Translating “Contemplation” in Zen Buddhism: A Functional-Pragmatic Analysis Using House’s Model

Trần Văn Long

Tóm tắt

This study investigates the Vietnamese translation of the term contemplation in D.T. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series, rendered into Vietnamese by Trúc Thiên as Thiền Luận – Quyển Thượng (2023). Using Juliane House’s (1997, 2015) functional-pragmatic translation quality assessment model, the paper focuses exclusively on lexical realization under the register variable Field. A bilingual corpus was constructed and processed using the VietCorpus tool, followed by manual classification into functional equivalents and lexical mismatches. Quantitative findings indicate that 13 of the instances of the term contemplation align semantically and doctrinally with the source text, whereas the remaining 13 reflect varying degrees of mismatch, including register shifts, doctrinal ambiguity, and omission. A qualitative analysis of selected cases further reveals that inconsistent lexical choices can disrupt the functional coherence of Buddhist philosophical discourse. The study underscores the need for a more systematic and context-sensitive approach in Buddhist translation, especially concerning semantically dense and doctrinally significant terms.

Citation this article (V. L. Trần, 2025)

Trần, V. L. (2025). TRANSLATING “CONTEMPLATION” IN ZEN BUDDHISM: A FUNCTIONAL-PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS USING HOUSE’S MODEL. Hoa Sen University Journal of Science, 09, 28–37. https://vjol.info.vn/index.php/dhs/article/view/127249/104365