VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

ĐẶNG HỮU CHỈNH

A Study of Mistakes and Errors in Consecutive

Interpretation from Vietnamese to English

SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN NINH BẮC, MA

Hanoi, May, 2010

Table of content

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Rationale ........................................................................................................ 1

1.1 The aim of the research and research questions ........................................ 2

1.2 Scope of the reseach ...................................................................................... 2

1.3 Methodology .................................................................................................. 3

2. Literature Review .................................................................................................. 5

2.1 Defintion of interpretation ........................................................................... 5

2.2 Definition of consecutive interpretation ..................................................... 5

2.3 Speaking in intrepretation ........................................................................... 5

2.4 Mistakes and errors in interpretation ......................................................... 6

3. Data and methodology ........................................................................................... 8

3.1 Data ................................................................................................................ 8

3.2 Methodology .................................................................................................. 8

4. Fingdings and discussion ....................................................................................... 9

4.1 Pronunciation mistakes ................................................................................ 9

4.1.1 Lack of ending sounds .................................................................... 10

4.1.2 Mispronunciation ............................................................................ 10

4.2 Grammatical mistakes ................................................................................ 11

4.2.1 Subject – verb agreement ............................................................... 11

4.2.2 Relative pronouns ........................................................................... 13

4.2.3 Other mistakes ................................................................................ 14

4.3 Lexical errors .............................................................................................. 15

4.3.1 Incomplete sentence ......................................................................... 15

4.3.2 Repeated words or phrases............................................................. 17

4.3.3 Unclear sentence .............................................................................. 17

4.3.4 Unneeded self-correction ................................................................ 20

4.4 Biggest factors leading to making mistakes .............................................. 21

4.4.1 Lack of practice ................................................................................ 23

4.4.2 Time pressure ................................................................................... 23

4.4.3 Speaking skill.................................................................................... 24

4.4.4 Nervosity ........................................................................................... 24

4.4.5 The rest ............................................................................................. 24

4.5 Suggestions for dealing with these mistakes ............................................. 25

5. Conclusion and future development .................................................................. 27

Reference ....................................................................................................................... 30

Appendix ........................................................................................................................ 31

ABSTRACT

Interpretation is a beloved yet challeging subject for third-year students in

translation and interpretation because it, on the one hand, requires a

combination of different skills which students have learned, i.e. speaking,

listening, memory, aprroximation and generalisation. On the other hand, the

risks of making mistakes and errors are so high that students are sometimes

afraid of facing it. This research aims firstly at finding out some types of

mistakes and errors in Vietnamese - English consecutive interpretation,

secondly at analyzing main factors causing students to make these types of

errors. Finally, some workable solutions are suggested to not only students but

also teachers who teach interpreting. To do so, several previous works related to

the topic have been studied to set background for the findings of this research.

Data collected from recorded cassettes in the final exam of fifth term are then

analyzed and classified into two groups including mistakes in pronunciation and

grammar and lexical errors which contain incomplete sentence, repeated words

or phrases, unclear sentence, and unneeded self-correction. Before some

suggestions are given from the findings, factors leading to these errors have

been specifically and logically analyzed.

ACKNOWLEDMENT

I would first and foremost thank my supervisor, Nguyen Ninh Bac, MA for

supervising me through this rewarding but hard-working process. I am grateful

to you for your support, guidance, feedback and encouragement. I would also

love to thank my dear classmate, Vuong Thi Thanh Nhan who allows me to

adapt her questionnaire and helps me during the time I spend doing this work.

Finally, I would like to thank my classmates, my family, and my old teacher,

Mrs. Phuong, for offering such kind help motivating me to finish this research.

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

In ULIS (University of Languages and International Studies), interpreting

students get started with interpretation in year 3 when they are competent in

English, especially speaking and listening. However, between listening as well

as speaking lesson and interpreting there is still a gap which needs time and

attention to be filled by third year students. Specifically, in listening students

are required to pay more focus on details and skills of using English while

interpretation requires them to give more priorities to main ideas and convey

the message in their way of understanding. Similarly, speaking lessons ask

students to speak out what they think or prepare in advance, whereas speaking

in interpretation means reproducing a spoken message or expression from a

source language to a target language based on the help of notes and short term

memory. Moreover, manners of interpreting are little focused because third year

students rarely have chance to access to professional interpretation

environment; consequently manners are often ignored. Therefore, they often

make mistakes in doing their interpreting during first step of getting acquainted

with the subject, mainly consecutive interpretation. For this reason, the

researcher decides to choose the thesis studying common speaking mistakes and

errors in consecutive interpretation often made by third-year students in ULIS.

In accordance with previous research, the thesis suggests some solutions to

these errors from findings of the research.

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1.2 The aim of the study and research questions

1.2.1 The aims of the research

First and foremost, the research aims to give more insights to consecutive

interpretation and find out common speaking mistakes and errors often made by

third-year students. The primary aim of this research is to deal with mistakes

because they have been taught in year one and year two of students’ curriculum;

thus making mistakes in year three can be considered to be serious. Moreover,

the researcher tries to find out factors causing these errors. The researcher hopes

to figure out common patterns of errors as well as mistakes so that next

generation of students will be better prepared and aware of what difficulties

they may encounter and what types of mistakes and errors they often make.

