HA NOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES = = == = = LUONG NGOC PHUONG DIFICULTIES IN ORAL TRANSLATION FACED BY SENIOR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG PHIÊN DỊCH CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGỮ NĂM CUỐI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI 2) GRADUATION THESIS Field: English Linguistics Ha Noi, 2019 HA NOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES = = == = = LUONG NGOC PHUONG DIFICULTIES IN ORAL TRANSLATION FACED BY SENIOR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG PHIÊN DỊCH CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGỮ NĂM CUỐI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI 2) GRADUATION THESIS Field: English Linguistics Supervisor: Mrs Tran Thi Ngan Ha Noi, 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT During the period of doing this graduation thesis, I received a plenty of enthusiastic help and support that guide me to overcome all difficulties to finish this work First and foremost, I would like to express my grateful thank to Mrs Tran Thi Ngan, my supervisor; and Mrs Do Thi Thanh Dung, my co-supervisor This paper would have never been accomplished without their dedicated help and assistance Once again, I would like to thank you very much for your support and understanding for the past four-year learning and training of mine in Hanoi Pedagogical University Secondly, sincerely thank to the Council of Faculty of Foreign Languages including Mrs Nguyen Thi Hong Nhat, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages; Mr Nguyen Van Den, Mrs Tran Linh Chi, Mrs Pham Thi Tuan, and Mr Leonard Reeg for creating favorable conditions for me to conduct this paper You are enthusiastic teachers, your guidance and orientation is the motivation for me to continuously improve myself Finally, I would also like to thank 38 members of class K41-English Linguistics for providing the information for my study to conduct this thesis 3i ABSTRACT This research aims to investigate the common issues that students often have to face during Consecutive Interpretation classes in Hanoi Pedagogical University Consecutive Interpretation is among the official subjects of English Linguistics field in the HPU2 In obtaining the data, the researcher uses survey questionnaire, interview form and observation of Consecutive Interpretation practice classes There are two results of this research The first result show that students often have to face with main problems namely, listening, short-term memory, note-taking, and idea-expressing issue The second result is that those problems happen quite frequent in Interpreting classes which affect badly to the students’ performance Therefore, the researcher suggests readers some useful tips and techniques to overcome those difficulties when doing a Consecutive Interpretation For further research, it is suggested that the study will be conducted in a larger scope and with a more detailed inside into Consecutive Interpretation Keywords: Consecutive Interpretation, difficulties, listening, short-term memory, note-taking, idea-expressing 4i LIST OF ABREVIATIONS Item No Abbreviation Explanation I.L.O International Labour Organization WHO World Health Organization HR Human Resources SOAS School of Oriental & African Studies ET&I English Translation & Interpretation HPU2 Hanoi Pedagogical University EU European Union WTO World Trade Organization WHO World Health Organization 10 UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund 11 APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i ABSTRACT ii LIST OF ABREVIATIONS iii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE .1 1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY .1 1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.4 DESIGN OF THE STUDY 1.5 SCHEDULE OF CONDUCTING THE STUDY CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Characteristics of interpretation 2.1.1 Theories of interpretation 2.1.2 Types of interpretation 2.1.3 Modes of interpretation .6 2.1.4 Modalities of interpretation .8 2.1.5 Consecutive translation .9 2.2 Situations to interpret 10 2.3 Interpreting procedures 11 2.3.1 Steps 11 2.3.2 Key Skills 12 2.4 Some important issues of Consecutive Interpreting 14 2.4.1 Knowledge 14 2.4.2 Powerful Listening 15 2.4.3 Memory 15 2.4.4 Note-taking 15 2.4.5 Time 16 2.4.6 Pronunciation 16 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 17 3.1 Research methods 17 3.1.2 Research instruments 17 3.1.3 Questionnaire 17 3.1.4 Interview 17 3.1.5 Observation 17 3.1.6 Research Participants 17 3.2 Research questions .17 3.3 Research instruments 18 3.3.1 Questionnaire 18 3.3.2 Interview 18 3.3.3 Observation .19 3.4 Data collection 19 3.5 Data analysis 19 3.5.1 Questionnaire data 22 3.5.2 Interview data 27 3.5.3 Observation data 28 CHAPTER IV: SUGGESTIONS 30 4.1 Listening skills 30 4.2 Note-taking skills .31 4.2.1 Always know what is to note down 31 4.2.2 Set the links between ideas .31 4.2.3 Pay attention to verb tenses 31 4.2.4 Use symbols, abbreviations 31 v 4.2.5 Mapping note-taking .32 4.3 Speaking skills 32 4.4 Memorizing skills 33 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION .35 5.1 Conclusions 35 5.2 Limitation of the study .35 5.3 Recommendations 36 5.3.1 To students 36 5.3.2 To teachers 36 5.3.3 To researchers 36 APPENDICES 37 REFERENCES 40 66 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 77 Nowadays, it cannot be denied that our world is growing rapidly in every aspect Particularly, when global integration is becoming a trend, results in the need for large enterprises and international