Declaration this thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or tertiary institution, and to the best of my knowledge and belief



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participating physician, you may get lower level of coverage.

  • Eliminating this two-year waiting period would provide stable HI to a vulnerable group of adults who are unable to work.

    However, when interpreted in different situations, some others can be either Classifier or Epithet:

    self-funding employer (BH của hãng cho nhân viên)

    pre-existing condition (bệnh tật có sẵn)

    II.2.2.2.4. Terms consisting of Classifier/Epithet (past participle) +Thing

    Like V-ing participle, some V-ed ones can serve as either Classifier or Epithet, and what function it carries depends on different situations:

    covered expense (chi phí được bao trả)

    insured person (người được BH)

    impaired risk (rủi ro xấu)

    experienced morbidity (tỷ lệ bệnh tật theo kinh nghiệm)



    II.2.2.2.5. Terms consisting of Thing + Qualifier

    The Qualifier in this group is usually ‘of noun phrases’:

    evidence of insurability (bằng chứng về khả năng có thể BH)

    coordination of benefits (phối hợp quyền lợi)

    schedule of benefits (bảng liệt kê các quyền lợi được hưởng)

    certificate of insurance( giấy chứng nhận BH)

    We have investigated the structural patterns of the nominal group in English in general and of HI terms in the form of the nominal group in particular. We have also made an attempt in classifying and dividing them into ‘single term’ and ‘compound term’ groups. Single terms are further grouped into sub-insurance terms and high insurance terms. There are subgroups of terms under the head ‘compound terms’.

    The next part will focus on what translation strategies and procedures have been used currently to translate HI terms that do not belong to non-equivalence group, and then draw out the ones that may be best applicable.


    II.3. The common strategies and procedures used in the translation of HIterms of equivalence group

    II.3.1. The translation of single terms – Old words with new senses

    The number of HI single-terms in English, both low-insurance and high-insurance ones, takes up a fairly significant proportion in comparison with compound terms. They, therefore, create a certain level of difficulty to translators. Almost all the terms in this section can be grouped under the heading “Old words with new senses”. They already exist in the language and are commonly used with their basic nuclear meaning. However, onced used in a professional narrow scale, these terms acquire new typical meaning of the field as analysed with vivid examples in (II.2.1).

    What should be noted here is that with regard to equivalence in form, not all Vietnamese terms can be seen as the equivalents for the single terms in English in quite a few cases. The discernible difference can be detected with ease. Take now the single term ‘representation’. It is clearly a term in the form of a single word. When it is rendered into Vietnamese as ‘lời khai của người được BH’, it is no longer a single word. Rather, it is a noun phrase and has the form of ‘head noun (lời khai) + of (của) + postmodifier (người được BH)’. The other two examples help further illustrate the non-equivalence problem in forms. They are ‘coinsurance’ and ‘formulary’ that take ‘đồng BH’ and ‘thuốc khuyến cáo’ respectively as their Vetnamese equivalents. In these cases, the Vietnamese terms are not single words, but compounds as defined by Cẩn, N.T. (1999: 49). Even, the sinlge term ‘underwriting’ has its Vietnamese equivalent ‘việc nhận xét rủi ro y tế’ in the form of a free group of words as defined by Nguyen Nhu Y (1996:64). Such a group is comtemporarily made to meet the need of the reality to be described or to meet the subjective demand of the speaker or the writer.

    (See more examples in Appendix 1)



    II.3.2. The translation of compound terms by rank shift or transposition

    The translation of the following groups of terms involves a change in the grammar from SL to TL, which is the so-called transposition or a shift.