Finally, tips and suggestions will be provided based on findings from the

research so that interpreting teachers will be able to use these errors patterns as

diagnostic tool for the design of instructions and constructions in curriculum.

1.2.2 Research questions:

1. What types of speaking mistakes and errors do third-year students

often make when doing their consecutive interpretation?

2. What are the factors causing these mistakes and errors to third-year

students?

3. What are workable solutions based on the research findings in efforts

to cure these errors?

1.3. Scope of the research

Due to the limitation of time and capability, doing research on all groups of

students in translation and interpretation division in year three would be

difficult. Thus, a group, namely 071E19, was chosen as the subject of the

research.

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1.4. Methodology

Sampling

The cassettes in the fifth-semester final examination of group 071E19 were

chosen to be analyzed in this study for 2 reasons. Firstly, the examination was

the time students apply what they learned in class. Secondly, students were in a

real environment of interpretation because in class they often had time to

prepare or with the helps from teachers.

Data collection instrument

21 cassettes recording the products of Vietnamese – English interpretation of 21

students in 071E19 were collected. Each cassette was listened carefully to

identify speaking errors. Also, a questionnaire of 9 questions was passed out

and then collected to gain response from students.

Data collection process

There are three main steps:

First of all, 21 cassettes were borrowed from the department library.

Secondly, each of them was analyzed thoroughly to identify common

errors.

Finally, questionnaires were given to targeted students to find out reasons

for making these errors.

Data analysis

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To answer the three research questions, data analysis was done. Errors, after

being identified, would be categorized in sample patterns. Some calculations

were made to find out the most common errors made by the students.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definition of Interpretation

Understanding the concept of interpretation would obviously set a sound

background for this study.

Interpretation can be generally understood as a process of conveying

message in which a speaker’s meaning is best expressed in his or her mother

tongue but is best understood in the languages of the listeners (Nolan 2005: 2).

He also emphasized that as a bridge-builder between languages, an interpreter

helps speakers make them understood and satisfy the need of understanding

what is being said from the listeners.

2.2 Definition of Consecutive Interpretation (CI)

In the article “Consecutive Interpretation: A Brief Preview”, Santiago, R. gave

the definition of CI. According to him, CI in its purest form is a mode in which

the interpreter begins his interpretation of a complete message after the speaker

has stopped making the source utterance. At the moment the interpretation is

done, the interpreter is the only person involved in the communication

environment.

2.3 Speaking in Interpretation

For Vietnamese – English interpretation, speaking plays the key role in

conveying the message. Moreover, speaking is one of the criteria to assess

whether one is a qualified interpreter.

Public speaking is an important part for one to become an interpreter

(Nolan 2005: 8). He stated that there exists difference between speaking in daily

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life and speaking in interpretation, in which speaking in daily life is primarily

for exchanging information and expressing feelings, whereas the main functions

of language used by public speakers such as diplomats, president candidates is

persuasion or gaining people’s trust. Therefore, an interpreter needs not only to

use skills at descriptive speech but also to master power of persuasion.

2.4 Mistakes and Errors in interpretation

So far, mistakes and errors remain unable to differ. A mistake is a wrong

response towards a topic that a student has known about. An error is also a

wrong response made by students because they have no knowledge about what

is the right answer. A student, if given a second chance, has the potential to

correct a mistake, whereas a student has no potential to correct an error until he

or she learns what is correct.

Barik (1973: 237) examined simultaneous interpretation and categorized

the results into temporal and quantitative data. He focused on the effect of time

lag, articulation and speed of interpretation. In another study by Barik (1975:

272), the same subject was treated but this time using qualitative and linguistic

data. Barik categorized translation departures into omissions, additions and

substitutions or errors of translation. Barik’s papers are informative as to how

texts of interpretation can be categorized and how data can be grouped.

However, the barrier between what is considered a mild error and what is

considered a serious error can sometimes difficult to distinguish.

Parks (1982: 131) defines mistakes as something which violates the

norms of standard usage; however, these may be defined. The concept of

“mistake” is relative to the principles of a particular speech community. He

gives some guidelines to the seriousness of various types of mistakes.

Phonological, intonational, and structural errors are not serious and can be

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ignored provided that they do not interfere with the listeners’ understanding of

the text. If the correct intonation is not used when asking a question, the listener

can become confused and therefore it would be considered a mistake. Short

omissions are of little importance because most texts are sufficiently repeated to

render them in a neutral way. Semantic errors can be considered quite serious.

For example, the insertion of a negative in a sentence will distort the meaning

of the message to be conveyed. Paraphrasing and approximation may be

accepted provided that they convey the meaning of the text. Though not

recommended, they can be a handy tool to use, especially when the speaker is

speaking too quickly. Lexical errors are considered to be extremely serious

because the wrong choice of vocabulary can change the meaning significantly.

Knowing the right word can greatly determine to what extent the listener will

trust the interpreter.

In this research, the researcher attempts to apply Park’s ideas of

categorizing different types of errors and mistakes but the names of these

patterns are given and suggested by the researcher himself. Specifically, two

categories of incorrect interpretation will be used: one which students have

known but still made, namely mistakes, and one that students have not had

knowledge about – errors (lexical errors).

