VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
LÃ THỊ PHƢƠNG LOAN
THE EQUIVALENCE OF ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE
TRANSLATION OF NOUN PHRASES IN THE BOOK
“FIRE AND FURY” BY MICHAEL WOLFF
Tính Tƣơng Đƣơng Trong Bản Dịch Anh – Việt Đối Với Cụm Danh Từ Trong
Tác Phẩm “Bão Lửa Và Cuồng Nộ” của Michael Wolff
M.A. THESIS (PROGRAM 1)
Field:English Linguistics
Code:8220201.01
HANOI – 2020
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
LÃ THỊ PHƢƠNG LOAN
THE EQUIVALENCE OF ENGLISH – VIETNAMESE
TRANSLATION OF NOUN PHRASES IN THE BOOK
“FIRE AND FURY” BY MICHAEL WOLFF
Tính Tƣơng Đƣơng Trong Bản Dịch Anh – Việt Đối Với Cụm Danh Từ Trong
Tác Phẩm “Bão Lửa Và Cuồng Nộ” của Michael Wolff
M.A. THESIS (PROGRAM 1)
Field: English Linguistics
Code:8220201.01
Supervisor: Assoc. Professor Dr Le Hung Tien
HANOI – 2020
i
DECLARATION
I declare that this thesis “The equivalence of English – Vietnamese
Translation of noun phrases in the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff” has been
composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in
any previous application for a degree. This thesis is submitted after a carefully
checking progress in order to fulfill the requirements of the M.A degree.
Hanoi, 2020
Lã Thị Phƣơng Loan
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
It is my gratitude to the beloved supporters who played important roles in my
accomplishment of this thesis entitled: “The equivalence of English and Vietnamese
Translation of Noun Phrases in the book Fire and Fury”. I realize that this thesis
was not completed without their support. I would like to express my sincere
gratitude and respect to:
Assoc. Professor Dr Le Hung Tien whose precious guidance, advice and
supervision are the assets to the thesis;
All the lectures of English Department of Hanoi University of Language and
International Studies who have always been reliable teachers for the
encouragement and enlightenment;
My colleagues for their support of time and encouragement;
Last but not least, the members in my family who have always given me
great support and encouragement all the time.
Finally, I thank for all the constructive criticism and suggestion from the readers
for the better contribution of the thesis.
Hanoi, January 2020
Lã Thị Phương Loan
iii
ABSTRACT
There have been various researches on translation equivalence which have
been key words in the field of translation so far. Within the thesis, an investigation
of the equivalence of the English and Vietnamese translation of the noun phrases
collected in Chapter II of the book “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff was taken
under the aspects of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context.
The study aims at testifying the importance of equivalence in the process of
translation among languages and clarifying the mismatches between the two
languages according to the theory of Meaning-based Translation by Larson (1984).
The mismatches of lexicon, grammatical structure, situational and cultural context
between the two versions are the principal elements for the assessment of the
equivalents of the collected noun phrases in the translation. The contrastive analysis
was implemented at the level of phrase and lexis to draw out the mismatches
between the two language texts in term of lexicon, grammatical structures and
situational and cultural context. The method of descriptive qualitative and approach
as well as the inductive method was used for the implementation of the study. 67
mismatches of lexicon in term of surface structure and one case of mismatch in
deep structure (deep meaning) were found. In the case of changes in deep meaning,
the original information can be distorted. Deep structure is therefore given higher
priority over the surface structure in order to get the faithful and natural translation.
There are 16 cases of situational and cultural mismatch (four cases of cultural
mismatch, eleven cases of situational mismatch). The translator showed the flexible
attitude to make the justifiable adjustment, which is clearly illustrated with three
cases stay intact, three cases translated in target culture and nine cases following the
style of source culture. 18 mismatches of grammatical structure were found, which
shows the fact that the English text has the priority of noun phrases while
Vietnamese favors verbal expression. 6 cases of literal translation have been found
during the investigation. From the findings, useful experiences and principles of