Использование английских слов во вьетнамских СМИ

In the past when Vietnamese people had to borrow words, they often just borrowed the meaning of those words (До, 2017). It means Vietnamese people used to try to understand the meaning of an English word and then translated it into Vietnamese. But nowadays, people tend to borrow English words but keep the original language form, for example: Wifi, internet, chat, MC, shopping, marketing, online, offline... As mentioned above, even on TV programs of major channels such as VTV1, VTV3… or on Online newspapers, the English name is also used instead of Vietnamese one.

Borrowing words without changing the forms of words is a general trend of all the languages in the world today. If there are similar words between different languages, it will help people communicate more easily, especially in the current globalization context. In addition, it is not always possible for us to be successful in translating an English word into Vietnamese. Our translation version may be too long, or can not fully express the meaning of the original word. For example, the word “wifi” in English has the Vietnamese version “mạng không dây”. As you can see, the Vietnamese version is longer, so Vietnamese people prefer to use English version. In some cases, borrowing words without changing the form of the original word is a correct choice, because the translation into Vietnamese is too long and does not fully express the meaning of the original word while the original word is concise and easy to remember.

When studying the use of borrowed words from the survey, we found that English words which were translated into Vietnamese often appear in articles about politics, society, economic and daily life... These articles are about general issues and they are read by wide and diverse audience. Therefore, these articles are required to be written more accurately and easily than articles about culture, entertainment and technology. (До, 2017)

On the contrary, the articles about culture, entertainment, mobile phones, and vehicles are often aimed at readers who are interested in these topics. These readers often know a lot about themes that interest them. Therefore, in articles on these topics, English words appear a lot, and they are not translated into Vietnamese. More than 80% of the English words in Vietnamese articles that we surveyed belong to these topics.

For example:

 “Hacker Anonymous Malaysia "hạ gục" 50 website Việt Nam” (Hacker Anonymous Malaysia" defeated "50 Vietnamese websites ) [3] (More detailed information can be found via the link in Reference section).

In the category “Motorcycles” of Vietnamnet newspaper, “Xe ++” of Dan Tri newspaper, “Vehicle” on VnExpress, these English words, such as: crossover, coupe, sedan, hatchback, SUV, AT, MT... have become so familiar to readers.  Authors of these articles used English words without any explanation in Vietnamese. Perhaps, they think that readers are able to easily understand the content of the articles without translation.

Or the words: ton sur ton, croptop, jumpsuits, retro, vintage, trendy, set, mix & match, tips, legging, item, street style... in the category “Fashion” of “Kenh14” newspaper are also completely familiar to Vietnamese fashion followers.

It is not difficult for music lovers to read articles with a range of English words about this topic, such as: hit, single, solo, live, cover, band, rock, ballad, Vpop, Kpop, MV, concert… without translation into Vietnamese language. (До, 2017)

In Vietnam, English is also a foreign language. Therefore, when a range of loanwords from English appear in the Vietnamese media, it makes Vietnamese people confused in correctly reading these words. And the pronunciation of an English word often depends on the ability and habits of each person. Therefore, with the same English word, but Vietnamese people can read it in different ways: World Cup (vôn cúp, oăn cúp, uân cúp, guôn cúp, goăn cúp…), style (sờ tai, xì tai, xì tin, xờ tin…) (Чу, 1997).