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3. DATA AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Data

The data for this research is from cassettes borrowed from the library of the

English Department. There are 21 cassettes which are the products of

interpretation in the fifth-term final exam of 071E19. This group was chosen

because (1) the number of its students can represent the whole number of K41

in translation and interpretation division; (2) the timetable of this group was

convenient for the researcher to observe and carry out the research plan.

The questionnaire was passed out on April 20th 2010 and then collected.

There are 21 sheets of questionnaires passed out to students and also 21 sheets

gained back. Each questionnaire contains 9 questions about reasons why

students make the mentioned mistakes (Appendix 1).

3.2 Methodology

The mistakes presented in this study are categorized into 3 groups, namely (1)

pronunciation, (2) grammar, and (3) lexical mistakes. These mistakes are

chosen because students repetitively make them with high frequency and great

number (about 15 students make the same pattern of mistakes).

The results from questionnaires are calculated to see which reason has

the greatest impact on the quality of students’ interpretation. It should be noted

that the questionnaire in this research is adapted from Vuong Thi Thanh Nhan’s

research which is about factors influencing the quality of interpretation in

061E19 in their seventh term. Also, bar charts are used to represent clearly the

number of students encounter the same reason for making these mistakes.

In this research, CI means consecutive interpretation, SL means source

language, and TL means target language.

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4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

As mentioned in 2.4, mistakes and errors in interpretation could be categorized

in terms of seriousness, from incorrect intonation to lexical mistakes or errors.

Although possible presumptions can be made about some types of errors, it is

important to have more insights into interpretation errors, i.e. what they are,

why students often make them, then more importantly how to minimize the risk

of encountering them. Moreover, speaking plays an important role in

Vietnamese – English interpretation; thus studying the common mistakes in

speaking would be significant to help third year students enhance the quality of

their interpretation products because they have known about mistakes already.

In terms of errors, they are quite broad and out of students’ understanding, so

correcting them would not be feasible and applicable. In part 1, popular

mistakes will be discussed and analyzed.

Identified errors in this study are categorized in terms of the level of

seriousness, specifically from pronunciation mistakes to wrong choice of words

or expressions – lexical mistakes. Before suggestions are given, mistakes are

listed in tables so that comparison can be seen clearly.

Some mistakes can belong to different categories, but they are placed in

the most appropriate and relevant group so that they really fit and make the

mistakes clear.

4.1 Pronunciation mistakes

In this part, there are two main types of mistakes, namely lack of ending sounds

and mispronunciation. Although pronunciation mistakes are not really serious,

they can somewhat affect the quality of an interpretation. Surprisingly, 100% of

the students made this mistake, which shows that students really have problem

with their speaking skill.

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4.1.1 Lack of ending sounds

The most common ending sounds which students did not pronounce are /s/ in

gifts, /t/ in ‘gift’, /S/ in ‘cash’, /θ/ in ‘their’, and /id/ in ‘developed’. Certainly,

there are more endings that students either did not pronounce or added in

unnecessarily, but these presented are the most typical ones. Surprisingly, 18

out of 21 students made mistakes in pronouncing these endings. These words

are all key words which carry the meaning of the whole message; so

mispronouncing them can obviously affect the quality of students’

interpretation. It shows the low competence in English of students.

Not only did students lack these endings, 2 students also often added /s/

ending unnecessarily in each word of their speech. For example, “…In Asians

countries, people has a common practice thats they usuallys gives gifts to

others…” This may be due to the habit of some students who always add /s/

ending in each word of their speech, especially after explosions (/t/, /k/, /p/).

4.1.2 Mispronunciations

Some words tend to be mispronounced and so they turned into a totally

different word. These words are shown as follow:

Bargain [bə'gi:n] beguine

Tax [t�ks] à tucks

Service [sə'vaiv] à survive

Present ['prizn] à prison

Cash [k�:d] card

If listeners do not know Vietnamese and have no access to original text,

they may understand the message in a completely different meaning such as in

the case …“in Asian countries, people often have a habit of giving prisons to

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others”… Therefore, mispronunciation these key words have affected seriously

the meaning of the message.

4.2 Grammatical mistakes

Although students are required to master grammar when they enter year three,

the frequency of making grammatical mistakes is still really high. In this part,

common grammatical mistakes are presented in order of popularity. Although

students specialized in English should master grammar with high proficiency,

they failed to use it correctly in speaking. Different from translation in which

students have time to look for the best words and grammatical structures to

express the idea, interpretation asks them to quickly response to the message by

using short-term memory, notes and grasping gist. So instead of paying

attention to grammar students really focused on the idea to be interpreted.

Despite an understandable speech, poor grammar shows lack of accuracy in

English and leads to the fact that the audiences lose their trust on the interpreter.

4.2.1 Subject – verb agreement

It can be said that this is a quite serious and common mistake that students

made (all of students in this group made them in their interpretation). It varies

from lack of linking verb, i.e. “to be” to wrong form of main verbs, either

singular or plural. For this type of mistake, all of the students in E19 contained

it in their interpretation. So they really need to focus on analysing some patterns

as presented below so that they can find possible solutions to correct and then

enhance their interpretation.

