1. SUMMARY OF THE STUDY SENTENCES WITH VERBS (NO.3, 6, 12, 22, 23, 2...

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%.