THE TRANSLATION OF TEMPORAL AND

ASPECTUAL INFORMATION IN DEICTIC MODE

FROM ENGLISH INTO VIETNAMESE

Nguyen Dinh Sinh

Hung Yen University of Technology and Education, Vietnam

ABSTRACT
The issue of whether tense and aspect exist in the Vietnamese language
has been the matter of debate among researchers and scholars. In
reality, the translation of the temporal and aspectual information from
English into Vietnamese sometimes causes ambiguity as tense and
aspect are compulsory in the English language, however, not usually
considered a matter of grammar in the Vietnamese language. This
article aims at investigating how the three well-known Vietnamese
translators Mac Do, Hoang Cuong and Trinh Lu translated the novel
entitled “The Great Gatsby” – a 1925 novel written by the American
author F. Scott Fitzgerald into Vietnamese with regard to the rendition
of the temporal and aspectual information in deictic mode in English
into Vietnamese. Besides, the interpretation of non-tensed elements by
the three translators is also analyzed in this article. Through the
comparison and assessment of the three translation versions of the
novel, it is hoped that the methods used by the three translators to
render tense and aspect information from English will be clearly
analyzed. The results would be a good reference for translators in
their work. Moreover, the results may prove the fact that even
Vietnamese has no tense and aspect to some people’s views, the
translation of a tensed language like English into Vietnamese can still
be done with ease.

Keywords: tense, aspect, translation of temporal and aspectual

information, deictic mode

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INTRODUCTION

In communicating between two countries even between two tribes or

ethnic groups within a country that speak different languages,
translation is an indispensable element contributing to a successful
information exchange. Translation has a very long history of
development. Its history dates back to 3000 B.C (Bassnett & Lefevere,
Andre (eds.), 1990).

Translators of different languages, however, still confronts quite lots of

difficulties in their work, among them equivalence is the most popular
one. Equivalence in translation is not very common as non-equivalence
between any two languages is a matter of fact. Even two languages
such as English and French all belonging to the Indo-European family,
have non-equivalence between them. Compare the English and French
sentence expressing the same information in the following example:
(1)A: She is a student; B: Elle est étudiante.

In the sentence (1A) the word “student” need not be defined in female
form as this is not a feature of English grammar rule, whereas in the
sentence (1B) the word “étudiante” is in female “form” and its male
form is “étudiant” to be in consistent with the subject female “Elle”.

Thus, the Vietnamese, a language belonging to the Mon-Khmer branch

of the Austroasiatic language family must possess more non-
equivalences than the French language in translating from English or
vice-versa. One of the non-equivalences between the two languages is
the recognition of tense and aspect. English is a language in which
tense and aspect are compulsory whether tense and aspect exist in the
Vietnamese language remains a controversial topic. Accordingly, in
translating from English into Vietnamese the difficulties related to
tense and aspect cannot be avoided. One of the difficulties is in seeking
for equivalence between the two languages in terms of tense and
aspect. When mentioning equivalence, Baker (1992) divides five levels
of equivalence including equivalence at word level, equivalence above
word level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence and
pragmatic equivalence. He details grammatical equivalence under five
categories including number, gender, person, tense and aspect, and
voice. Thus, the non-equivalence as regards tense and aspect between
the English and Vietnamese languages is at grammatical level. There

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have appeared some research studies on translation methods of tense
and aspect in the world, nonetheless, not many of them have been
applied by translators. The reasons for that are many such as the
limited number of the research studies, the research is not various
enough or not vey systematic. As a result, these research studies have
not become as popular references for translators, especially, in case of
Vietnam. From the afore-said reasons, the researcher was inspired to
carry out the study on how English tense and aspect translated into
Vietnamese.

With the present study, the researcher is going to find out how tense
and aspect information that is always expressed explicitly in English, a
tensed language translated into Vietnamese, a non-tensed one.

Literature review

The system of tense in English

Jespersen (1931) is believed to be the first linguist who defines tense

as "the linguistic expression of time relations, as far as these are
indicated in the verb forms". Under the angle of perceiving tense
through markers, “tense is generally used to refer to the morphological
markers on the verb which function to describe the temporal relations
between the situation and the time of utterance”.