organizations to expand cooperation and international relations Thus, there is a need for more understanding in intercultural relations and communication, inter-language and interpreters are the bridge connects the outside world As a well-known translator Anna Rusconi said “Words travel worlds, and translators the driving” (Anna Rusconi, 2016) And so, the world view of the interpreter has changed a lot, far different from the old days since it was excelling in most areas such as: Businesses, math, physics, science and technology Interpreters has become disciplines in universities and colleges, learners will be trained to become future interpreters In Vietnam, Hanoi Pedagogical University is one among the schools with the training of interpreting skills in the language learning industry The curriculum includes interpreting and related courses such as: note-taking, translation theories, and discourse analysis The main course, interpreting, is divided into theoretical and practical periods which provide not only basic knowledge but also experience in real translating situation with foreign teachers However, during the study, many difficulties still appear in the training and learning sessions of students, especially for senior majors when certain level of skills is required to be ready for work after graduation This paper will provide a brief look of interpretation and its other aspects Moreover, the study will focus mainly on common difficulties senior English majors in the context of this study are facing and give some solutions and strategies in order to help them overcome the problems 1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY  ointing out commons difficulties senior English-majored students often face P Suggesting useful tips and strategies to help students overcome the difficulties To archive the aims of the study, these following questions have been raised: - What are the most common difficulties that senior majors face in interpretation? 88 vocabulary that makes it harder to get the equivalent expressions for conducting the output idea 3.5.3 Observation data After observe a series of videos in Consecutive Interpreting class of K41-ET&I, and using a check lists to sort out the issues and its frequency Below table of data was conducted Item No Issues Appearances Portion Listening 11.43% Idea-understanding 11.43% Note-taking 14 20.00% Memory 16 22.86% Idea-expression 24 34.29% As can be seen from the table, during the recording, the number of frequency is for listening and idea-understanding issue as when listening, students, cannot hear the sounds that the teacher uttered properly (the native teacher speaks American English accents) This directly lead to the misunderstanding of the idea of source language, in the recorded videos, some students still have to re-ask the teacher to repeat or re-explain what has been said These two difficulties each account for 11,43% of the total Issues of note-taking and memory seems to happen in higher frequency Notetaking issues happen 14 times, account for 20% of all the mistakes Due to slow note-taking, they cannot get enough main information in the paper especially, some long words are often missed when they render the message A few students, after not being capable of following the speech, stop taking notes and decide to use their short-term memory to store the details Some fails since after having rendered 7080% of the message, they quickly forget the final rest of the idea, and cannot give a perfect rendering This problem takes 22.86% of the total The rest 34,29% of the obstacles come from the matter of expressing the idea, or outcome message-rendering Students who get this problem mainly not know how to convey the final idea smoothly, from all of what they have had including written notes and short-term memory The result is, an unfinished choppy speech with mini pauses during the students’ utterance Besides, some information is still missing and versions of interpretation are still lack of accuracy since a portion of the output is translated differently from the original input source language CHAPTER IV SUGGESTIONS Since the students have some mentioned common problems mostly with listening, note-taking, with Consecutive Interpretation, the author subjectively suggest some below suggestions to deal with the obstacles 4.1 Listening skills To improve listening skills, students should practice every day to get familiar with the voices, accents, pronunciations, the speed, and the pressure of interpreting A regular practice with audios or subtitled videos should be suitable for the beginning, but try not to look at the subtitles 1, Listen to the whole audio to get a general idea The audios may be a dialogue, a talk, a short story; the length should be minutes, or 10 minutes After listening, try to trace back to see if you miss any information If you haven’t got all of the details, go back to the start and try to master it 2, Listen to an audio sentence by sentence You can preferably pause after or sentences if they are short sentences, and if it is a long sentence and transcribe the sentences Some may think this activity is time-consuming and tiring, but remember that: No pain, no gain Practicing is never enough 3, Surely you will have some gaps in your transcript, try to re-listen for the whole sentence for a number of times Do not see the subtitles, try to discover it yourself Listen to the sounds and think about some possible spellings, dictionary may be used to check the spellings of the word By doing this, not only your ears will be improved, but also your spellings and vocabulary 4, After