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‘Old’
Phách:
40 Years' Meditation on Words and Meanings
by Frank Trinh
Thangui Editor of Website vny2k.com
Launay khong tintuc gi cho nhau. Sau vu docgia, dacbiet la
MinhHo va DieuTan, dat cauhoi va neu nhanxet qualai ve
baiviet cua toi va cua Philip Coen (HoangBaCong) lienhe
den chuyen zichthuat tren ‘Website’ cua anh, toi
xingui den anh baiviet nay (xem attachment zuoiday, Font
Unicode, New Times Roman) ve motnguoi ma MinhHo decap la
tacgia cuon “Butchien MietDuoi”.
Caigoi lai “Butchien’ nay keozai khoang 3 thang vao
nam 1997-1998, khoidau tu viec Ong Phach tranhcai ve mot
vai tungu phiendich voi mot anh sinhvien cuatoi, ma saunay
cungla ChuBut/Chunhiem cua mot tobao Vietngu o Sydney.
Loile doiben, ngoai nhung ykien tichcuc, saucung diden cho
chitrich nangne den canhan. Tatnhien khongthe doloi cho
cai ‘khongkhi ngotngat’ rieng vephan aica. Boivi “it
takes two to tango” nhu anh dacothe biet.. Trong mot
giaidoan loiquatienglai giua hainguoi, toi cung co
‘nhay’ vao banluan gaygo qualai voi Ong Phach,
nguoiban vongnien cua toi, nhung tranhcai cua chungtoi
hoantoan tren canban xaydung hocthuat. Baiviet tiengAnh
nay cua toi (dadang trong tobao Anhngu ‘Integration’
cua Congdong NguoiViet tai Uc, nam 1998) la mot phan trong
mot baizai hon bang tiengViet, sau va trong vutranhcai voi
Ông Phách, la nguoi vanthich cuoc butchien trong lichsu
vanhoc candai VietNam co lienhe den Cu PhanKhoi. Theotoi
cuoc tranhluan giua toi va Ông Phách co taczung phainoi
la ‘positive’ cho nganhnghe phienzich. Totthoi!
Nay anhhieu lizo taisao toi khong muon lienhe vao nhungvu
tranhcai giua sinhvien va giangvien nhu truonghop anh
MinhHo va ‘his tutor’ o RMIT, hocvien cu cua Gs Phách.
Gui anh baiviet nay de anh ‘tuynghi’.
Than.
TrinhNhat.
I have known ’Old’ Phách (we like to address each
other in this fashion) for nearly 30 years, when the
country was at war, and by sheer chance we happened to be
working in the same building at the same time. He was
older than me, his position and rank was superior to mine,
and his knowledge of words and their meanings was wider
than my own at the time.
In that imposing building, which was referred to with
great respect as the Main Building, ‘Old’ Phách was
Chief of the Press Section, whereas I was Chief of the
Protocol and Translation Section. We did not meet up with
each other in the course of our work, however we often met
together on the tennis court (I am a better player than he
is). We would meet in the early morning, exercising
vigorously to build up a sweat, and then have breakfast bún
mộc (vermicelli soup with meatballs stuffed with chopped
mushrooms) in a small roadside café before going to work.
Sometimes we were even accompanied by our subordinates.
The situation changed when the country was going
through a ‘metamorphosis’, and we met up again in
Australia after he arrived here from Guam with the idea of
resettlement. He chose to live in Melbourne because he was
scheduled to work for Radio Australia, whereas I was
settled in Sydney completing my MA (Hons) Degree in
Linguistics. After about two years of teaching English to
Indo-Chinese refugees with the Adult Migrant Education
Service (AMES), I was selected to work with the BBC World
Service in the Vietnamese Section in London in the late
1970s. This was on a three-year short-term contract, and
on my return I was appointed lecturer in Vietnamese and in
charge of training students working towards a BA degree in
Interpreting and Translation at the then Milperra College
of Advanced Education (now known as the University of
Western Sydney Macarthur). Before and during this time the
University introduced the BA (I/T) and I had the honour of
asking him to attend the University and to deliver
speeches at various conferences and seminars on
translation. These lectures were sometimes delivered to
both ethnic and Australian groups. We also invited him to
serve as a visiting professor of translation on a
fortnightly basis lecturing and tutoring in translation
into and from Vietnamese and English, in the years 1986
and 1987.
Sydney to Melbourne is a distance of nearly 1000
kilometres, and he often boarded the coach, sleeping on
the overnight trip and arriving early the next morning. We
acquired the habit, at the conclusion of the evening
lecture, to go to Cabramatta for hủ tiếu xào bò
(fried beef rice noodles), a dish which he relished very
much. Personally, I have always thought that he is the
most experienced and capable person in the Southern
Hemisphere on the subject of translation. He is always
very careful in his work as a translator, and has always
maintained that translation is a very difficult task
indeed. Those who perform this task must be highly
competent and thoroughly understand both languages in
question, in order to render successfully and effectively
those things that people speak and write. He held the view
that the source language material, when translated into
the target language, must be done in such a way as to
sound natural and comfortable to the listener’s or
reader’s ear, thus resulting in being comprehensible.