    Group 1: Terms translated with transposition procedure that involves an automatic change in the word order from SL to TL

    Since this is the only translation procedure concerned with grammar, most translators make transposition intuitively. Specifically, what they have to do with the terms in this group is the change in the position of adjectives or modifying elements due to the difference in word order between English and Vietnamese. Vân (1998) claims that English nominal group differs from the Vietnamese one in terms of the order of Classifiers and Epithets in relation with the Thing, and this is presented in the table below:



    English

    Vietnamese

    Classifier/Epithet + Thing

    Thing + Classifier/Epithet

    Examples of terms translated by this procedure are as follows:



    Classifier (noun) +Thing

    English terms Vietnamese terms

    benefit period thời kỳ thụ hưởng

    utilization management quản lý sử dụng

    cost containment kiểm soát chi phí

    sub-standard risk rủi ro dưới mức tiêu chuẩn

    health insurance BHSK



    Classifier/Epithet (adjective) +Thing

    medical insurance BH y tế

    dental insurance BH nha khoa/răng

    common fee chi phí thông thường

    major plan chương trình chính

    supplemental plan chương trình phụ/bổ sung

    It is no exaggeration to say that it is an easy transposition procedure. The translator just has to do two things: (1) firstly identify the divisions between the elements in the group and (2) then convert the position of the elements from English word order into their corresponding word order in Vietnamese. Terms of longer nominal group, within expectation, can also be easily dealt with this way:

    English word order Vietnamese word order

    medical benefits exemption miễn trừ các quyền lợi y tế

    group health plan chương trình BHSK theo nhóm

    hospital expense coverage BH chi phí nằm viện

    dental expense coverage BH chi phí nha khoa

    Individual health insurance BHSK cá nhân

    This type of transposition can be of great help in that it is applicable to the translation of nominal groups of different types, especially longer groups as follows:

    English word order Vietnamese word order

    guaranteed renewable health insurance BHSK tái gia hạn được bảo đảm

    conditional renewable HI BHSK tái tục có điều kiện

    major medical expense coverage BH chi phí y tế chính

    creditable drug prescription coverage BH theo đơn thuốc chính đáng

    (See more examples in Appendix 2)

    The Vietnamese equivalents that sound stiff or fail to accord with natural usage in Vietnamese are categorized under the heading “Literal translation” which will be touched upon in the “non-equivalence” section.

    Group 2: Terms consisting of Classifier (past participle) + Thing

    Exactly, the terms in this group can be translated by either (i) automatic transposition or (ii) by rank-shift that involves a change in grammatical structure of certain items in SL. To be more specific, a nominal group in English corresponds to a clause in Vietnamese as follows:

    (i) expected morbidity = số liệu thống kê bệnh tật dự tính

    A change in the position of V-ed acting as Classifier is needed so that the Vietnamese version can sound natural and accords to the word order in the Vietnamese nominal group.

    (ii) expected morbidity = số liệu thống kê bệnh tật (đã) được dự tính

    Syntactically, (ii) is longer than (i), but semantically clearer though both are comprehensible to the readership. Usually, though the shorter is more preferred for the economy of the text, and it sounds more technical and succinct, the longer one still gets the priority for the comprehensibility of the version in Vietnamese:

    Other examples:

    English terms Vietnamese terms

    uncovered expense các chi phí không được bao trả

    standardized plans các chương trình đã được chuẩn hoá

    insured employees nhân viên đã được BH

    uncompensated care dịch vụ chăm sóc không được bồi thường

    (See more examples in Appendix 3)



    II.3. 3. The translation strategy which involves the deletion of “OF”

    Group 3: Terms consisting of Thing + Qualifier (noun + of +noun/noun phrase)

    Within this study, we have collected 13 nominal groups in the form of ‘Thing + Qualifier (of phrase)’. If, when rendering these terms into Vietnamese, we translate the preposition ‘of’ as ‘của’, the version in Vietnamese will not sound naturally as the way it should normally be. Put differently, it definitely fails to accord with the natural usage in Vietnamese:

    evidence of insurability bằng chứng của khả năng có thể BH

    schedule of benefits bảng liệt kê của các quyền lợi được hưởng

    If such translation is seen in the light of literal translation, it is grammatically acceptable. However, a translation is not simply the converting of grammatical elements from SL in to TL. The translator, among many other things to take into consideration when doing his job, has to decide when and what to add or omit to make the translated version readable and natural.

    Concerning the translation of the terms in this group, the deletion of “ofis widely made, yielding such equivalents as follows:



    English terms Vietnamese terms

    duplication of benefits kết hợp quyền lợi

    summary of plan bản tóm tắt chương trình BH

    explanation of benefits giải thích quyền lợi được hưởng

    schedule of benefits bảng liệt kê các quyền lợi được hưởng

    (See more examples in Appendix 4)

    In so doing, the translators can avoid lengthy expression which may, to some extent, distract readers. One noteworthy thing here is that this translation strategy should only be employed only when the advantages of producing smooth translation clearly overweigh the value of exactly rendering a certain meaning in a given context.