filling all the blanks, check your result by comparing your transcript with the original one to see they are correct or not 5, Be ready for the next practice, try to repeat the procedure regularly An interpreter should continuously develop his/her listening skills, the easiest way is to practice interpreting speeches in conversations If something is unclear, he/she should look it up and note it down immediately because language is changing every day 4.2 Note-taking skills 4.2.1 Always know what is to note down Notes can be considered as a frame outline of the source language utterance listed with main ideas For an interpreter, it is vital that he/she has the ability to identify, sort out important ideas, information and omit the unnecessary which does not affect the meaning of the speech Furthermore, an interpreter can easily reconstruct the structure of the speech, retrieve the important details, and keep the loyalty to the original in terms of meaning by writing down key information - Write down the key information only - Sort out important ideas, omit the unnecessary words, but remain the meaning 4.2.2 Set the links between ideas During the work, the interpreter should pay attention to the relationships among individual idea since they can influence the overall meaning of the speech The ways that ideas may be linked together are: - Logical consequences: as a result, accordingly, therefore, consequently, hence; - Logical cause: because, due to, as, since, for; - Opposition: but, yet, nevertheless, however, on the other hand; By noting these relationships, the interpreter will be easily to follow the flow of the speech from the start to the end 4.2.3 Pay attention to verb tenses Tenses of the verbs are also to be considered, the tenses of verbs should be noted correctly The overall meaning of the utterance may be influenced if the tenses is changed and, it is not the purpose of doing interpretation which is conveying the exact meaning of source language 4.2.4 Use symbols, abbreviations A symbol is like a mark that represents a certain thing, word, or subject Abbreviation is a shorten form of words, usually of common international organizations or institutions An interpreter should take them into his/her mind to remember, and must have background knowledge for it Some examples of abbreviation are: European Union : EU World Trade Organization : WTO World Health Organization : WHO United Nations Children’s Fund : UNICEF Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation : APEC While using symbols, interpreter should pay attention not to be confused between the concept of each symbols since there may be similarities among symbols An interpreter can create his/her own style of symbols, or shortened words to express a longer phrase, in order for further use 4.2.5 Mapping note-taking The mapping method is useful to organize the notes in a more visual way and also to connect the relationships between topics The notes should be organized by the main topic, then branch out to smaller subtopics with detailed data about each one steps of mapping note-taking: - Begin with the main topic - Spread it out in smaller subtopics, write headings for each - Write some key words, key details, or important notes down below each subtopic - Keep going on the pattern 4.3 Speaking skills Speaking skills is also crucial to an interpreter as the listener will not understand what you say if your pronunciation in not correct, therefore lead to the miss of information The best way to practice speaking skills is to practice it To speak well, you have to speak every day, try to find a partner near your side, a colleague, a roommate, or classmate, who speak English Take advantage of that, communicate with them in English when you are available When speaking, be free, don’t worry about making mistakes because the more mistakes you make, the more experience you earn If you make some wrong pronunciation or so, definitely your partner will correct you, take that in your mind and try not to violate it in next conversations Another way to improve your pronunciation is copying the way people speak If you are confusing about how to pronounce the words correctly, look up for it to see how it is pronounced by professional interpreter Pay attention to the sound and the way they move their tongue, lips, and teeth, then copy it You can stand in front of a mirror, say the words and check if the sound is correct or not 4.4 Memorizing skills Memorizing is among the first steps when you interpret a language To improve the memory, shadowing technique may be an effective solution The nature of shadowing technique is repeat what has been said independently and immediately You are to copy all of the features of the speaker’s utterance such as, intonation, pronunciation, ending sounds By practicing the shadowing, you can improve not only your short-term memory but also your peaking and listening There are main steps in shadow technique: Step 1: Find a source of audio with transcript or subtitle You should choose an audio that is suitable with your current level Take one with not so much new words and vocabulary, it will be easier to understand the whole idea The speed of the audio is also concern; a fast speech will make you confused when practicing, hence lead to an early giving-up Additionally, you should choose what makes you amused, so that you can continue practicing without being bored Some examples are movies with subtitles, lyrics with audio tracks, talk shows, sitcoms or cartoons Step 2: Listening Listen to the text once, and in case you cannot get at least the general idea, you