On Translation

(basically what I talked about with students at a university a few days ago, in English)
(tóm gọn nội dung trao đổi với sinh viên một trường đại học vài hôm trước đây, bằng tiếng Anh)

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I love this phrase beautifully expressed by one of my colleagues, “Hồn phách của tiếng Việt” “The soul of the Vietnamese Language”.

Speaking of “Hồn phách của tiếng Việt”, we’ll naturally think of the many accents, the distinct dialects, the rich expressions, the great poets, and the like. To these I’d like to add the fundamental grammar of Vietnamese language, which is largely different to that of English.

What I find deeply disturbing in my work as a translator and a linguistic instructor is the dire fact that a lot of Vietnamese, among them highly educated and competent professionals, do not have the much-needed mastery of Vietnamese, their native language.

When I ask my workshop attendees whether they know or have ever heard of the Topic - Comment structure, one of the most basic features of Vietnamese grammar, or else the verb serialization, yet another feature of this kind, the result is invariably like this: no more than one or two out of ten people can say ‘Yes’. And, mind you, some of these are professional translators, editors, copywriters, content writers, i.e. working in language-related fields, with at least some years of working experience.

One thing I know, as naturally as I know I am alive, is this: In order to be a good translator, you have to possess not only a mastery of the source language. You have also to possess a mastery of the target language, which, in this case, means your native language.

Fail to possess one of these and you will fall into one of the two fatal chasms of a translator: either you are unforgivably distant from the source material/the author, or you are shamefully alien to your target audience.

Speaking of the “fundamental grammar” of any language in general and Vietnamese in particular, we need some examples. Here one for you.

Whenever I open my mobile phone, I’m unpleasantly struck by the alienness of the notifications saying, for instance, “Đang mở điện thoại của bạn” (Opening your phone). What is the problem with this Vietnamese sentence? many may ask. Or, to put it more bluntly: Is there any problem at all? Yes, there is. A problem does exist here, only that it’s not recognized by so many, which is regrettable, taking into consideration the fact that they’re native Vietnamese speakers.

Let’s consider this phrase: “Tips on how to drive your car safely”. How can this be translated into Vietnamese? “Mẹo lái xe của bạn an toàn” or “Mẹo lái xe an toàn”? Ask this question to an ordinary Vietnamese, one of the vast “eighty percent consisting of non-English speaking Vietnamese people” and you will get an almost identical answer: “Why in the hell anyone can think of putting this stupid “của bạn” (“your”) into this simplest sentence?” The simple fact is, the Vietnamese language does not have, and hence does not use “possessive adjectives” in exactly the same way English does. The natural Vietnamese is “Mẹo lái xe an toàn”, which is literally translated into English as “Tips on how to drive car safely”. Note that none “your” is required. (It can be inferred from the context. Further information can be added in case it’s really necessary to differentiate whether it’s your own car or a borrowed/rented one).

Vietnamese does have specific means to indicate possession, of course, to avoid misunderstanding. For example:

“She combed her hair.” (her own hair)
=> “Cô chải tóc”. (literally: “She combed hair”. The fact that this hair belongs to her can be inferred from the context).

“She combed her hair.” (not her own hair but that of another person, her mother, for example)

=> “Cô chải (mái) tóc của bà” (Yes: “She combed her hair”, where “của bà/her” is used to refer to that another person mentioned earlier)

The same applies to “Đang mở điện thoại của bạn”. This is not how natural Vietnamese works. “Đang mở điện thoại” (lit. “Opening phone”) is good enough. The vast majority of Vietnamese out there, eighty percent of the total population, who are non-English speakers, they don’t speak that way in daily conversation.

This example, I hope, serves well to illustrate how a sound knowledge, or rather, a deep insight of the “inner workings” of our mother tongue is mandatory, if we are to become genuine experts in our language-related fields.

A writer well-versed in distant worlds and imagined lands should also be well-versed in his/her own mud-and-dirt country if he/she is to be a truly good author. A translator who is a virtuoso in foreign languages should also be a virtuoso in his/her native language. That’s the idea behind my translation workshops I have been conducting so far, which I call “Translation: from Hobby to Mastery”.

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This photograph embodies the perilous situation of a "perfect" translator: She must exert all her efforts to find, and to sustain, an "impossible" balance based on the minuscule footing between the two opposite precipices: that of falling slave to the source text, and that of betraying the source in favor of the whimsical tastes of the audience—and of herself.