. Consequently, an in-depth interview

was conducted as soon as the tourists ﬁnished

answering the questionnaire. It was designed

with short questions for the researchers

to explain the meaning of translation that

foreigners found it diﬃcult to understand

in the questionnaire and ask further details

about their comments on the translation

quality. Also, the respondents’ references and

recommendations (if there were) to improve

the current translation quality of culture-

speciﬁc items would be clariﬁed.

5%

10%

American

10%

British

45%

Canadian

Australian

Others

30%

Chart 1. Tourists’ nationality

Regarding tourists’ self-evaluation on

their understanding of Vietnamese culture,

the majority (70%) rated their knowledge as

“fair” while 30% thought they rarely knew

about Vietnamese culture and no one rated

“good”.

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159

3.3. Data collection procedures

Quantitative and qualitative analysis

(for survey and interview) was employed to

analyze the collected data for this study. After

collecting the data from the questionnaire, the

tourists’ background information and their

answers were classiﬁed in similar groups of

common trends. These data were converted to

percentages and presented in graphs. The note

from the interview was written down in order

to ﬁnd out the dominant tourists’ assessment

on translation quality at the Vietnamese

Women’s Museum.

Stage 1: Pilot questionnaire and interview

To ensure the eﬀectiveness of collected

information from the questionnaire and

interview, pilot ones were carried out by

sending test questionnaires to three native

English speakers via email and giving a

test questionnaire and interview to 2 actual

foreigners visiting Vietnamese Women’s

Museum. Their answers were revised to

complete the ﬁnal version.

Stage 2: Deliver the questionnaires and

conduct the interviews

4. Findings and discussion

Face-to-face questionnaires and interviews

were carried out to collect data from the

40 foreign visitors from English-speaking

countries visiting the Vietnamese Women’s

Museum. These interviews were conducted in

English to guarantee the origin and preciseness

of the study. The semi-structure allowed

ﬂexibility and naturalness for new questions to

be probed in. Both recording and note-taking

were used to record data (with agreement and

permission from respondents).

4.1. Research question 1

4.1.1.Tourists’diﬃcultiesinunderstanding

This was the procedure to conduct

questionnaires and interviews

Chart 3. Diﬃculty in understanding

Chart 3 shows that the majority of

the participants found no diﬃculty in

understanding the translation of object labels

at the Vietnamese Women’s Museum. Several

tourists used words like “well-presented

translation”, “easy to understand”, “very

clear”, “all good” and “well-done translation”

to comment on the translation.

Step 1: Participant invitation

The researcher guided a private tour

for one or two English native speakers at

Vietnamese Women’s Museum. At the end of

the tour, the researcher asked participants for

permission to collect data for the study.

Step 2: Questionnaire instructions

However, 17% (7 people) responded that

they found it diﬃcult to understand some

parts of the translation. The ambiguous and

confusing content is often related to marriage,

cultivation tools, Mother worshipping,

and traditional clothes. In particular, the

participants said they hardly understood and

were unfamiliar with specialized terms about

cloth-making techniques (i.e. ‘motif art’,

‘batik’, ‘applique’, ‘ikat’); kinds of society

in Vietnamese culture (i.e. ‘patrilineal’,

The researcher instructed respondents to

complete the questionnaire.

Step 3: Completing the questionnaire and

interview

The researcher asked respondents to

complete the questionnaire and went on with

further interview questions.

3.4. Data analysis procedures

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160

‘matrilineal’); names of traditional Vietnamese

clothes (i.e. ‘Tu than’, ‘ao dai’), and tools of

cultivation (‘sickle’, ‘ploughing’). The other

culture-speciﬁc items in religious practices

like ‘Mother Goddess worshipping’ (‘thờ Mẫu’

in Vietnamese), ‘consecration ritual’ (‘lễ bán

khoán’ in Vietnamese) were also on the list.

The participants also evaluated the

percentage of content at the Vietnamese

Women Museum that they could understand

with ease through the scale of 0 to 10. Half

of them had no diﬃculties in understanding

the culture-related content in translation at

the museum. Noticeably, there were 20% of

tourists who could get the whole meaning of

all object labels. Meanwhile, the number of

respondents understanding only half of the

information was only 5%.

Chart 4. Responses in understanding

diﬃculty

It can also be seen thatVietnamese culture-

speciﬁc items such as names of clothes,

religious practices and motif techniques were

rated as the most challenging for the tourists

in this study to understand. These words often

had no equivalence in English or were not

familiar with foreigners in their culture and

background knowledge.