Also, in viewing tense as a grammatical category Comrie (1985) meant

that it has to be "integrated into the grammatical system of a language"
(p. 10). This integration is done by means of either bound morphemes
(i.e., inflection on the verb morphology) or by grammatical words in
line with the verbs such as the auxiliaries. Hence, this definition which
is widely accepted as Comrie (1985) himself points out, "permits a
highly constrained theory of tense" (p. 10). This does not recognize
lexicalization of temporal location itself as tense. But it requires that
tense is a grammatical category. Therefore, this necessary criterion can
distinguish tensed and non-tensed languages, i.e. languages that do not
have tense. Confirming 'tense' as a purely grammatical category, more
importantly, reflects a long tradition in Linguistics of a fundamental
division between grammatical and lexical or other categories
regardless of any semantic interrelation. The distinction is also shared
by Finch (2005) when he states that "tense refers to the grammatical

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changes made to the form of a verb, as opposed to time, which refers to
the semantic functions such changes signal"(p. 113).

Traditionally, English has normally been considered to have 12

"tenses". In trying to talk about the tense-aspect system and tense-
aspect combination, Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Feeman (1999) create a
chart by combining the three tenses, present, past and future along the
vertical axis. The four aspects—simple (sometimes called zero aspect),
perfect, progressive, and their combination, perfect progressive—are
arrayed along the horizontal axis.

Other similar viewpoints are from Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) as

they consider “tense in relation to the perfective and progressive in
which the verbal action is experienced or regarded”. Accordingly, there
are at least twelve major tenses in English identified in the English
linguistic research.

The system of aspects in English

Jarvie (1993) claims that “Aspect is a category indicating the point

from which an action is seen to take place. Two contrasts of aspect are
marked in English: progressive aspect and perfect (or perfective)
aspect.

In fact, Comrie (1976) states that the distinction between he read, he

was reading, and he used to read in English is equally an aspectual
distinction, so aspect is a category even in as familiar a language as
English. Particularly in view of this terminological, and conceptual,
confusion of tense and aspect, it is worth ensuring now that the
meaning of the more familiar term 'tense' is understood, before
embarking on discussion of the less familiar term ' aspect'. Tense
relates the time of the situation referred to some other time, usually to
the moment of speaking. The commonest tenses found in languages -
though not all languages distinguish these three tenses, or indeed
distinguish tenses at all - are present, past, and future: a situation
described in the present tense is located temporally as simultaneous
with the moment of speaking (e.g. John is singing); one described in the
past as located prior to the moment of speaking (e.g. John sang, John
was singing); one described in the future as located subsequent to the
moment of speaking (e.g. John will sing, John will be singing). Comrie

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(1976) believes since tense locates the time of a situation relative to
the situation of the utterance, we may describe tense as deictic.
According to Smith (1997), aspectual meaning of a situation results
from interaction between situation types and viewpoints. Situation
types are determined by the inherent lexical nature of verbs or verb
phrases. Vendler (1967) first identifies three characteristics which
determine the classification. These are boundedness or telicity,
duration, and change. Bounded or telic verbs are those which have a
natural endpoint, while unbounded or atelic verbs can continue
indefinitely. Durative verbs describe events that span over a time, in
contrast to non-durative events that are punctual or instantaneous.
Change can refer to either a homogeneous event, which is identical
from one moment to the next; or a heterogeneous event, which is
changing from moment to moment. Based on these characteristics,
Vendler proposes four verb classes: states, activities or processes,
accomplishments, and achievements. Smith (1997) calls these situation
types and she adds one more situation type, semelfactives.

