A PRE-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE EFFECTS OF TEACHING CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE AND NON-EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL ON TRANSLATION PRODUCTS OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Equivalence and non-equivalence are important concepts in translation - a translation is considered successful when it ensures the equivalent conveyance of the linguistic elements of the original one. Equivalence is not always achieved due to cultural factors in the language. This paper presents a pre-experimental research that investigated the effect of the process that students were provided with knowledge of cultural factors and word-level equivalence on their translation products. Participants were a group of 30 3rd-year students majoring in English - Thai Nguyen University. Through a training workshop, questionnaires, interviews, pre-test and post-test, the research aimed to answer 2 questions: What do you understand about non-equivalence at word level? What are the effects of the teaching of cultural factors and non-equivalence at word level on the translation products of the students? The results of the study show that students still had a relatively vague awareness of culture in their translation, and confirm that providing students with cultural knowledge in translation positively affected the quality of their translation products.