Chart 6. Level of content tourists can

understand

4.1.3. Re-check reliability of tourists’self-

evaluation

4.1.2. Tourists’translation quality assessment

Believing that all positiveness from

the participants in the previous assessment

was subjective, the researchers decided

to re-check the reliability of tourist self-

assessment. All the respondents were

asked to explain their understanding of

ﬁve culture-speciﬁc items taken from the

museum’s exhibition. They were ‘Celestial

Mother’ (‘bà mụ’), ‘Consecration Ritual’

(‘lễ bán khoán’), ‘Mother Goddess’ (Mẫu),

‘Shoulder Pole’ (‘Quang gánh’), ‘Ao Dai’

(‘áo dài’). These Vietnamese culture-bound

words were selected as the researchers

noticed that they related to religion, clothes

and street vendors, which often caused

certain misunderstanding and ambiguity

for visitors. To be more speciﬁc, the words

were given to participants without showing

pictures or any other visual aids of them.

The result was shown in the table hereafter.

When being asked about translation

quality at the Vietnamese Women’s Museum,

almost all tourists showed a high level of

satisfaction. To be more speciﬁc, 65% of

visitors voted “completely satisﬁed” and 35%

rated “quite satisﬁed”. There was no record

of the votes for ‘satisﬁed’, ‘less satisﬁed’, or

‘dissatisﬁed’ (Chart 5).

Chart 5. Translation quality satisfaction

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161

Table 3. Responses of tourists for interpreting cultural translation

Percentages of

right answer in

Number 83% (33 people)

Translation Translation

Procedure Strategies

Culture-

speciﬁc items

No.

Deﬁnition

of correct

responses

participants

with no

diﬃculty in

understanding

13 mothers taking

care of baby

1

2

Celestial mother

Equivalence Domestication

2

6%

0%

before birth

Ritual of putting

the baby’s soul

in the temple for

protection

Consecration

ritual

None

System of

four Mothers

and Pantheon

of Goddess

3

Mother Goddess

Equivalence Domestication

18

54,5%

protect/ care for

everything

The pole for

4

5

Shoulder Pole carrying baskets Equivalence Domestication

of street vendor

23

1

69,7%

Vietnamese

Ao dai

Borrowing Foreignization

3%

traditional dress

It can be seen that there was a small number

of tourists who could recall the meaning of

terms number 1, 2, 5 (only 0%-6% of visitors

could interpret correctly).After being explained

the meanings of 5 terms, ‘ao dai’ and ‘shoulder

pole’ could be recalled by 100% tourists,

while the percentage for ‘Mother Goddess’

was 93,9% (31 out of 33). Nevertheless, the

percentage remained unchanged for ‘celestial

mother’ and ‘consecration ritual’ as no tourist

was able to remember the section related to the

two terms above.

ones. The reasons given by tourists was that

among ﬁve terms of diﬀerent Vietnamese

cultural activities above, ‘Mother-Goddess

Worshipping’ and ‘Street Vendor’ were

exhibited in separated rooms at Vietnamese

Women’s Museum, while the other three were

just shown in small sections of each ﬂoor, so

these terms are more noticeable and well-

informed. Also, the images of street vendors

and Vietnamese national dress imprinted in

tourists’ impression when they ﬁrst came to

Vietnam since they can be seen on the street,

at shops, Vietnam Airlines ﬂight attendants’

uniforms, tourist handbooks, souvenirs.

As the data revealed, ‘celestial mother’

and ‘consecration ritual’ were the two most

poorly understood terms, while ‘mother

worshipping’ along with ‘ao dai’ and

‘shoulder pole’ are the more noticeable

Inshort, despite thefairlysatisfactorylevel

of self-evaluation from 83% of participants,

the Vietnamese culture-speciﬁc words still

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162

posed signiﬁcant challenges for readers to

understand and remember due to dissimilarity

between the cultures and languages.

in translation at Vietnamese Women’s

Museum (only 2%-12% of object labels’

translation used other procedures). Similarly,

foreignization strategy is employed as much as

85% in translation. From the statistics, it can

be seen that the translator(s) of the museum

exhibits intended to keep the translation

natural and close to readers by mostly using

foreignization strategy.