For viewpoint types, English is customarily said to have two types of

viewpoint: perfective and imperfective (Brinton, 1988; Comrie, 1976
&Smith, 1997). Perfective viewpoint is normally signaled by the simple
form of the main verb (Brinton, 1988 & Smith, 1997). Perfective
viewpoints generally refer to the totality of a situation including the
beginning, middle, and end as a whole (Comrie, 1976 &Smith, 1997).
As Comrie (1976) points out, the perfective "looks at the situation from
the outside, without necessarily distinguishing any of the internal
structure of the situation" (p. 4). According to Smith (1997), he asserts
that "sentences with a perfective viewpoint present a situation as a
whole. The span of the perfective includes the initial and final
endpoints of the situation" (p. 66). The imperfective viewpoint in
English is commonly considered to be signaled with the verb 'be’ and
the 'ing’ (progressive) form of the main verb (Brinton, 1988 & Smith,
1997). Imperfective viewpoint focuses on part of a situation, including
neither initial nor final endpoints (Smith, 1997). Thus, in Comrie
(1976)’s words, the imperfective "looks at the situation from the
inside, and as such is crucially concerned with the internal structure of
the situation” (p. 4).

So far, we have seen quite many viewpoints towards tense and aspect

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in English, thus it can be concluded that traditionally due to the
combination of tense and aspect, the English language possesses
twelve basic tenses. In the following section, with the case of the
Vietnamese language, tense and aspect will be discussed too.

The system of tense and aspect in Vietnamese

The arguments whether Vietnamese has tense and aspect or not are
still popular among linguists. In this section, the researcher is going to
review some of the outstanding opinions either realizing or denying
the existence of tense and aspect in Vietnamese. These opinions are
drawn from the studies by Vietnamese linguists and also by foreign
linguists.

Among the very first linguists stating that Vietnamese has tense,
[Link]ần is considered to have a remarkable opinion about tense.
According to Trần (1940), in mentioning adverbials denoting time in
Vietnamese, he divides these adverbials into different types depending
on their expressions of meaning of:(1). Present tense: bây(rarely used),
giờ, chừ, nay, rày, bây chừ, bây giờ.(2). Past tense: a. Indicating the
moment: Khi nãy, lúc nãy, hồi nãy; b. Indicating day: hôm qua, hôm kia,
hôm kìa, hôm trước, hôm nọ; c. Indicating month: tháng trước; d.
Indicating year: năm ngoái, năm kia, năm kìa; e. Indicating the time
which has just passed: mới rồi, vừa rồi; f. Indicating the time which has
passed for a long time: xưa, ngày trước, độ trước, đờ itrước, trước kia,
ngày xưa, thuở xưa, đời xưa, xưa kia. (3). Future tense: a. Indicating
moment: chốc nữa, lá tnữa, tí nữa.; b. Indicating day: mai, mốt, ngày
mai, ngày kia, ngày kìa.; c. Indicating month: sang tháng, tháng sau. ; d.
Indicating year: sang năm, năm sau ; e. Indicating indefinite time: rồi,
mai sau, sau này, ngày sau, rồi ra.

Therefore, it can be inferred from the above-mentioned information

that Trần affirms Vietnamese has tenses. Apart from other different
adverbials locating time, at least three tenses are mentioned namely
present tense, past tense and future tense that are expressed through
adverbials denoting time.

According to Cao (1998), lots of other traditional Vietnamese

grammarian states that Vietnamese has tense. As they strongly affirm
that Vietnamese has three tenses: the present tense indicated by đang,

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the past tense expressed by đã, and the future tense conveyed by sẽ
(Rhodes, 1651; [Link]ương, 1883; Bùi, 1952, Đào, 1979; to name a
few). Đinh (2001), [Link]ễn & Nguyễn (1998), Panfilov (1993)
confuse as assigning tense meaning with lexical items, thus denying
that tense is a grammatical category in Vietnamese. Cao (1998),
however, remarks that countless examples in Vietnamese discourse
are not difficult to encounter to illustrate đã does not always imply
past, or đang does not always refer to the present, or sẽ does not
always mean the future.

Cao (1998), Emeneau(1951), Jones & Huynh (1960), Nguyễn(1996)

strongly affirm that "it is impossible to find in Vietnamese anything
that resembles 'tense'... In other words, Vietnamese has absolutely no
tense. What is meant is that Vietnamese does not have a grammatical
category for tense.

