Experiences in the process of the English translation of a Vietnamese research book: challenges and solutions

This paper is based on our experiences participating in the translation of the research book Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa Việt Nam (Discovering the Identity of Vietnamese Culture) into English, especially the proofreading and editing of previous groups’ work on the project. (We also draw on our experiences with other translations and written texts in Vietnam, as well as discerning linguistic causes.) We discovered many difficulties in the process that had reduced the quality of the work, requiring us to develop and implement a series of proofreading and editing steps to improve its quality. We conclude in this paper that translations of important works (especially academic works) from English to Vietnamese or vice versa must be done through the substantial, interactive involvement of at least one native speaker from each language who is also proficient at the other language. We also conclude that a much more detailed set of proofreading steps should be followed. Finally, we propose a specific set of eight steps to be used for the process of translation, editing, and proofreading to ensure high quality of the finished translation