4.2. Research question 2

4.2.1. Tourists’preferences

To investigate the participants’preferences

for translation at the museum, the researchers

classiﬁed object labels’ translation into

procedures based on Vinay and Darbelbet’s

model (2000) and noted the tourists’ choices

of their favored procedures after showing

them the classiﬁed table. The percentages of

translation procedures and strategy used to

translate the total of 477 selected object labels

at the Vietnamese Women’s Museum in this

study were illustrated in Chart 7. As Calque

and Modulation procedures were not used in

translating object labels, the pie chart did not

include these two procedures.

After having been shown the table of

classifying procedures and strategies of

translation, the tourists’ highest preferences

of procedure were ‘literal translation’ at 90%,

followed by ‘transposition–and ‘descriptive

equivalence’ at 70% and 57,5 % respectively.

Other procedures were dismissed as ‘hard

to understand without explanation’, or

‘unfamiliar’. The tourists explained that

the content whose meaning was conveyed

by literal translation procedure was easy to

understand no matter the diﬀerent shape or

structure of the object is. They also added

that the familiarity with the words helped

them visualize the usage or function of the

displayed items. In terms of the culture-

speciﬁc items, “descriptive equivalence was

unavoidable” as descriptive translation could

maintain the ‘culture value’ and help them

visualize the object. Finally, the tourists

did not recognize any diﬀerences between

literal translation and transposition. As they

did not know Vietnamese, grammar changes

in transposition procedure could not be

recognized from tourists’ views.

Literal Translation

5%

Transposition

Transferene

Equivalence

12%

3%

2%

78%

Literal Translation +

Transferene

Chart 7. Percentages of translation

procedures

15%

Foreignization

Domestication

85%

Overall, literal translation and descriptive

equivalence were the most favored procedures

in translating atVietnameseWomen’s Museum.

Chart 8. Percentages of translation strategies

4.2.2. Tourists’recommendations

As can be seen in the pie chart, literal

translation accounted for 78% of translation

while other procedures were rarely used

When being asked for recommendations

for better translation at Vietnamese Women’s

Museum (especially the culture-speciﬁc items

VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol.36, No.6 (2020) 150-167

163

that are diﬃcult to understand), all the tourists

Secondly, Vietnamese culture needs

more recognition from foreign visitors. For

instance, while most foreigners can recognize

traditional costumes’ names from other

countries like ‘Hanbok’ from Korean or

‘Kimono’ from Japan, ‘Ao dai’ from Vietnam

is hardly retained by tourists unless they have

come to Vietnam before. This highlighted

that the Vietnamese government or travel

agencies should consider spreading images

of Vietnamese cultures, including diversity of

ethnicminoritygroups,traditionalceremonies,

costumes, cuisines, music, and local customs

more internationally. Public media like

magazines, advertisements, tourist brochures,

handbooks, or social networks can be a useful

means in this case. Besides, as these concepts

are strange to foreigners from other cultures,

they should be introduced informatively and

thoroughly in the simple short text so that

foreigners can absorb and remember with

ease. Last but not least, when the translators

want to keep the origin of Vietnamese names,

added explanations in English should appear

apart from Vietnamese version in order to

make readers memorize the content.

had no other way to translate. Their common

explanations were that their familiarity with

Vietnamese culture might not be wide enough

to recognize without seeing models, pictures,

or reading descriptions and explanations.

Their suggestions, therefore, were to broaden

Vietnamese culture through tourist brochures,

booklets, guide books, or advertisements. For

example,if‘áodài’isoneofthemosttraditional

and typical dresses, so it was appropriate

to keep its original Vietnamese name. But

for ‘áo tứ thân’, the tourists said they had

barely or never seen it before in Vietnamese

tourist brochures or advertisements, hence,

it should be translated in a descriptive way.

For example, it is suggested that the term may

be translated as ‘áo tứ thân’ - a traditional

Vietnamese costume with four panels.

4.3. Discussion and implication

As can be seen from the results above,

there are some suggestions the researchers

have withdrawn from. First of all, in general,

translation at Vietnamese Women’s Museum

came up to tourists’ expectations and

successfully delivered the majority content

of the museum to help visitors visualize and

make them ﬁnd Vietnamese culture interesting.

However, some contents relating to religion

or Vietnamese customs (Mother worshipping,

consecration ritual, 13 celestial Mothers full-

month ceremony) and traditional outﬁts (fabric-

making or fabric-dyeing methods, names of

traditional costumes) caused some diﬃculties

for readers. Hence, the Vietnamese Women’s

Museum should pay more attention to the

display sections of these contents. It is suggested

that explanation texts or the introduction of some

religious belief and concept, more information,

or English description of Vietnamese names can

be added in order to help visitors understand

more about the Vietnamese culture.