    II.4. Concluding remarks

    As presented above, quite a few native American and Vietnamese translators with different level of background knowledge do the translation of HI terms in the US health plans into Vietnamese, and so naturally they were expected to turn to different translation strategies or procedures when dealing with the same terms. Interestingly, though some of them admitted having no concept of translation theories, they all have employed commonly used translation strategies (deletion of preposition OF) and procedures (transposition or rank-shift) in dealing with HI terms of equivalence group. It may be concluded that amateur and professional translators in any field all turn to these translation strategies and procedures in their job, either consciously or unconsciously since they have already gained their rightful place in translation.



    CHAPTER III

    THE TRANSLATION OF HEALTH INSURACNE TERMS OF NON-EQUIVALENCE GROUP

    Examples of nil equivalence:



    Non-equivalence or One-to-zero equivalence

    employee +1 and more coverage

    BH nhân viên +1 trở lên

    community rating

    đánh giá cộng đồng

    gatekeeper

    bác sĩ HMO điều hợp chăm sóc bệnh nhân và kiểm soát hiệu quả chi phí bằng cách giảm thiểu dịch vụ không cần thiết

    HMO (Health Maintenance Organization)

    BH HMO

    Medicaid

    chương trình Medicaid


    III.1. The source of non-equivalence problem in the translation of HI terms

    Though it is a luxury for a translator to say that something cannot be translated, there are exceptions for a number of reasons as Mona Baker (1992) shows in her famous book titled ‘In other words-A course book on translation’:



    • Culture-specific concepts

    • The SL concept is not lexicalized in the TL

    • The SL is semantically complex

    • The SL and TL make different distinctions in meaning

    • The TL lacks a superordinate

    • The TL lacks a specific term

    • Differences in expressive meaning

    • Differences in forms

    • Differences in frequency and purpose of using specific forms

    • The use of loan words in the source text

    The non- equivalence problem mentioned in this study, however, is not attributed to all of the causes listed above. We are going to briefly provide an overview of HI in the US and in Vietnam. This will help give an insight into why HI terms in the US HI plans are translated the way they are now in the Vietnamese versions.

    The development of the US HI dates back to 1907, whereas Bảo Việt-the oldest insurance carrier in Vietnam, offering all kinds of insurance including health insurance- has been in operation for just only as long as 40 years, 60 years younger than the US counterpart. A big gap in the development of the sub-culture of insurance between the two countries is, therefore, inevitable.

    More noticeably, the US is the only industrialized nation that did not choose the compulsory HI path, whereas in Vietnam employees working in legally operated establishments are offered with only one type of compulsory health plan. Put differently, American employees enjoy full freedom in choosing to enroll in the health plan which best suit their needs and income. Once a year, employers hold an open enrolment for their employees to choose to stay with the plan they enrolled the year before or to switch to another. They are well informed or updated about any changes in health plan thanks to the information provided directly to their home by the employer. By contrast, employees in Vietnam, especially workers, have no idea about to what extent they are covered. Regarding the type of coverage, only state-mandated medical insurance is available.

    Another sharp difference is that our government has no coverage for the low-income or people over 65 years who did not work in the past as in the US. In fact, the US government designs specific health plans for specific people in an attempt to guarantee that everyone is covered. Vietnam is too poor to do so and that is the very reason why there are many health plans in the US we have never heard about.

    In a nutshell, the differences in the level of the development of HI between the US and Vietnam, and the diversity of health plans in the former are the source of non-equivalence problem in the translation of HI terms in the US health plans. The following section will focus on the analysis of how the problem is currently handled.

    III.2. The strategies, procedures and methods employed in dealing with non-equivalence problem in the translation of HI terms

    III.2.1. The translation of terms with transference procedure (the use of loan words)

    The strategy proves itself a great tool in dealing with technical terms in general and HI terms in the US health plans in particular. Specially, readers’ better knowledge of internationally recognized language as English can also be named as a reason why this strategy is more and more popularly used.