should change to another appropriate topic Listen for a few more times until you feel confident of understanding all the ideas because you will not have time to figure out when you get to the next hearings The advance for this section is that you should only listen for 30 minutes in one time because your brain works in the best condition during the first 30 minutes, after that the efficiency will decrease Take advantage of it, spend 5-10 minutes for it when you are going to school, going to the market, sitting on the bus, and so on Step 3: Shadowing Re-open the audio or video, try to ape the pronunciation and intonation of the speaker You can listen and read the transcript Next, mute the video and read the transcript with your own voice Once you get familiar with the practice, listen to the video only and then repeat each sentence without seeing the subtitles As for further practice, the length and number of sentences should be expanded, try to memorize as much information as you can and then repeat them After having recorded your speech, save it and compare with the audio and transcript to see if the information that you uttered are the same as in the video CHAPTER V CONCLUSION This chapter has three main parts namely conclusions, limitations and suggestions 5.1 Conclusions Based on the findings in Chapter III, some conclusions related to the difficulties of Consecutive Interpretation in the HPU2 can be drawn below In relation with the first objective, which is to find out the issues senior English majors in the HPU2 often have in Consecutive Interpretation There are total of issues mentioned by the participants namely listening, ideaunderstanding, note-taking, memory, note-expressing, and idea-expressing Among those issues, listening, memory, note-taking, and idea-expressing are the most common since the rate of votes for higher frequency levels such as often, usually and always are higher than the lower ones (see column chart 1) Dealing with the second aim which is to find out to what extend the obstacles affect students’ performance It can be drawn that students have to face with those problems almost all the time they Consecutive Interpretation as more than 25 % of the students votes that they usually have problems in note-taking, memory and idea-expressing; and listening issue has 13% and 8% of the votes for usually and always respectively Means they are struggling with those problems in a high frequency In order to help students overcome those problems, the author recommends some tips and suggestions to deal with listening skills, nota-taking skills, speaking skills, and memorizing skills 5.2 Limitation of the study This topic if large, but when writing this research paper, the author focuses mainly on understanding the problems that students often encounter in Consecutive Interpretation classes Moreover, the research is conducted on a certain number of students in a university unit, particularly Hanoi Pedagogical University Therefore, it is not capable to deeply study and analyze the topic in a larger scale 5.3 Recommendations After conducting the research, the writer proposes three suggestions for the students who are learning Consecutive Interpretation as one of their main subject in university, teachers who are teaching the subject of oral translation, and researchers who are intending to study the same topic 5.3.1 To students Students of English Linguistics should spend time learning more about Consecutive Interpretation though articles, books, and other sources for deeper understanding Besides, it is suggested that students should spend more efforts for self-practice in classes and home, apply regular exercises to improve interpreting skills 5.3.2 To teachers Teaching not only relies on knowledge in books but also depends largely on practical experience and practices Teachers who are teaching interpretation should create more opportunities for students to have the environment to practice and experience real-life interpretation situations Since then students can accumulate practical skills and knowledge actively themselves and know how to handle problems in real situations 5.3.3 To researchers Future researchers who are interested in the same topic are suggested to study other aspects of Consecutive Interpretation Besides, they can try to conduct more advanced researches with other way of approaching and deeper analysis into the topic APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: Survey questionnaire of Consecutive Interpretation Questionnaire on Consecutive Interpretation Dear all: My name is Phuong, a senior English-majored student at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2, Vietnam I am conducting a survey on Consecutive Interpretation, this questionnaire is a part of the survey The purpose of this questionnaire is to find out some information of which difficulties students are facing and the to what extend they affect the student's study It will not take long to finish the questionnaire Again, I appreciate your competence and help 1, On scale of 5, how hard is the Consecutive Interpretation subject in your class? Easy Little bit hard Difficult Very difficult Extremely difficult Consecutive interpretation 2, Let me know what issues you're having when doing consecutive interpretation You can choose more than one choice If you're facing another different issue, please write down below Listening Understanding the idea Note-taking Memory Expressing the note Re-expressing the idea Extra: 3, In scale of 5, how is the frequency of problems you have when doing Consecutive Interpretation? Rarely Listening