Grammatical metaphor in English official documentation : a corpus approach to the Vietnamese translation of nominalisation
This thesis aims to investigate grammatical metaphor in Vietnamese translations of English official documentation. Building on Hallidayâs notion of grammatical metaphor and linguistic theories of translation shift, the thesis situates its argument in the broader context of translation theory and explores the various representations of grammatical metaphor in relation to Catfordâs translation shifts. It adopts a corpus approach with the compilation of a 200,000-word English-Vietnamese parallel corpus, and focuses specifically on the translation of nominalisations formed with the suffixes ATION and MENT. The thesis draws on the Vietnamese translations to provide insights into metaphorical modes of expression via nominalisations-as-grammatical metaphor in official texts. The findings reveal the various types of metaphorical meanings embedded in nominalised forms. The identification of this range of metaphorical realisations can be interpreted along a cline from being more verb-like and denoting the Act category, to being more noun-like and denoting the Result category, or stretching along the cline and denoting the Process or Activity indicated in the verbal stem. The thesis supports the argument that several
Le Thi, Giao Chi
grammatical metaphor ; nominalisation ; translation shifts ; translation universals ; linguistic model of translation shifts
Grammatical metaphor in English official documentation : a corpus approach to the Vietnamese translation of nominalisation. This thesis aims to investigate grammatical metaphor in Vietnamese translations of English official documentation. Building on Hallidayâs notion of grammatical metaphor and linguistic theories of translation shift, the thesis situates its argument in the broader context of translation theory and explores the various representations of grammatical metaphor in relation to Catfordâs translation shifts. It adopts a corpus approach with the compilation of a 200,000-word English-Vietnamese parallel corpus, and focuses specifically on the translation of nominalisations formed with the suffixes ATION and MENT. The thesis draws on the Vietnamese translations to provide insights into metaphorical modes of expression via nominalisations-as-grammatical metaphor in official texts. The findings reveal the various types of metaphorical meanings embedded in nominalised forms. The identification of this range of metaphorical realisations can be interpreted along a cline from being more verb-like and denoting the Act category, to being more noun-like and denoting the Result category, or stretching along the cline and denoting the Process or Activity indicated in the verbal stem. The thesis supports the argument that several
grammatical metaphor english official documentation corpus vietnamese translation aim_investigate grammatical metaphor vietnamese translation_english official documentation building halliday notion grammatical metaphor linguistic_theory translation_shift situate argument broad_context translation_theory explore_various representation grammatical metaphor relation translation_shift adopts corpus compilation word english vietnamese parallel_corpus focus_specifically translation form draw vietnamese translation provide_insight metaphorical mode expression via grammatical metaphor official text finding_reveal various_type metaphorical_meaning embed form identification range metaphorical realisation interpret along verb like denoting act category noun like denote category stretch along denote process activity indicate verbal stem support_argument several