    Group 4: HI acronyms

    These acronyms are created and used for the purpose of one text to designate products, appliances, processes and international institutions within the particular text. In translation, they can be either decoded or transferred: if they appear for the first time they are usually accompanied by both English (in case readers know English, they themselves can figure out their real essence) and Vietnamese full forms; and if they are repeated or used at other points in the target language text, the full forms are withdrawn. Source language acronyms are often retained for convenience and to avoid repeatability.

    Example 1:

    First time:

    Source language:

    Members have to choose a primary care physician (PCP), who becomes the personal doctor…

    Target language:

    Những người tham gia BH phải chọn một bác sĩ chăm sóc chính (primary care physician _PCP). Người đó sẽ trở thành bác sĩ riêng của họ.

    Second time forward:

    Source language:

    No matter what health problem you encounter, it is required that you always call your PCP first and…

    Target language:

    Cho dù quý vị gặp vấn đề gì về sức khỏe, việc đầu tiên quý vị phải làm là liên lạc với PCP của quý vị và…

    The second example can better illustrate the convenience of using of acronyms in the translated version:

    Source language:

    A Preferred Provider organization (PPO) (1) plan combines the benefits of fee-for-service with the features of an HMO. If patients use health care providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) who are part of the PPO (2) network,... Some PPOs (3) require people to choose a primary care physician who will... Other PPOs (4) allow patients to choose specialists on their own. A PPO (5) may offer lower levels of coverage for care given by doctors and other professionals not affiliated with the PPO (6).

    Target language:

    Chương trình BH của Tổ chức cung cấp dịch vụ ưu đãi (Preferred Provider Organization-PPO) (1) kết hợp các quyền lợi của chương trình dịch vụ tính tiền với các quyền lợi của chương trình HMO. Nếu bệnh nhân sử dụng dịch vụ của các nhà cung cấp chăm sóc sức khỏe thuộc mạng lưới PPO (2) …Một số PPO (3) yêu cầu mọi người chọn một bác sĩ chịu trách nhiệm chính cho mình…Các PPO (4) khác cho phép các bệnh nhân tự chọn bác sĩ của mình ngoài mạng lưới. Các bệnh nhân sử dụng các dịch vụ của các bác sĩ hoặc chuyên gia không thuộc mạng lưới của PPO (5) sẽ được PPO (6) bao trả với mức thấp hơn.

    (See more examples in Appendix 5)

    Even at a glance, one can recognize that the translated version would be more than clumsy if the borrowed foreign acronyms are not made use of. In fact, they are more and more frequently used by translators as an effective strategy to deal with this type of non-equivalence problem arising from the gap in the subculture of insurance.

    What should be noted is that acronyms collected in this study such as HMO, PPO, POS and EPO stand for the names of organizations which do no exist in Vietnam, hence completely unknown to Vietnamese speakers. So far, no direct equivalents have been found, and we find that all of these terms are translated rather literally with the lexical rendered out of context. Their names, when translated into Vietnamese, can not themselves tell readers about their functions. The translation, however, would be lengthy or cumbersome if an explanation is provided in parentheses. In an attempt to facilitate readers’ thorough understanding about different insurance plans so that they have made right decision at annual open enrolment, a glossary in the target language is added by translators to facilitate enrollees’ understanding about different health plans. This helps lead to their sound decisions at annual enrollment.
    Group 5: Terms referring to the name of health plans unavailable in the subculture of insurance in Vietnam

    In this study, there are only 6 items which appear exactly the same form as they are in the source language text:



    Table 1: Terms referring to the name of health plans

    English terms

    Vietnamese equivalents

    Medicaid plan


    Chương trình Medicaid (loại hình BH dành cho người nghèo)

    Medicare plan

    Chương trình Medicare (loại hình BH dành cho người trên 65 tuổi)

    Medi-gap plan

    Chương trình Medi-gap (chương trình bao trả các chi phí vượt quá mức bao trả của chương trình Medicare)

    Medicare Advantage plan

    Chương trình Medicare Advantage (chương trình cho phép người thụ hưởng được lựa chọn các nhà cung cấp dịch vụ y tế ngoài Medicare)