First of all, “there + to be” pattern should be mentioned. Surprisingly,

for this simple and popularly used structure, students were often confused and

felt hesitant to use them. With the model structure that the verb “to be” is

determined either singular or plural by the objects followed, students may know

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it clearly in grammar but they do not master the practice of this structure. The

table below shows the model of incorrect use of the structure “there + to be”.

Wrong sentences Suggestion for correction

…in China there are a situation

that…

…in China there is a situation that…

There is also TV, souvenirs… There are also TV, souvenirs…

There are rarely seldom bargainness

of service…

There is rarely any bargain of

service…

Among these gifts, there is also

many wine, tobacco…

Among these gifts, there are also a

lot of wine, tobaccos…

Secondly, wrong form of main verbs should also be taken into account.

Within this mistake, students unconsciously used the main verbs in the wrong

form. When a singular subject needs to be followed by a singular verb, the verb

is placed in the plural form and vice versa. The fact that students put too much

focus on the meaning of the text makes them fail to render the interpretation

correctly in term of grammar. The evidence is clearly depicted in the table

below.

Incorrect sentences Suggestion for correction

…because seller don’t have to put

their money to buy these gifts…

…because sellers don’t have to use

their money to buy these gifts…

…the gift are exchange become

money…

The gifts are exchanged for/into

money…

Officers has been given a lot of gifts

that they hasn’t used them much…

Officers have been given so many

gifts that they haven’t used them

all…

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Asian people has tradition is gift

giving …

Asian people have a tradition of

giving gifts…

…many shop which buy these gifts

is very small and the bargain

situation don’t often happen…

…many shops which buy these gifts

look very small and the situation of

bargain doesn’t often happen…

…the person who want to sell new

year gifts seem not to make

bargain…

The person who wants to sell new

year gift seems not to make

bargain…

It can be seen that though the idea is possibly understood, wrong form of

main verbs shows the low level of using English of students. From the table, it

can be concluded that the level in English of students lies in pre-intermediate or

so. But the context of the time limitation some can be acceptable.

4.2.2 Relative pronouns

The representative of this mistake is indicated in this table:

Unfinished sentences using relative

pronouns

correction

…the people who sell their presents,

they don’t have to spend money…

The people who sell their presents

don’t have to spend their money…

…Chinese government concern

about the issue because the people

who give the present under the

world…

Chinese government is concerned

about the issue because people give

the present illegally…

…Asian people have a tradition is

giving gifts to others when the Tet

holiday comes…

…Asian people have a tradition that

they give gifts to others when the Tet

holiday comes…

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The use of relative pronouns shows the competence of students to be

capable of making complex sentences or structures. However, wrong use of this

grammatical issue can lead to a run-on sentence or a meaningless sentence. To

some extents, students sometimes forgot that they were using relative pronouns

in their speech, so they kept running on an unfinished sentence or idea. Four

students commited this mistake in their products.

4.2.3 Other mistakes

The first one should be listed in this group is wrong use of double

comparative. The double comparative is known as “the + a short adjective –er

… the + a short adjective –er” and “the more… the more…” in which a long

adjective follows “the more” or both of the two mixes. However, students put a

noun after “the more”, which makes a confused sentence. In this case, “the

more position they are, the more expensive they have”, certainly it is a nonsense

sentence. It must be turned into “the higher position they are, the more

expensive gifts they have”.

Secondly, incorrect use of reduced subjects is worth being noticed. A

subject of a sentence is only reduced when two clauses inside share the same

subjects. However, students, in fact, reduced subject even when the subjects of

two clauses are totally different. Two examples are shown to represent this

type:

1. After collecting, they will be buy with high price à After being collected,

they will be bought at high price. (they refer to gifts)

2. After bought from junior officials, senior officials sells them to the markets

à after receiving gifts from junior officials, senior ones sell them to the market.

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4.3 Lexical errors

Regarding errors in interpretation, they are unknown to third year students

because fifth term is the first hand experience in interpretation for them.

Therefore, some types of errors which they have no ideas about are obviously

encountered. From this part, more insights into lexical errors will come into

play, especially ones distorting the meaning of the original message. These

errors are categorized into different groups each of which is put a name

suggested by the researcher.

As discussed in 2.4, lexical errors are the most serious type which

directly distort the meaning of a sentence and can lead to misunderstanding.

The samples followed are only the most typical ones which many a student

encounter the same problems namely incomplete sentence, repeated words or

phrase and unclear sentence.

4.3.1 Incomplete sentence

Incomplete sentences occur in speech because students lacked needed time for

interpretation segments or their ideas have not been fulfilled, or their

vocabulary was not enough for them to express the ideas. More seriously, all 21

students’ cassettes contain this mistake, which means their time management is

not good enough due to lack of regular practice. This result is understandable

because third year students in their fifth term are completely fresh men to be

accessible to interpretation. 15 week contact in class can be enough for them to

handle some principles of interpretation, but from theory to practice, there is

still a gap to be fulfilled, i.e. regular practice is necessary for students to be

acquainted with time pressure.