Not many studies have been conducted into the classification and
temporal properties of situation types in Vietnamese. Cao (1998) and
Nguyen (2006) provide the most thorough descriptions of Vietnamese
situation types. They are both under primary influence of the
classification of situation types in English and other European
languages. They both based their classification mainly on two
characteristics: (a) telicity and durativity. Cao categorized Vietnamese
verb phrases (VP) into four groups: telic, atelic, dynamic, and non-
dynamic (stative) basing on these characteristics. His defines a telic
situation basing on the definition by Hopper and Thompson (1980).
Hence, his definition of a telic situation as one that consists of a process
that leads up to an endpoint or an action that brings about a result. An
atelic situation, however, does not bring about a result, so that part of
the situation is the same as it is when it stops, or it does not have an
endpoint.

Summarizing the discussion thus far, for the purpose of the study I will
assume that though tense and aspect do not formally exist in the
Vietnamese language as grammatical feature they exist in varieties of
lexical items as adverbials expressing time.

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Translation and equivalence in translation

Translation

Nida (1964) observes, "definitions of ... translating are almost as

numerous and varied as the persons who have undertaken to discuss
the subject" (p. 161). Jakobson (1959) was among the first scholars in
the twentieth century to provide a definition of translation. According
to Jakobson (1959), he states "translation from one language into
another substitutes message in one language not for separate code-
units but for entire messages in some other language" (p. 233). The
view of translation as 'substitution' of messages by one language for
another is shared by Catford (1965), who affirms translation as
substitution of TL (target language) meanings for SL (source language)
meanings or "the replacement of textual material in one language (SL)
by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)" (p. 20).

Munday (2001) views translation from a broader perspective and

proposes a more comprehensive definition, as follows:

The term translation itself has several meanings: it can refer to the
general subject field, the product (the text that has been translated) or
the process (the act of producing the translation, otherwise known as
translating). Munday (2001) confirms that the process of translation
between two different written languages involves the translator
changing an original written text (the source text or ST) in the original
verbal language (the source language or SL) into a written text (the
target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language or
TL) (p. 4-5).

Equivalence in translation

Jakobson (1959) places equivalence in a close relationship with

linguistic meaning. His so-called "equivalence in meaning" focuses on
"differences in the structure and terminology of languages" rather than
on the untranslatability of a message from one language to another.
According to Venuti (2000), "equivalence has been understood as
'accuracy', 'adequacy', 'correctness', 'correspondence', 'fidelity', or
'identity'; it is a variable notion about how the translation is connected
to the foreign text" (p. 5). Translation equivalence has been a dominant
issue in translation studies (Munday, 2001). Kenny (1998) observes

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that although it is a central concept, it is also a controversial one.

Nida's Equivalence Theories: Conversely, E.A. Nida (1964) has written

that there are two kinds of equivalence - formal equivalence (also
known as formal correspondence) and dynamic equivalence. Formal
equivalence is more concerned with word-for-word translation and
content faithfulness, while dynamic equivalence focuses upon context
and sense-for-sense adaptation.

Avery interesting discussion of the notion of equivalence can be found

in Baker (1992) who seems to provide a more detailed list of conditions
upon which the concept of equivalence can be defined. She investigates
the notion of equivalence at different levels, in relation to the
translation process, including all different aspects of translation, thus
putting together the linguistic and the communicative approach. She
proposes different levels of equivalence in translation - equivalence at
word level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence and pragmatic
equivalence. Amongst the grammatical devices that might cause
problems in translation, Baker focuses on number, tense and aspects,
voice, person and gender. The current study is to investigate the
methods of translating tense and aspect; therefore, the researcher aims
at finding out equivalence at grammatical level.

THE STUDY

In the previous section, different viewpoints on tense and aspect both

in English and Vietnamese have been presented. Besides, theories of
translation and translation equivalence have also been reviewed. It can
be inferred that due to the combination between time and aspect, the
English language traditionally has twelve basic tenses, whereas in the
Vietnamese language, the notion tense and aspect is blurred. Thus, the
current study is to investigate how translators choose the temporal
sources in Vietnamese to convey tense and aspect information from
English into Vietnamese. In detail, the study is set out to answer the
following questions:

1. How do the three translators translate tense information in

deictic mode from English into Vietnamese?

