5.1. Summary of the study
sentences with verbs (No.3, 6, 12, 22, 23, 27,
and 32) were shown to have a low choice rate,
This study focuses on measuring the
ranging from 45% to 55%.
receptor”s responses to the naturalness of a
Based on the responses of five groups of
number of Vietnamese sentences containing
verbs being tranlated from those containing
informants as a whole and of each individual
group, altogether 11 sentences with verbs in the
nouns in English. The data were taken from the
five original Australian short stories and their
TTs were chosen as sounding more natural than
translations in Vietnamese. Thirty five
those with nouns by from 46.5% to 55% of
respondents (see Table 1 and Table 2). Three
sentences with the noun-verb shift were
detected in the TTs. For the purpose of
among these 11 sentences (No. 3, 5, and 6)
checking whether this word class shift was the
comprise the nouns [“observations”, “decision”,
and “difference”] in combination with the verb
translator”s style or it was a culture-conditioned
“make”, and two sentences (No. 18 and 27)
linguistic feature of Vietnamese texts, an
contain the nouns “birthday tea” and “school”
MDCT questionnaire, following Bachman”s
following the preposition of time “after”.
[13] framework, was conducted on 370 native
Vietnamese readers of five groups. The
In the three Vietnamese sentences (No. 3, 5
questionnaire was to check the naturalness of
and 6), the option with the verb was chosen by
those thirty five sentences based on responses
about half of respondents of Group 1 (students
from native respondents. Two versions of
of Literature and Linguistics) (sentence No. 3),
MDCT questionnaire were developed: the first
by just above half of respondents of Group 3
version contained thirty five English sentences
(English major students) (sentence No. 5), and
quoted from the original texts and their
by about half of respondents of Group 1, Group
translations in Vietnamese, while the second
2 (postgraduate students of English), and Group
version – only the Vietnamese translations of
4 (lecturers of English) (sentence No.6) (see
those English sentences. There were two
Table 1 and Table 2). The option with the noun
options of Vietnamese translations of English
in these sentences was translated from the
sentences: one option with the verb - taken
English structure (make + observation = tiến
from the TTs, and the other with noun -
hành quan sát; make + decision = đưa ra sự
designed by the researcher.
quyết định; make + difference = gây ra sự khác
On the whole, regarding the responses of
biệt, respectively). It can be seen that this is the
the five groups of informants as a whole, in 20
case only among respondents who was given
out of 35 sentences the options with verbs were
version 1 of MDCT, i.e the version with both
selected as sounding more natural than those
English and Vietnamese sentences, while the
choice of the option with the verb in these
with nouns by over 75% of respondents, and in
10 other sentences - by 60% to 74%
sentences, is much higher among respondents
of Group 5 (general readers), who was given
respondents. In other words, 30 out of 35
sentences with verbs in the TTs, i.e. 85.7%,
version 2 of MDCT, i.e. the version with only
have been opted as sounding more natural than
Vietnamese sentences. A possible explanation
which may be suggested here is that the
the sentences with nouns by over 60%,
precisely by 60.5% - 97%, of respondents. In
respondents of Groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 may
probably be affected by the structure of “make”
the last 5 sentences, the options with verbs were
chosen by less than 60% of respondents. Four
distinction between source-text focused and
target-text focused translations.
among the last five sentences have the choice
rate of lower than 52%.
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