    Medicare Specialty plan

    Chương trình Medicare Specialty (loại hình BH dành cho các đối tượng có bệnh lý đặc biệt)

    Spend-down plan

    Chương trình Spend-down (dành cho những người có thu nhập bị giảm hoặc thất thoát về tài sản)

    To compensate for the untranslatability, some translators add a functional-descriptive equivalent in parentheses as shown in Table 1. This is of great help for those who are not good at English; otherwise, the intended readers will definitely find it impossible to understand what, say, “Spend-down plan” is. If the name of a plan appears at other points in the text, the functional-descriptive equivalents will be withdrawn since readers have presumably got hold of the concerned perception.



    III.2.2. The translation of terms by paraphrase

    Paraphrase has been employed by both professional and amateur translators in all fields either consciously or unconsciously, though as a last resort in many contexts. This is simply an explanation of the meaning of the source item(s). In the following section, we will investigate how a number of HI terms are translated by paraphrase.



    Group 6: Terms referring to culture-specific concepts

    As analyzed above in (III.1), there exist sharp differences in the sub-culture of insurance between the US and Vietnam. In fact, the former is much more developed, resulting in totally unknown insurance concepts, which are expressed via a number of US HI terms, to Vietnamese. Since they are not lexicalized at all in Vietnamese, translators have to paraphrase them, using either related words or unrelated words to unpack the meaning of the terms in question. Here are some typical examples:



    Table 2: Terms translated by paraphrase

    English terms

    Vietnamese equivalents

    donut hole

    giai đoạn 3 trong chương trình Medicare mà theo quy định thì người tham gia BH phải tự trả các chi fí y tế

    self-funded plan

    BH bao trả theo chi fí y tế thực của hãng cho nhân viên thông qua quỹ được đóng góp theo tỷ lệ phần trăm nhất định giữa chủ hãng và nhân viên

    staff model

    mô hình HMO cho cá nhân

    accrete


    bổ sung thêm thành viên mới vào chương trình BH trợ cấp y tế Medicare của chính phủ dành cho người trên 65 tuổi

    delete


    loại ra khỏi diện được BH bởi chương trình BH trợ cấp y tế Medicare của chính phủ dành cho người trên 65 tuổi

    No-gap


    [Bác sĩ] cam kết không tính phí cao hơn mức thanh toán tối đa của BH cho một dịch vụ nào đó.

    Known-gap


    [Bác sĩ] tính phí cao hơn mức thanh toán tối đa của BH nhưng cam kết giữ số chênh lệch này trong một phạm vi quy định.

    (See more examples in Appendix 7)

    Clearly, from Table 2, all the seven terms are explained or paraphrased rather than being translated. The reasons why translators have to resort to this strategy are easily isolated, that is the unavailability of the Vietnamese equivalents and the subculture-sourced concepts unknown in Vietnamese. “Self-funded plan” can serve as a very good example of , the latter. Unlike Vietnam where all employers pay a fixed premium to an insurance carrier, in the US, several employers set up a special trust fund to earmark money (corporate and employee contribution) to pay incurred claims. Probably, only by explaining the term can translators be sure that the intended meaning of the term is fully conveyed to the intended readers.

    Regarding “donut hole”, “no-gap”, and “known-gap”, they can not be found in dictionaries, even in insurance dictionaries, leaving translators no choice but to paraphrase them in an understandable way.

    Nevertheless, this strategy reveals in itself two disadvantages. Firstly, a paraphrase does not have the status of a stable lexical item, hence failing to transfer its associated expressive, evoked, or any kind of associative meaning into the target language. Secondly, when one term in the source language is replaced by a lengthy explanation in the target v cfeuydlanguage it is undoubtedly cumbersome and even awkward.



    III.2.3. The translation of terms with communicative method

    Within this research, the researchers find that the translators go for communicative method for a generous transfer of foreign elements in to the target culture as well as the target language where necessary.