2. How do the three translators translate aspect information in

deictic mode from English into Vietnamese?

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To find answers to the above two questions, the researcher bases on
the theories in the literature review mentioned above to develop
himself a conceptual framework under a table format – table 1 in the
following sections to contrast the equivalents of English and
Vietnamese tense and aspect.

Data collection and analysis

The information in the source language (SL) is taken from the novel
“The Great Gatsby” (TGG) - a 1925 novel written by the American
author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is now widely regarded as one of
the greatest American writers of the 20th century. This novel is so
famous that it has been adapted into film and television, literature
theatre, opera, radio, ballet and even computer games. The information
in the target language (TL) is collected from the translation versions by
three well-known translators namely Mặc Đỗ, Hoàng Cường and Trịnh
Lữ and the translated titles of the novel in Vietnamese “Anh chàng hào
hoa” (ACHH), Gatsby vĩ đại” (GVĐ), “Đại gia Gatsby” (ĐGG) respectively
into Vietnamese. Notably, within the limitation of the study only deictic
clauses in the SL are selected as the data.

The data analysis is as follows. Firstly, the tense form in each clause in
the English source text (ST) was identified. The tense form found was
categorized into one of the three main groups, present, past, and
future. The present tense group might include the simple present,
present progressive, present perfect, and present perfect progressive.
The past tense group might consist of the simple past, past progressive,
past perfect, and past perfect progressive. Equally, the future tense
group might include the simple future, future progressive, near future,
future perfect, and future perfect progressive.

The next step was to find an overt temporal device in the

corresponding clause in the Vietnamese translation. The Vietnamese
overt temporal resources consist of temporal adverbials, auxiliaries,
and aspectual markers. If a Vietnamese locating adverbial is found in
the translation of an English clause that contained a particular tense, it
was concluded that the temporal information expressed by the English
tense was explicitly conveyed in the Vietnamese translation. Likewise,
If the Vietnamese progressive aspectual marker is found in the
translation of an English clause that is expressed by the progressive

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aspect, the aspectual meaning of the ST was concluded to be explicitly
conveyed in the TL. On the other hand, due to the lack of agreement on
the meaning of the Vietnamese auxiliaries, conclusions as to what
temporal meaning is expressed by the Vietnamese auxiliaries had to be
drawn from the results of the study.

When no temporal adverbial, auxiliary, or aspectual marker is found in

the Vietnamese translation of an English SL clause in the deictic
sections, the next step was taken to identify the situation type of the
situation in the Vietnamese TL clause.

The frequency of occurrences of each English tense form and each

Vietnamese temporal device or situation type that was found to
translate the English tense was calculated and tabulated from
proposed the Table (1) below.

Table 1. English and Vietnamese tense and aspect translation

sample
Source texts Target texts

Resources Freq Temporal adverbials Aspectual markers Aux Situation type

Pres Past Fut Ao F Prog Perf St Act Acc Ach

Sim 747 ĐM 18 12 10 22 8 612 52 5 8

Present

HC 16 14 12 24 10 610 50 5 6
TL 16 10 13 24 10 611 50 6 7

Prog 75 ĐM 4 25 3 6 21 9 7
HC 6 24 5 9 19 7 5

TL 5 24 5 5 22 8 6
Perf 67 ĐM 51 7 3 4 2

HC 49 6 4 5 5
TL 50 5 4 5 3

PP 29 ĐM 11 6 4 5 3

HC 10 7 3 4 5
TL 12 4 3 6 4

Sim 296 ĐM 68 101 92 15 11 9

Past

HC 67 98 91 14 10 8
TL 69 104 91 14 10 8

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 Prog 23 ĐM 2 10 4 2 5

HC 4 9 3 3 4

TL 3 10 3 3 4

PP 16 ĐM 16

HC 16

TL 16
Sim 93 ĐM 5 11 56 7 4 6 4
Future

HC 6 11 55 6 5 5 3

TL 3 13 57 5 6 4 5
Near 28 ĐM 12 5 6 5

HC 13 6 5 4
TL 11 4 7 6

Legend: Freq: frequency: sim: simple; prog: progressive; perf: perfect:

PP: perfect progressive; AoF: adverbs of frequency; LA: locating
adverbials; TA: temporal adverbials; act: activity; acc: accomplishment;
ach: achievement; st: state; ĐM: Đỗ Mặc; HC: Hoàng Cường; TL: Trịnh Lữ

Findings and discussion

In this section is the discussion of the results of the data analysis of the
English source information and their Vietnamese translations, which
was performed to answer the research questions. Part 4.1 presents
quantitatively the tenses/aspects found in the English deictic sentences
and the temporal devices found in Vietnamese translations to render
each tense /aspect information. In part 4.2, a detailed discussion of the
results will be shown.

Quantitative analysis of the results

Tense and aspect clauses found in English SL and Vietnamese TL

translated by Đỗ Mặc.

The researcher decided to select 1384 clauses in the deictic mode as

data corpus. The tenses identified in the clauses consist of simple
present tense, present progressive tense, simple past tense, past
progressive tense, present perfect tense, present perfect progressive
tense, past perfect tense, past perfect progressive tense, simple future
tense and near future tense. The clauses of simple present tense are the

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most common, appeared in 747 clauses, accounting for 54 percent of
the total clauses. Then the clauses of simple past tense rank the second
in terms of frequency in the novel. They account for 21 percent and the
number of clauses is 296 clauses. The third most frequently found
tense is the simple future tense as it includes 93 clauses, accounting for
6 percent. The other tenses occur much less frequently. The
illustrations of the English tenses/aspects and the Vietnamese
equivalents found to convey the meaning of tenses/aspects are
depicted as follows.

Of the 1384 clauses in deictic mode, only 451(33%) were found to be

explicitly conveyed in the Vietnamese translation by an explicit tempo-
aspectual device. The explicit tempo-aspectual devices that were found
most frequently were perfect aspectual markers, appearing in 214
clauses (equal 47 percent of the clauses marked with an explicit
tempo-aspectual device) followed by temporal adverbials found in 118
clauses (26 percent). The Vietnamese auxiliaries were found in 82
clauses (18 percent). The progressive aspectual markers were used
the least often, found in 37 clauses (8 percent).

Tense and aspect clauses found in English SL and Vietnamese TL

translated by Hoàng Cường

Similarly, with exactly the same corpus in the SL clauses, below is the
illustrations of the English tenses/aspects and the Vietnamese
equivalents found to convey the meaning of tenses/aspects are
interpreted as follows.

After calculating it is found out that 458 (33%) of the 1384 clauses in
deictic mode, were found to be explicitly conveyed in the Vietnamese
translation by an explicit tempo-aspectual device. The explicit tempo-
aspectual devices that were found most frequently were perfect
aspectual markers, appearing in 211 clauses (amount to46 percent of
the clauses marked with an explicit tempo-aspectual device) followed
by temporal adverbials found in 120 clauses (26 percent). The
Vietnamese auxiliaries were found in 87 clauses (9 percent). The
progressive aspectual markers were used the least often, found in 40
clauses (8 percent).

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Tense and aspect clauses found in English SL and Vietnamese TL
translated by Trịnh Lữ.

The English corpus remains the same whereas the tempo-aspectual

equivalents in Vietnamese are slightly different between the two first
translation versions. With the last translation version, the difference
will be a matter of fact but whether the difference affects greatly the
content of the information in the novel or not needs a detailed analysis
below.