Ideaunderstanding Note-taking Memory Sometimes Often Usually Always Noteexpressing Ideaexpressing 4, In scale of 5, in your opinion, how important are these skills in Consecutive Interpretation ? Least important Not important In between Important Very important Listening Ideaunderstanding Note-taking Memory Noteexpressing Ideaexpressing 5, Besides, are you having to cope with any of these problems ? And how is the frequency ? Rarely Sometimes Often Usually Always I cannot hear the speech properly I cannot understand what was said I am distracted by the surroundings I cannot remember what was said I heard some new words and I don’t know what they mean I don’t know how to express the idea in Vietnamese 6, Any problems not mentioned above ? APPENDIX 2: Questions for interview Interview form on Consecutive Interpretation Dear all: My name is Phuong, a senior English-majored student at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2, Vietnam I am conducting a survey on Consecutive Interpretation, this interview form is a part of the survey The purpose of this interview is to find out some information of which difficulties students are facing and the to what extend they affect the student's study It will not take long to finish the form Again, I appreciate your competence and help Question 1: In your opinion, is Consecutive Interpreting classes in the HPU2 difficult? ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… Question 2: During Consecutive Interpretation classes, what problems you encounter? ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… Question 3: How often you have to face the problems during Consecutive Interpretation classes? ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… REFERENCES Berlo, David K (1960) The Process of Communication: An Introduction to Theory and Practice USA Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc Carford, J (1995) A linguistic Theory of Translation London Oxford University Press Cokely, D (1992) Interpretation: A sociolinguistic model Burtonsville, MD: Linstok Press Colin, J and Morris, R (1996) Interpreters and the Legal Process Winchester: Waterside Press Colonomos, B., 1987 Interpreting process: A working model Unpublished workshop handout Ford, L (1988) Mind mapping: A technique for expanding short-term memory in interpreting In Dinning, E.F (ed) Papers of the 1988 Conference of the Association of Visual Language Interpreters of Canada AVLIC Publications pp 20–30 Ghazala, Hasan, (1995) Translation as problems and solutions (4th ed.) Syria: Dar Elkalem ElArabi Gillies, A., 2005 Note-taking for Consecutive Interpreting: A Short Course Manchester: St Jerome Hale, S and Napier, J (2013) Research methods in interpreting: A practical resource London, Bloomsbury Herbert, J (1956) The interpreter’s handbook: How to become a conference interpreter Geneva: Librairie de l’Université Janzen, T (2005) Interpretation and language use: ASL and English In T Janzen (Ed.), Topics in signed language interpreting (pp 67–105) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Jones, R., 2002 Conference Interpreting Explained Manchester: St Jerome Miyake, Akira and Shah, Priti (eds) (1999) Models of Working Memory: An Introduction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Patrie, C., 2004 The Eff ective interpreting series: interpreter from English Teacher’s Guide San Diego: Dawn Sign Press Consecutive Pöchhacker, F (2004) Introducing interpreting studies New York, NY: Routledge Pöchhacker, F., & Shlesinger, M (Eds.) (2002) The interpreting studies reader London, England: Routledge Pöchhacker, Franz (1991) ‘The role of theory in simultaneous interpreting’ Teaching Pöchhacker, Franz (2001) ‘Quality assessment in conference and community interpreting’ Pöchhacker, Franz (2009) ‘Issues in interpreting studies’, in Jeremy Munday (ed.) The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies London: Routledge, 128-140 Roy, C (2000) Interpreting as a discourse process New York, NY: Oxford University Press Rozan, Jean Francois (1956) Note-taking in Consecutive Interpreting Translated by Andrew Gillies and Bartosz Waliczek: Tertium Russell, D., 2005 Consecutive and simultaneous interpreting In: T Janzen, ed Topics in Signed Language Interpreting Amsterdam: John Benjamins Russell, D., Shaw, R and Malcolm, K., 2010 Effective strategies for teaching consecutive interpreting International Journal of Interpreter Education, Seleskovitch, Danica (1998) Interpreting for international conferences: Problems of language and communication Washington (DC): Pen and Booth Setton, Robin and Dawrant, Andrew (2016a) Conference Interpreting: A Complete Course Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company Wadensjö, C., 1998 Interpreting as Interaction London and New York: Longman Yowell, A Muffan, S.L (1999) Principles of Translation Dar Annahda Alarabiya ... KHÓ KHĂN THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG PHIÊN DỊCH CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGỮ NĂM CUỐI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI 2) GRADUATION THESIS Field: English Linguistics Supervisor: Mrs Tran Thi Ngan Ha Noi, 20 19 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT... PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES = = =? ??? ?= = = LUONG NGOC PHUONG DIFICULTIES IN ORAL TRANSLATION FACED BY SENIOR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN... interpreters In Vietnam, Hanoi Pedagogical University is one among the schools with the training of interpreting skills in the language learning industry The curriculum includes interpreting and related