    Group 7: Terms referring to culture-specific concepts

    In (III.2.2), we have studied how terms referring to culture-specific concepts are dealt with by paraphrase. Seemingly, such terms have been best translated by the procedure or strategy of paraphrase because of the non-equivalence problem analyzed in the above section. However, there are terms which also refer to culture-specific concepts, but solved with communicative method rather than by paraphrase. To some or many extent, the translators who employ the strategy do get profound knowledge of the sub-culture of insurance in both the two countries. This can be manifested by the way they handle the terms and choose the lexical words in Vietnamese. The contextual meaning of the terms is rendered in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the intended readers.

    Examples:

    Table 3: Terms translated with communicative method

    English

    Vietnamese equivalents

    cafeteria plan

    chương trình BHSK tự chọn

    fee-for-service/indemnity plan


    tiền trao cháo múc

    dịch vụ tính tiền



    wellness office visit

    khám định kỳ

    office visit

    đến khám bệnh tại phòng mạch

    triage

    sàng lọc các bệnh nhân cần ưu tiên

    fee schedule

    giá biểu liệt kê các mức thanh toán tối đa

    well-baby care

    săn sóc phòng bệnh cho trẻ nhỏ

    domesic partner

    bạn đời

    (See more examples in Appendix 8)

    Well-baby care” is a health care service designated for children as dependents in health plans for covered workers. The goals of well baby care are 1) to immunize; 2) to provide parents with reassurance and counseling on safety, nutrition and behavioral problems; and 3) to identify and treat physical and developmental problems. How to find an equivalent that can fully convey the three goals of the service to the readers in the source language with no available concept may be hard for translators. The problem seems to be compounded by the term itself since the lexical words can not say anything about the function of the service. The translator, in this case, may assume that what he has to do is to make “well-baby care” understandable to the intended readers in the sense that it is a good health service to their children in terms of both prevention and care. And the Vietnamese equivalent “săn sóc phòng bệnh” seems to do its good job, finding its way through even the most difficult readers. Some may thought of paraphrase as a last resort, but it seems that communicative method has proved itself a better solution.

    Cafeteria plan”-a completely alien concept of insurance to Vietnamese readers-is also a very good example of the effectiveness of communicative as a translation method. During the process of finding data for this study, the researcher came across with more than one translated version for the term, including “chương trình phòng ăn” and “chương trình cafeteria”. The former is the so-called “literal translation” with no reference to health insurance, and the words are translated singly by their most common meanings or out of the context. The latter, though less ridiculously rendered, still needs an explanation while it can be better translated with communicative method if the translator has really understood what it is. “Cafeteria plan” is a customized health plan, under which employees can choose among two or more benefits to best feed their real needs and utilizes the benefits selected. The translator who has translated the term into Vietnamese as “Chương trình BH sức khỏe tự chọn” must have firstly investigated into the definition of the plan so that he can adapt and make the thought and cultural content of the term more accessible to the reader.

    Though undoubtedly a great tool in dealing with non-equivalence stemmed from the gap in the sub-culture of insurance in Vietnam and the US, communicative method has one disadvantage. Specifically, in a number of cases, some loss of meaning in Vietnamese equivalents compared with the original meaning intended in the English terms cannot be avoided. Take now the translation of “domestic partners” as an illustration. “Domestic partners” are commonly defined as two adults who share an emotional, physical and financial relationship similar to that of a married couple but who either choose not to marry or cannot legally marry. They share a mutual obligation of support for the basic necessities of life. “Bạn đời” reflects the translator’s good choice of lexical words, and it seems to be impossible to find a smoother and more colloquial equivalent that would be more accessible to the readership than this one. However, if we take a look at the definition of the term, we can easily recognize some degree of the loss of meaning wished to convey by the person who created that word. In common sense in Vietnamese, “bạn đời” is used to refer to someone’s legally married husband or wife, whereas “domestic partners” are not necessarily such that. Someone may suggest “nhân tình” and “bạn tình” as its equivalent, but both of them still fail to convey the full meaning of the term. This can be proved by employing “back translation” which will yield such an equivalent as “lovers” who normally do not share financial relationship as “domestic partners”.