The following table shows incomplete sentences and reasons why they

occur, either for running out of time or for poor vocabulary.

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Incomplete sentences Reasons

Although this service can earn a lot

of money, the shop looks very…

how to say…

Poor vocabulary. In fact, this student

is trying to say “the shop look very

small and poor-equiped”

Hope that this custom giving gifts in

Tet will…

Running out of time. The full

sentence is “it is hoped that the

custom of gift giving in Tet will

remain its original beauty”

In official, they forbid to receive gift

in material, but they can receive the

gift in…

Poor vocabulary. This idea should be

“officially, officers are forbidden

from receiving money, but they can

receive material gifts”

…but the gifts are so expensive and

they were given so many gifts, so

they did not use it…

Poor vocabulary and lack of time.

“…but the gifts are so expensive and

they were given so many gift that

they did not use them all…” (they

refer to Chinese state officers)

Hope that our neighboring country,

Vietnam, can …

Running out of time. It should be

“we hope that/it is hoped that our

neighbouring, Vietnam, can find

effective measures to prevent red

tape/corruption.

…many of them do not use the

given…

Running out of time.

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4.3.2 Repeated words or phrases

On account of time limitation for each interpreted segment, repetition of words

of phrases can certainly shorten the time for students to carry out their ideas.

This reason is closely related to the mistake of incomplete sentence. Moreover,

too many repeated words make a speech sound messy and confused.

In terms of words, “and” and “but” are the two to be repeated the most

frequent. Students did this because they wanted to find a suitable word to

express their ideas. Instead of keeping silent, they made fillers in their speech

too many times.

Regarding phrases, the following list presents common repeated

expressions.

1. Many shops which buy this gift is very small and the bargain situation (often

happen)3 … do not often happen…

2. (Chinese government)3 is very worried (because)2…. (not only this student

repeat too much but she also has an unfinished sentence)

3. There is a situation which occur in Chinese. (It is that)4 many bosses in

Chinese bought their gifts which they have just received. (in this case, “it is

that” can be omitted. Likewise, this sentence conveys wrong meaning as

compared to the original one which is “in China, there is a situation in which

many bosses sell their gifts which they have just received”.)

4.3.3 Unclear sentence

This type of mistake is the most serious one because students used wrong words

to speak out their ideas. In some cases, students used a noun as a subject such as

“they”, “the + noun” without enough evidence to identify who or what the

subject really is. Misunderstanding or even incapability to understand certainly

occurs. The students themselves were not clear and did not understand

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thoroughly the message so they make a completely new and different sentence.

The typical one can be seen in this table:

Unclear sentence correction

These presents is too big to use. So

they can bring it to sell to…

These presents are too many in

quantity for the managers to use. So

they can sell it to the market

The managers receives many of

things of presents so they…sell

it/them because they do not take

advantage of them.

The managers receive so many

presents that they do not take all

advantage of them; so they sell them.

Chinese authority is hard to solve

these problems to these stores

because they do not work officially

It is hard for Chinese authority to

solve these problem of these stores

because they are doing this business

illegally

Those selling people, they do not

have the money to buy those thing…

For people selling these gifts, they do

not have to spend money buying

those things. (“they” refers to state

officers; “things” means gifts which

officers receive)

Common gifts they are received on

Tet are…

Common gifts they receive on Tet

are…

It is interesting that a few people

who bring their presents they do not

have to use their money to buy that

presents; so they do not have to

It is interesting that some people

selling their presents do not have to

spend money buying these presents;

so bargain does not happen/they sell

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debate the best price. these gifts without bargaining.

These activities is support for

traficial…

These activities are supporting for

red tape/bribery/trafficking

To collect new year gifts, many

shops which be set to meet the

demand that the boss want to

exchange gifts to money are act

illegally without license

To collect new year gifts, many

shops which are being operated

illegally/without legal license are set

up to meet the demand that the boss

wants to exchange gifts into money

In China, the government prevents…

and many managers of company do

not receive money but they can

receive gifts

In China, the government prevents

red tapes, and so many managers of

company are not allowed to received

money but they can receive gifts

So many shops have a successful

enterprise but they are very poor

Although many shops have a

successful business, they look very

poor-equipped

One interesting thing about the shop

there is no bargain to buy the gifts

because many sellers do not put

money to buy the gifts

One interesting thing about these

shops is that there is no bargain in

selling because many sellers do not

have to spend money buying these

gifts

…because they are not allowed

license and evade paying tax…

…because they do not have legal

license and they evade paying tax…

As can be seen from the table, unclear sentence is the combination of all

previously mentioned mistakes; thus it can be considered the most serious one.

Also, the frequency that students made this kind of mistake is high, i.e. it is

shown via the number of unclear sentences and the number of students

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producing such mistake. It is surprising that all of 21 students contain wrong

meaning sentences in their interpretation.

4.3.4 Unneeded self-correction

For this type of error, students spoke a word, but they did not satisfy with this

word then they attempted to try a new one which did not surely make their

interpretation better and more importantly was a waste of time. This type occurs

because students are not yet familiar with instant response or reaction in

interpretation, which requires interpreter to give the most satisfactory

expression in the quickest amount of time possible. In addition, lack of

vocabulary in general and related to the topic of corruption in particular causes

students to produce this kind of error. When students looked for another

alternative of the previous word, they waste their time and consequently, they

did not finish the segment which needed interpreting.

