AIDING THE TRANSLATION PROCESS WITH AFFIXAL ANALYIS – A CASE STUDY IN “THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA”

Abstract

Affixes have been of great interest, attracting more and more translators to pay attention. While English is an inflectional language, Vietnamese is an analytical one. This morphological difference leads to an increase in the time of the translation process and a decrease in the target text’s quality. To address this problem, this study examines, with qualitative research in the secondary source, the semantic contribution of English suffixes and prefixes in the translation process by categorizing and analyzing various English affixes in the source texts and proposing their Vietnamese equivalent for the target texts. The results reveal that implementing an affixal analysis in the translation process (1) enhances the translation quality, (2) accelerates the translation process, and (3) conveys patterns of meaning associated with affixal stress and intonation. These findings yield practical translation practices, thereby ensuring equivalence and consistency in English–Vietnamese translation.