    Another example is the translation of “idemnity health plan”, also called “fee-for-service”. Two equivalents “tiền trao cháo múc” or “dịch vụ tính tiền” for the term have been used so far among insurance circle with the former much more natural and familiar to the readers. A glance at the equivalents can tell readers that they have to pay for the services themselves anytime they go to any physician or provider they have chosen. What is lost here is that they can file claims for reimbursement later. If paraphrase, though yielding a long explanation, is used to deal with the term, it will not involve any loss of meaning like that.

    We may not exaggerate in saying that the loss of meaning in translation, more or less, is inevitable because there exists a big lexical gap between the two languages, especially a lack of equivalent technical terms in Vietnamese. Though communicative assumes that exact translation may be possible and may be perfect (Newmark, 1995: 68), it still fails to transfer the exact message intended in a number of HI terms collected for this study from English into Vietnamese.



    III.2.4. Literal translation

    Among the collected data, there are ten terms which are translated literally with the lexical words rendered out of context. The lexical gap between the two languages again poses a difficult task to translators who then have to turn to this translation method as a last resort regardless of the ridiculousness or awkwardness of the equivalents.



    Group 8: Terms referring to concepts that are not lexicalized in the target language

    These terms express concepts which are known in Vietnamese, but simply not lexicalized, that is not “allocated” Vietnamese words or phrases to express them. The following table features some terms of this non-equivalence problem collected for this study:



    Table 4: Terms that are not lexicalized in Vietnamese

    English terms

    Vietnamese equivalents

    community rating

    đánh giá cộng đồng

    look-back period

    khoảng thời gian xét lại

    out-of-plan

    ngoài chương trình

    portability

    tính chuyển đổi

    employee +1 and more coverage

    BH nhân viên +1 trở lên

    (See more examples in Appendix 9)

    Look-back period” is a good example of the discussed problem. The term refers to the six-month time lapse before a person enrolls in a new HI plan. If a person receives medical advice, suggestions, prescription drugs, diagnosis, or treatment for a health problem during the look-back period, he or she is considered to have a preexisting condition. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese equivalent “khoảng thời gian xét lại” fails to give readers any hint or clue to the concept in the sub-culture of insurance, making no sense in the given context. ‘Period’ and ‘look-back’ are literally rendered into Vietnamese as ‘khoảng thời gian ’and ‘xét lại’ respectively before being put together to make a compound. If the word order of the term had not been changed, it would have become word-for-word translation. The translator may have not acquired background knowledge needed for his job, resulting in the failure to produce on the intended readers an effect as close as to that obtained on the readers of the original. Even, he makes the term difficult to understand.

    It is no exaggeration to say that literal translation is out of question when dealing with non-equivalence problem. According to Newmark (1995: 70), literal translation above word level is the only correct procedure if the source language and target language meaning correspond, or correspond more closely than any alternative. Unfortunately, non-equivalence means such a happy match can not be found in any circumstances.

    Let’s look at one more example which serves as proof of the inapplicability of the method in dealing with the terms in group 8. “Community rating” has its Vietnamese equivalent as “đánh giá cộng đồng”. It may easily produce a misleading effect on readers who may equate it with a number of things. For example, they may assume it is a procedure under which a community is rated based on a number of specific criteria. In fact, it is a method of developing HI premium rates (or for any other type of insurance) wherein actuaries figure out what a population's total costs will be, then estimate what portion is allocated to each individual, family, single+spouse, etc. Clearly, the lexical words are translated singly, hence yielding inarguably inaccessible concepts to the reader. It would be much better if a functional-descriptive equivalent is provided as an explanation to clarify the meaning of the term in question. Paraphrase, though long, can fulfill its function of making the source language meaning understandable in the target language. Brevity, as a result of word literally combined, might not always be the best choice in translation.



    III.3. Concluding remarks

    Clearly, the task of handling HI terms of non-equivalence group is of greater level of difficulty compared to dealing with terms of equivalence group. In fact, it demands the translator to make a smart choice of the translation strategies/procedures/methods so as to render the terms in questions appropriately in terms of the intended readership, and accurately with regards to the message wished to be conveyed. To this end, transference procedure, paraphrase as a translation strategy, communicative method and literal translation have been the choice of the translators in different situations or for different groups of terms, though each embodies in itself both advantages and disadvantages as a matter-of-fact.





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