At a seminar on translated health information in 1986
in NSW, whilst commenting on the weaknesses of Vietnamese
community translators, he did not forget to make
derogatory remarks about his first forays into the
profession, when he stated, ‘If anyone could find a text
which I translated 30 or 40 years ago and point out to me
the mistakes I then made, I would have to look for a hole
in which to hide’. Whatever text he has translated,
whenever he has a chance to revise it, he can always find
things with which he was not happy and which need to be
corrected. Only when it has gone to press, will he be
content that no more can be done.
He is hard-working and spends much time researching, in
order to find the correct strategies to use to translate
new words in English which have no existing Vietnamese
equivalents. One of the strategies he employs is to choose
a Sino-Vietnamese word which he thinks has the advantage
of being simple and concise, as well as suitable in the
formal context in which it is used. One of these new words
he chose was bệnh liệt-kháng (Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS) which previously had been
rendered into a lengthy equivalent (Hội-chứng Suy
giảm Miễn-dịch Mắc phải). His coined term bệnh
liệt-kháng was used in a 20-minute video on AIDS which
was made by the NSW Department of Health in 1988. My
recommendation to use him as a translator was approved
after the first two translated versions of the original
English script were found to leave much to be desired. The
term has common currency today and has been circulated
throughout the Vietnamese communities in the USA,
Australia and even Vietnam itself. Recently, however, in
Vietnam the French acronym SIDA has been used to refer to
AIDS.
When he was asked to review a 4000-word translated
health information brochure which had the title
Infertility, and which had been translated as Sự mất
khả-năng sinh-sản (The loss of reproductive
capability) he suggested that it be changed to Hiếm
muộn (which literally means ‘rarity and lateness’)
because, as he explained, it suits the intention of the
text, and also is appropriate to Vietnamese culture. He
often said that there are instances when we have to render
a translation in such a way that ‘to be faithful we have
to be unfaithful’, that is, we have to sometimes be
inaccurate in order to be accurately understood by the
reader. Therefore, translation in these circumstances is
that of translating the ‘idea’ rather than the
‘word’.
He has done so many different things relating to the
subject of words and meanings, that people might call him
a writer, an author, a newspaperman, an academic or a
scholar, but the title he likes most to be called is ‘a
journalist’. This is perhaps understandable, because for
over 40 years, he has been writing for Western as well as
Vietnamese newspapers using his real name Nguyễn Ngọc
Phách, and also the ‘noms de plume’ of John Draw,
Nguyen Nam Phong, Ngụy-lão, Thường-đức and
Lực-sĩ Ghế Bành.
In 1985, I was required interstate to serve for six
weeks as an interpreter in the Supreme Court of Victoria
on a murder case which touched on some very delicate
issues affecting the local Vietnamese community, ‘Old’
Phách and his daughter, who is now a lawyer, attended
Court to act as my supporters and observers. In the early
stages of my research on ‘collocation in translation’,
every time I had the opportunity to go to Melbourne on
business or on conferences, I would often visit him at
what he would jokingly call ‘my humble abode’. On
these occasions I often consulted him on the topic of
translation research. This research project has lasted a
decade, and will be completed this year in the form of a
doctorate degree in linguistics.
Recently, ‘Old’ Phách has been enthusiastically
preparing a book on Chữ Nho và Ðờii Sống Mới
(Sino-Vietnamese Script and the New Life) in the hope that
it will help the younger generations who were brought up
outside of Vietnam to go back to their roots and learn to
write and read Vietnamese books, as well as have
additional material for reference. In the meantime, whilst
waiting for the book to be published he has undertaken to
write a column in the bi-weekly Việt Luận (The
Vietnamese Herald). Many readers have expressed their
appreciation of and interest in the English rendering of
the Sino-Vietnamese expressions which are difficult to
translate.
‘Old’ Phách’s interest and desire to have
dialogue on words and meanings, as well as the art of
translation, has been expressed by himself in the 1998
Việt Luận Vietnamese New Year edition: ‘Whether you
agree with my argument or not, I’m not to know. But
whosoever does not agree, particularly those who work as
interpreters and translators, then let me know the reasons
why. I would whole-heartedly love to respond. Who knows?
-- most likely we will have a fruitful discussion, not
only from those working as interpreters and translators,
but from those interested in the future of the Vietnamese
language outside Vietnam.’
Frank Trinh
Sydney, 1998
Australia
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