The following examples clearly give students away when they tried to

find for a not-yet better choice.

Unneeded self-correction Analysis

Because the anti-red tape in China is

very restricted so the high-ranking …

the big one can not receive cash

directly

“The big one” is unknown in this

case because it has not ever

mentioned before in this student’s

speech. “high-ranking” is obviously

a better choice.

Among these expensive gifts are TV,

mobile phones, precious pictures …

precious paints, …

“Pictures” is a wrong choice, but

“paints” can not be a better alternate.

It should be “precious paintings”.

Oriented … oriental …orientation The student tried to mean “Asian

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people have a custom of giving gift

when new year comes.

people”, but none of these words

could be a possible choice.

There is a strange thing …

phenomenon in China that senior

officers are often received expensive

gifts from junior officers

In this case, “thing” and

“phenomenon” have the same

meaning which refers to “red tape”

or “bribery”

The sellers … the selling people …

the people who sell these gifts do not

have to put their money to buy these

gifts

“the sellers” is the best choice, but

this students may want to look for a

longer expression so he thought

about “the selling people” and

“people who sell gifts”

4.4 Biggest factors leading to making mistakes

In the questionnaire, there are 8 different reasons namely (1) nervosity, (2) bad

health condition, (3) tape-recorder’s quality, (4) speaking skill, (5) lack of

practice, (6) time pressure, (7) classmates, (8) others (see appendix 1). Based on

responses from students, the most chosen mistake is found. Furthermore,

specific reasons within these big categories come into light, which later helps to

find out workable solutions to cure the latter mentioned types of mistakes.

The chart below shows the number of students choosing different reasons

for their making mistakes.

22

the number of students choosing different reasons for making mistakes

0

5

10

15

20

reasons

numbers of students

nervosity bad health tape-recorder's qualityspeaking skill lack of practice time pressureclassmates others

The bar chart shows the number of students choosing different reasons

for their making mistakes. Generally, lack of practice ranks the first position in

terms of the number of students whereas classmates and others are the least

influential factors on students.

Firstly, there are four factors, namely lack of practice, time pressure,

speaking skill, and nervosity, which are chosen to be the greatest impacts on

students respectively. 18 and 17 students think that they made mistakes due to

they did not practice well enough and they did not have enough time to finish

their interpretation. Also, poor speaking skill together with being nervous

accounted for a significant amount of undergraduates for just over 10.

Regarding the rest, classmates and other factors are not thought to be the

main reasons because they share the same number of choice, exactly 2 students.

Similarly, the quality of recorder and bad health condition respectively

accounted for 3 and 4 students out of 21.

23

From the chart, it can be seen that there is a big difference in

contributions of the factors.

4.4.1 Lack of practice

18 students out of 21 (86%) chose it to be the main factor for their mistakes in

the interpretation. It is noted that 17 out of 18 (94% students in this group)

students said they needed time to work more on short term memory, specifically

they wrote that they could not remember the information due to the length of

each interpreting segment. So this means that because students could not

remember the main idea, they were hesitant to speak up and tend to repeat

unnecessary words to have time to think. Other 7 choices (38%) were made to

note that they had problem with note-taking skill. In fact, students have a great

advantage in Vietnamese – English interpretation because they do not have

problem with listening skill and moreover, if they can use notes well,

interpretation is not a big deal. In Vietnamese – English interpretation,

Vietnamese is the mother tongue of students so they rarely note down.

Moreover, the speaker often makes a fast speech so students mainly base on

their short term memory. However, because fifth term is the first time students

have access to interpretation so problem with short term memory is

understandable.

4.4.2 Time pressure

Related to time pressure, there were 17 responses (81%) choosing this reason.

Among these 17 choices, 14 noted that the time given for them to render their

interpretation was too short. Combined with repeated words and sentences in

part 4.3.2, it can be concluded that maybe the time is enough for students to

finish interpreting, but they repeated words too much; consequently they could

not complete the whole segment. Other 4 students in this group thought that the

24

segment which they needed to interpret into English was too long. So both of

the information is relevant to each other.

4.4.3 Speaking skill

In terms of speaking skill, 10 out 12 students assumed that their poor

vocabulary caused them to perform badly in their interpretation. For this reason,

students could not find suitable words or phrases to express their ideas. It is

concluded that poor vocabulary is the main reason why students make lexical

mistakes, specifically making unclear sentences. In the mean time, 5 responses

revealed they did not have good grammar and pronunciation. This number

explains why there are quite many mistakes relating to grammar and

pronunciation. Finally, 4 students noted that they made too many types of filler

in their parts. For example, they made too many uhm…, ahh…, or they repeated

“and” and “but” too many times. This information is related to 4.3.2 which

discussed the mistake of repeated words.

4.4.4 Nervosity

Nervosity is the fourth biggest factors which caused students to make mistakes

in the interpretation. 10 choices were the number of students who thought

nervousness was the cause of poor performance. 8 students revealed that they

were not well-prepared about the topic, which made them feel nervous and lose

their confidence. Although topics related to interpretation often were informed

to students in advance in the website www.lopdich.tk students may not know

about this. Just one student informed that she was always nervous before any

exams.