5. Conclusion

The study revealed that most tourists

(83%), despite their diﬀerent gender,

background, or nationality, found no

diﬃculty in understanding translated terms

and no tourists felt ‘dissatisﬁed’ with the

translation. On top of that, the response rates

were beyond expectation with only positive

votes of ‘completely satisﬁed’ and ‘quite

satisﬁed’. In contrast, when it comes to the

negative side, most tourists still had diﬃculty

in understanding some Vietnamese cultural

translations relating to religion and national

costumes.

P. T. Trang, T. P. Linh / VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol.36, No.6 (2020) 150-167

164

Besides, tourists’ preferences for

the translation of cultural object labels but

also from the translators’ perspectives. Last

but not least, further research’s subject can be

diﬀerent from object labels at Vietnamese’s

Women Museum. It can be another culture-

speciﬁc translation at diﬀerent museums.

translation

were

literal

translation,

transposition, and descriptive equivalent.

They also recommended that literal translation

should be mostly used because objects share

similar features between cultures; therefore,

this procedure is simple to understand with

visual supports like models or pictures of

objects. For Vietnamese culture-speciﬁc

items that cannot be translated literally, the

descriptive equivalent would be helpful for

readers to visualize the object. Furthermore,

the tourists suggested more detailed

explanations for some Vietnamese culture-

bound terms as well as wishes for Vietnamese

culture to become more popular and advertised

in public media. This, to some extent, helps

foreigners assess Vietnamese culture easier so

that the chance for them to understand cultural

translation would be enhanced.

References

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Routledge.

Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation.

London: Oxford University Press.

Crystal, D., & Davy, D. (1969). Investigating English

Style. English Languages Series. London, UK:

Longman.

Georges, L. B. (1998). Encyclopedia of Translation Studies.

New York, NY: Routledge.

Hickey, L. (2003). The reader as translation assessor.

Studies in Translation, 1(1): 59-92.

House, J. (1977). A Model for Translation Quality

Assessment. New York, NY: Routledge.

Joos, M. (1967). The Five clocks. New York, NY:

Harcourt, Brace & World.

In terms of limitation, this study was

conducted on a small scale (40 foreign visitors)

at the Vietnamese Women’ Museum. This can

aﬀect the diversity of tourists’ assessment and

the result of the study. In addition, the content

of the museum covers many aspects and the

sizeable exhibitions consist of four ﬂoors

with smaller sections in various Vietnamese-

related areas. Hence, the questionnaires

and interviews conducted at the end of the

visit can be less qualitative as most tourists

cannot remember the diﬃcult translations to

understand and their tiredness also made the

judgment less precise.

Laviosa-Braithwaite, S. (1998). Encyclopedia of

Translation Studies. New York, NY: Routledge.

Lim, L., & Loi, K. (2015). Evaluating slogan translation

from the readers’ perspective: A case study of

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Muñoz, I. D. (2011). Tourist translations as a mediation

tool: Misunderstandings and diﬃculties. Cadernos

de traduçao, 1(27), 29-49.

Narváez, I. C., & Zambrana, J. M. V. (2014). How to

translate culture-speciﬁc items: A case study of

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Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation (Vol 1).

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Nida, E., & Taber, C. (1974). The Theory and Practice of

Translation. California: Stanford University Press.

Nida, E. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating with

Special Reference to Principles and Procedures

Involved in Bible Translation. Brill: Leiden.

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further studies, it should be noted that further

study can be conducted on a larger scale with

a larger group of tourists and research subjects

in order to enhance the reliability and equality

of the research. Additionally, the approach of

the study can be explored from another point

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translating. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language

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Pierini, P. (2007). Quality in web translation: An

investigation into UK and Italian tourism web sites. The

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Rezaei, M., & Kuhi, D. (2014). Strategies Employed in

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Translation of Tourist Guidebooks Culture-speciﬁc

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Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility. New

York, NY: Routledge.

