MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES ENGLISH DEPARTMENT __________________________________________ Nguyen Tuyet Ngan GRADUATION THESIS TO SUCCESSFULLY TRANSLATE ENGLISH POEMS INTO VIETNAMESE Instructed by: Nguyen Quy Tam HANOI – 2006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis paper could not be completed without the wholehearted assistance and encouragement from many people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of them. I would like to thank Mr. Nguyen Quy Tam, my instructor, for his careful instruction and valuable comments since the beginning to the end of the study. I sincerely thank Mr. Aaron Chin, my American friend, who has provided me with useful materials for carrying out my study, especially ones regarding English poetry and some studies on translation. I would like to give my tremendous thanks to my father, my mother and my sister for their support and encouragement, without which I could not have been able to put all my mind and effort into carrying out this study for over a month. I would also like to thank other friends of mine for their sincere feedback and encouragement. - ii - TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDEMENTS …………………………………………………….. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………….. iii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ………………………………………... 1 1.1 Background to the study ……………………………………………………. 1 1.2 Aims of the study …………………………………………………………… 3 1.3 Methodology ………………………………………………………………... 4 1.4 Scope of the study …………………………………………………………... 4 1.5 Organization of the thesis …………………………………………………... 5 1.6 Definition of terms ………………………………………………………….. 6 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ……………………………….. 8 2.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………. 8 2.2 Literary translation ………………………………………………………….. 8 2.3 Poetry translation …………………………………………………………… 9 2.3.1 What is poetry? ………………………………………………………... 9 2.3.2 Poetry translation …………………………………………………….. 12 2.4 Previous studies on poetry translation …………………………………….. 13 2.5 Remaining issue …………………………………………………………… 18 CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY ………………………………………… 19 3.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………... 19 3.2 What are required of a translator to translate poetry successfully? ……….. 19 3.3 English poetry vs. Vietnamese poetry …………………………………….. 21 3.3.1 English poetry ……………………………………………………….. 22 3.3.2 Vietnamese poetry ………………………………………………….... 37 3.4 An approach to translating an English poem into Vietnamese …………… 49 3.5 What can be considered a successful translation of a poem? …………….. 58 CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS …………….. 59 4.1 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 59 4.2 Suggestions for further studies …………………………………………... 61 - iii - REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………. 63 APPENDIX: Glossary of poetry forms ............................................................. 65 - iv - CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Translation, since its inception, has always played a vital role in scientific and cultural exchange activities, bringing peoples of different cultures closer together. Each people, each country has its own culture and knowledge passed on from generations to generations and throughout history, the culture and knowledge of each one has been vastly enriched and broadened through translation activities. Translation opens up new horizon of knowledge to people by enabling us to access the immense ocean of knowledge of mankind. Vietnamese patriots and revolutionists in the Dong Kinh movement in early XX century expressed their view on the importance of translation as a booster to the progress of Vietnam and the spirit of its people through those verse lines: “Ch ữ Tàu d ịch l ấy ch ữ ta Ch ữ Tây c ũng ph ải d ịch ra ch ữ mình ….. Sách các n ước, sách China Ch ữ nào ch ữ ấy d ịch ra t ỏ t ường Nông công c ổ tr ăm đường c ũng th ế Hi ệp qu ần nhau thì d ễ toan lo Á Âu chung l ại m ột lò Đúc nên t ư cách m ới cho làm ng ười. Một ng ười đọ c, muôn ng ười đề u bi ết Trí ta khôn, muôn vi ệc đề u hay, Lời nguy ền n ắm được vào tay Có c ơ ti ến hoá có ngày v ăn minh” (Đă ng c ổ tùng báo, as cited in Thuý Toàn, 1999) - 1 - Of translation activities, literary translation, according to Thuý Toàn (1999), plays an especially important role as it helps one people gain better understanding of others than any other type of translation. A number of works constituting the Vietnamese literature are translated versions of Chinese, Russian, French, English literary works and obviously they not only have enriched Vietnamese literature but also have helped boost the creation of the domestic literature. (Thuý Toàn, 1999). Poetry is a form of literature, thus it is also a target pursued by many translators who want to bring the world’s poetic quintessence to Vietnamese readers. Millions of Vietnamese readers have been enchanted by beautiful, passionate lyric poems of the great Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin through the translated versions of Thuý Toàn; many have enjoyed French poet La Fontaine’s Fables translated by Nguy ễn V ăn V ĩnh, etc. Those are excellent poetic works, translated many times by many translators, but there are still a lot valuable, beautiful poems yet to be translated. Besides, although we have seen a lot of Chinese, Russian and French poems translated into Vietnamese, the number of English poems translated seems rather modest (Cao Xuân H ạo, as cited in Doãn Di ễm, 2004). English poetry still appears to be unfamiliar with the majority of Vietnamese people, including English language learners. However, many people wish to understand more about it and even translate it. Against this backdrop, this research is carried out in order to present an approach to translating English poems into Vietnamese. Another reason why I chose this topic for my thesis is that although English language majors of the English Department, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, have carried out many researches on translation, no one has ever dealt with the issue of poetry translation. Meanwhile, literary translation in general and poetry translation in particular cannot be dispensed from the society and still plays a vital role in Vietnamese literature. Besides, the translation of poetry does benefit translators themselves, as translation will help - 2 - translators to acquire much more profound understanding than that can be afforded by the most scrupulous analysis; and the translation of great writers’ works will help translators to realize their creative potential. “The act of translating can evoke in us creative powers we might not otherwise know we had. We can make a contribution to literature while enlarging our own artistic accomplishment” (Kessler, 2000, p. 3). For all those reasons, it is worth to do a research on this subject. This study is carried out with a hope to find something out of the terra incognita to contribute to the collection of researches that have been done. It is done on the basis of my studying English and Vietnamese poetry, prosody, the work of many poetry translators and previous studies about the field. The guideline given in this thesis, of course, is just a suggestion, not a rule. 1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY This thesis is written in order to give general guidelines to translating poems from English to Vietnamese. However, I have to emphasize here that despite being an English major who have studied English for many years and a poetry lover myself, I cannot claim that this study is a guideline to veteran professional translators of poetry. In fact, I owe a lot to their work and studies on which I have done my research. This thesis can only be a guideline to poetry translation for such people as English language learners who have a good command of English and now want to try translating poems from English to Vietnamese, yet find themselves knowing little about poetry in general and poetry translation in particular. Besides, for those who do not intend to translate poems but have a wish to understand more about English and Vietnamese poetry in order to appreciate poems written in these languages better, this study is hoped to be a useful source. In short, this thesis is aimed at: 1) providing would-be translators of poetry with basic knowledge about poetry in general, English and Vietnamese poetry in particular - 3 - 2) offering an approach to translating an English poem into Vietnamese 1.3 METHODOLOGY To achieve the aims above, the study has been carried out with data collected mainly from books, articles, dictionaries, encyclopedias and online documents. After being collected, the data regarding English and Vietnamese poetry was compiled to suit the specific areas related to the study; similarities between English and Vietnamese poetry as well as peculiarities of each one were also drawn. The information obtained from articles was mostly about opinions of writers, poets, and veteran translators about translation, which was seriously taken into account. Online documents offer studies by some international translators on the field of translation and poetry translation, which became good orientation of the study. Besides, the approach offered in the study is based on the thesis writer’s own experience of poetry translation, together with useful knowledge drawn from the previous studies on the field. Apart from that, more information or data needed for the study has been gathered by other methods such as informal discussions with some university majors of English and professional translators. 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This thesis only provides a general guideline to translating English poems into Vietnamese. It neither studies the translation