4.4.5 The rest

The rest includes bad health condition, the quality of the recorder, classmates

and other reasons. First of all, 4 students blamed poor quality of recorder for

their mistakes. The sound of the recording was good, so no students chose it as

25

a cause of making mistakes. In regard to bad health condition, 3 students

responded that on the day of examination their health condition was not good,

which directly affected their performance. Last but not least, 2 choices were the

number circling classmates and others as their answer. It should be noticed that

both of the students wrote they needed to widen their background knowledge to

be well-prepared in terms of ideas, vocabulary and confidence. 1 student

believed when he was confident about the topic he could perform better.

4.5 Suggestions for dealing with these mistakes

Suggestions will aim at three subjects, namely students, teachers in speaking

skill, and teachers in interpretation. The suggestions are given based on the

findings of this study; consultation from teachers and professional interpreters

is not yet done.

4.5.1 For students

From the analyzed reasons, the first and foremost thing third year students

should do is to practice more regularly. By practice frequently under the

instruction of teachers, students can be familiar to time pressure, taking

advantage of their notes, training their short term memory, and most

importantly sharpening their speaking skill in term of grammar and expression.

Firstly, to train short term memory and be familiar with time pressure,

students need to do more interpretation. A suggestion for them is that they

should surf the website www.ted.com in which there are tons of videos about

familiar academic topics such as education, business, environment, humanity.

By downloading them, both in original language and interpreted Vietnamese

subtitle, students can do their own interpretation and then compare to the

interpreted for self-correction. Furthermore, students should record their

interpretation, after that they can either listen again to correct or give them to

26

their teachers in order to receive comments. Some useful soft wares which help

record are Jet audio, Nero version 7.0.

Secondly, to strengthen students’ note-taking skill, they need to take

notes in the form of an outline of a speech, then give this outline to their

classmates or teachers to check whether they can understand or not. By doing

this, students can develop their note-taking skill in terms of a system of symbol

and writing in shorthand.

More importantly, sharpening speaking skill is really necessary. Related

to recording their interpretation, students should pay more attention to

grammatical and pronunciation mistakes by noting often made mistakes then

speaking them again. Also, forming a group to practice speaking could help. By

speaking in front of a group of friends who take note a student’s performance

and then give feedbacks, students can certainly improve not only their speaking

skill but also their confidence as well.

4.5.2 For teachers who teach speaking skill

Teachers in speaking skill should pay more attention to pronunciation and

grammar in students’ presentation. It may take time and not be necessary, but if

they do not correct these mistakes students will form a habit of making and

repeating the mistakes without notice that they have problems with grammar.

Also, public speaking should be given more tasks to the students to enhance

their confidence.

4.5.3 For teachers who teach interpretation

First, they need to give more tasks not only in class but also at home for

students and recording students’ interpretation should be required. This would

help student have more practice and be close to time pressure and taking notes.

Similarly, teachers need to take students’ notes to check whether they take notes

in a right and sensible way.

27

5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

A study of common mistakes and errors in consecutive interpretation made by

third-year students revealed that in most cases, the mistakes and errors are very

similar to the results found by Parks. Mistakes in terms of pronunciation and

grammar and lexical errors all appeared in the interpretation performed by

students.

The errors can also be classified into omissions, additions, substitutions,

grammar, pronunciation, pronunciation, meaning and others. In numerous

cases, the grammatical mistakes were rooted due to the inability of the students

to apply their knowledge of grammar to actual situation. Therefore, it is not a

matter of the lack of knowledge but rather a matter of the lack of application.

Depending on how a text is viewed, all errors can fall into the meaning category

because in consecutive interpretation as long as the interpreter can understand

the message, he/she will not have any difficulty delivering it to the audience.

Provided that the original text is properly understood, the audience will be able

to understand the message despite a few grammatical mistakes. Moreover, in

some cases, errors occur due to pressure of time to perform. When students are

pressed for time they will not be able to perform all their knowledge. This can

be proved by the fact that when students are given chance to listen to their

interpretation again, they can correct the mistakes or errors they made.

From the analysis above, it can be concluded that there are three main

types of mistakes in terms of speaking skill made by third year students in their

fifth term. First, although pronunciation is not a big problem in speaking, it can

distort the meaning of the message, especially when key words of a message are

mispronounced. Secondly, grammatical mistake is a major problem among third

year students. The most outstanding one is subject – verb agreement. Wrong

forms of main verbs followed subject of a sentence show low competence of

28

third year students who first time access to interpretation. Similarly, relative

pronouns can be a two-face risk which either help to make a speech more

complex and advanced or worsen the quality of the speech. Thirdly, lexical

mistakes are the most serious case, which directly leads to misunderstanding of

the message. In this type of mistake, unclear sentences and unfinished sentences

should be paid a special attention because they occur with very high frequency

and in large quantity. If so, a message can be understood in a totally different

meaning.