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ĐÁNH GIÁ VỀ BẢN DỊCH VIỆT-ANH CÁC MẪU VẬT

Ở BẢO TÀNG PHỤ NỮ VIỆT NAM

QUA GÓC NHÌN CỦA DU KHÁCH NƯỚC NGOÀI

Phạm Thu Trang¹, Trần Phương Linh²

1. Khoa Triết học, Tâm lý và Khoa học ngôn ngữ, trường Đại học Edinburgh, Vương quốc Anh

2. Khoa Sư phạm tiếng Anh, trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ, ĐHQGHN

Phạm Văn Đồng, Cầu Giấy, Hà Nội, Việt Nam

Tóm tắt: Dịch từ ngữ văn hóa gây ra nhiều khó khăn cho người dịch vì công việc này đòi hỏi kiến thức

sâu rộng về cả ngôn ngữ và văn hóa. Nghiên cứu này nhằm nghiên cứu đánh giá của khách du lịch về bản

dịch thuật các mẫu vật tại Bảo tàng Phụ nữ Việt Nam và làm sáng tỏ các ưu tiên của khách du lịch đối với

các thủ pháp dịch từ văn hóa. Nhằm hoàn thành các mục tiêu này, một nghiên cứu hỗn hợp đã được thực

hiện, trong đó phương pháp điều tra qua bảng hỏi và phỏng vấn đã được sử dụng làm công cụ thu thập dữ

liệu chính. Mô hình đề xuất của Vinay và Darbelnet (2000) được sử dụng để phân tích các quy trình dịch

thuật được áp dụng trong việc dịch các từ văn hóa. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy nhìn chung bản dịch tại

Bảo tàng Phụ nữ Việt Nam đã đáp ứng kỳ vọng và truyền tải thành công phần lớn nội dung, giúp du khách

hiểu đa phần nội dung văn hóa được trưng bày tại Bảo tàng. Tuy nhiên, một số nội dung liên quan đến tôn

giáo hoặc phong tục ở Việt Nam bao gồm thờ Mẫu, lễ bán khoán, tục cúng Mụ (cúng đầy tháng) và trang

phục truyền thống như phương thức may hoặc nhuộm vải, tên trang phục truyền thống) gây ra một số khó

khăn cho độc giả. Các đề xuất từ khách du lịch có giá trị cho cả người dịch và Bảo tàng để cải thiện bản

dịch và phần trưng bày tại Bảo tàng.

Từ khóa: dịch thuật, đánh giá của khách du lịch, thuật ngữ văn hóa.

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166

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Questionnaire

We are a research team from University of Languages and International Studies. We are

carrying this survey to collect data for our research “ASSESSMENT ON VIETNAMESE-

ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF OBJECT LABELS AT VIETNAMESE WOMEN’S MUSEUM

THROUGH FOREIGN TOURISTS’ PERSPECTIVES”

We would be very grateful if you could complete this questionnaire. The information will be

used for research purposes only. Thank you for your contribution!

A. Participant’s background

Nationality:………………………

Occupation:………………………

Gender:………………………….

Age:…………………………….

B. Translation Assessment

1. In which area of VWM do you ﬁnd diﬃcult to understand the translating label? (You can

choose more than one or none)

a. Labels related to marriage custom

b. Labels related to birth custom

c. Labels related to women in history

d. Labels related to traditional clothes

e. Labels related to family items

f. Labels related to mother worshipping

g. Labels related to cultivation tools

2. Can you give examples of some translating labels at the museum that you do not understand?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………........................................................................

....................................................................................................................................................

3. What do you think about translation quality at Vietnamese Women’s Museum?

4. What is your general understanding of Vietnamese culture?

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167

a. Good

b. Fair

c. Poor

5. How you interpret the phrases below:

a. Celestial mother: ……………………………………………………………………

b. Consecrationritual:……………………………………………………………………

c. MotherGoddess:………………………………………………………………………

d. Shoulderpole:…………………………………………………………………………

e. Ao dai: ……………………………………………………………………………

6. From the scale of 1 to 10, please indicate the level of content of the museum translation that

you can understand with ease.

This is the end of the questionnaire!

If you are interested in my research or have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me via

[email protected]. Thank you for your time!

Appendix 2: Interview

Part A: Tourists’ assessment

1. Can you explain your answer to question 1? If there is diﬃculty, can you name the particular

factors that make you feel diﬃcult in understanding this ﬁeld?

2. (Explain the meaning of diﬃcult understanding items in question 2 and 5 for participants).

After understanding the label(s), do you have any recommendations for better translation?

3. What is your general opinion about Vietnamese-English translation of object labels at

VWM?

Part B: Tourists’ preference

1. What way of translating in the museum do you like best?

(Given the table of classiﬁed labels based on diﬀerent procedures and strategies)

If you are not satisﬁed with the translation, do you have any suggestions or preference for

better translation?