As can be seen from the Table 1, of the 1384 clauses in deictic mode,
460 (33%) were found to be explicitly conveyed in the Vietnamese
translation by an explicit tempo-aspectual device. The explicit tempo-
aspectual devices that were found most frequently were perfect
aspectual markers, appearing in 214 clauses (equal 47 percent of the
clauses marked with an explicit tempo-aspectual device) followed by
temporal adverbials found in 118 clauses (26 percent). The
Vietnamese auxiliaries were found in 82 clauses (9 percent). The
progressive aspectual markers were used the least often, found in 37
clauses (8 percent)

Detailed results illustrated by examples

The following are some illustrating examples taken from the data
analysis. Firstly, the present simple tense clause in English is translated
into aspectual marker progressive in Vietnamese.

(2) The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this
quality when it appears in a normal person. (TGG, p.3)

“Một kẻ đầu óc không bình thường sẽ rất nhanh chóng phát

hiện và gắn bó với đức tính ấy khi nó biểu lộ ở một con người
bình thường. (GVĐ, p.5)

Secondly, the present perfect tense in English is translated into

aspectual marker perfective in Vietnamese.

(3) ‘I believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.’ (TGG,

p.109)

Ông Buchaan, hình như chúng ta đã gặp nhau ở đâu rồi thì phải

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 Then, of the two examples below, one is to explain the simple
present tense clause is translated from English into Vietnamese
by using a situational verb. The other example is the description
of the translation of the a simple past tense clause in English into
a situational verb in Vietnamese, too.

(4) ‘At least they’re more interesting than the people we know,’ (TGG,
p.109)

Ít nhất họ cũng thú vị hơn những người mà bọn mình biết, (ĐGG,
p.153)

(5) “She ran out in a road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even stop us car”
(TGG, p.149)

“Bà ấy chạy ra ngoài đường. Thằng khốn nạn không thèm đỗ lại”
(ĐGG, p. 196)

Finally are illustrations of which simple future tense in English

are translated into temporal adverbials present in Vietnamese or
a situational verb in Vietnamese

(6) ‘Look at that coat. Some coat. That’s a dog that’ll never bother you
with catching cold.’ (TGG, p.31)

Quý ngài nhìn long nó đây này. Lông thế mới là lôngchứ! Giống
chó này không bao giờ bị cảm lạnh để làm quý ngài phải vất vả vì
nó (ACHH, p. 18)

(7) And I don’t understand why you won’t come out frankly and tell
me what you want. Why has it all got to come through Miss Baker?’
(TGG, p.77)

Và tôi không hiểu tại sao anh lại không nói thẳng với tôi. Sao cứ
phải đi vòng qua cô Baker mới được? (ACHH, p. 43)

Conclusion and recommendations

Though tense and aspect are not always considered to be a

grammatical category in Vietnamese, translators can convey tempo-
aspectual information from English – a tensed language into
Vietnamese - a non-tensed one using a variety of lexical resources in
Vietnamese. Basing on the result analysis, the first conclusion can be

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made is that perfect aspectual markers in Vietnamese are used the
most frequently in conveying tense and aspect information from
English. The secondly conclusion is the past tenses are translated into
not only Vietnamese using temporal referring to the past but also
aspectual markers implying perfective or even progressive. The next
conclusion is the present tenses in English can be rendered into
Vietnamese equivalents expressed by progressive or perfective
markers. The final conclusion is that almost tense and aspect
information in English can be found in the Vietnamese translation
under the presence of situational types of verbs. These findings would
be of practical use for translators in flexibly selecting appropriate
equivalents in translating from English into Vietnamese and vice versa
with regard to tense and aspect. Besides, teachers or learners of
English could also use these as a good reference for their English
teaching and studying respectively. Due to the limitation of the scope of
the study, however, the data collected might not be various enough
though they seem to be consistent as they are taken from one reliable
source. Furthermore, the investigation into the methods to translate
narrative clauses is not taken into account in this study. Also, the
examination into how to transform tempo-aspectual items from
Vietnamese into English would be a very applicable research that is
worth calling for further studies by linguists and researchers.

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The Author

Correspondence concerning this study should be addressed to Nguyen

Dinh Sinh, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hung Yen University of
Technology and Education, Vietnam. E-mail: mrsinh09@[Link]

540 | The 7th OpenTESOL International Conference 2019 | Proceedings