For reasons which cause these mistakes, lack of practice is the biggest

one with 86% of students takes it into account. It is noticeable that students

really have problem with their notes and short term memory both of which

cause students to make unfinished sentences and make too many fillers. The

second one should be noticed is time pressure. Failing to be acquainted with

time pressure, students often have incomplete sentences in their interpretation.

Speaking skill and nervousness are the other main causes. Especially speaking

skill, 51% (12 out of 21 students) of the students in 071E19 responded that their

vocabulary and grammar are not good enough to perform well in the exam. This

information needs to be paid attention by teachers because in third year,

students are required to master these things. Finally, poor preparation and lack

of background knowledge make students nervous, which directly or indirectly

lose students confidence and impoverish the quality of the interpreatation.

In the future, the researcher hopes that more researches will be done

about suggestions to minimize the risk of making these mentioned mistakes.

Also, more researches should be carried out to analyze deeply the process in

which students do their interpretation, specifically input or encoding –

comprehension or analysis – decoding – interpretation or output. Analyzing

each stage will help to find out in which stage students often have trouble with

29

and which stage directly lead to causing mistakes or errors. Moreover, due to

small scope of study so the findings may not represent the general situation of

all third-year students in translating and interpreting division. Finally, data in

this study was taken in the final exam, i.e. the fifth term final exam in

interpretation, therefore, more serious or common mistakes and errors may not

have been found. Hopefully, future studies can address these limitations so as to

make a quite perfect study on mistakes and errors in English – Vietnamese

consecutive interpreting.

30

Reference

Books:

Barik, H.C. (1973). Simultaneous interpretation: Temporal and quantitative

data. Language and Speech, 16, 237-270.

Barik, H.C. (1975). Simultaneous interpretation: qualitative and linguistic data.

Language and Speech, 18, 272-292.

Ngo, H.T. (2005). Common Errors in Vietnamese – English Translation of

Heritage in Interpretive Signage in Some Beauty Spots in Hanoi. BA

thesis, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam.

Nolan, J. (2005). Interpretation Techniques and Exercises. Multilingual Matters

Ltd. Toronto

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2005). Oxford University Press.

Parks, G.B. (1982). What language do interpreters speak? Rassegna Italian di

Linguistica Apllicata, 14, 121-135.

Websites:

Santiago, R. 2004. Consecutive Interpreting: A Brief Review. 21 April 2010.

<http://home.earthlink.net/~terperto/id16.html>.

31

APPENDIX

SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

Dear 07.1.E19’s students,

I am Dang Huu Chinh, a fourth year student. I am doing a research on “A Study on Mistakes

and Errors in Vietnamese – English Interpretation by Third Year Students in Fifth Term”.

The aim of my study is find out common errors made by third year students, and then gain

information about different factors that affect the quality of each student’s interpretation.

Finally, some solutions will be given for students to improve their interpretations, not only in

exams but also in their future career. This survey is not a test, so there are no “right” or

“wrong” answers and you do not have to write your name on it. I am interested in your

personal opinions. Please give your answers sincerely as only this will guarantee the success

of the investigation. Thank you very much for your help.

1. Circle the factors that affected the quality of your interpretation in the 5th final-term

test.

A. Nervosity => Move to question 2

B. Bad health-condition => Move to question 3

C. Tape-recorder’s quality => Move to question 4

D. Speaking skill => Move to question 5

E. Lack of practice => Move to question 6

F. Time pressure => Move to question 7

G. Classmates => Move to question 8

H. Others => Move to question 9

2. What made you feel nervous when you took your interpreting exam?

A. You are always nervous in every exam.

B. You were not well-prepared enough (you did not search for information about

given topics, you did not practice interpreting frequently, etc)

C. Other reasons (please specify )

…………………………………………………………………………………………

……

32

3. Please specify how your bad-health condition affected your interpretation?

…………………………………………………………………………………………

……

4. Please specify how the tape-recorder’s quality affected your interpretation?

…………………………………………………………………………………………

……

5. Of the following cases, which one were you in? You can choose more than one

option.

A. You made too many fillers such as “ohh”, “uhm”, etc.

B. You got stuck in choosing appropriate words.

C. Others (specify your answer)

…………………………………………………………………………………………

……

6. Which skills that you think you should have practiced more before the interpreting

exam?

A. Listening& speaking

B. Note-taking & memorizing

C. Others (please specify your answer)

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…..

7. Why did time pressure affect your interpretation?

A. The time for each segment was too short.

B. The time for each segment was too long.

C. Others (please specify your answer).

………………………………………………………………………………………......

.....

33

8. Why did your classmates affect your interpretation?

A. Due to the lack of sound-proof equipment, you could hear your classmates’ voice

when you were interpreting.

B. Sometimes, you could not finish your interpretation at the same time as your

friends, which made you worried.

C. Others ( please specify your answer)

…………………………………………………………………………………………

……

9. Besides those 8 factors mentioned above, are there any others? If the answer is Yes,

please specify it with details. Then rank the factors from 1 in order of their influence

on the quality of your interpretation.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………….…………………………………………..……………………

……………….

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

………............

THANK YOU FOR YTHANK YOU FOR YTHANK YOU FOR YTHANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.OUR COOPERATION.OUR COOPERATION.OUR COOPERATION.