"Liberal arts" and other terms in Vietnamese
Tuan Hoang tuannyriver at gmail.com
Wed Jun 15 17:52:37 PDT 2016
*Thaveeporn: *Thanks for the bit on "liberal arts" as *giáo dục khai phóng*.
I've long wondered what its Vietnamese translation should be. I'd
considered *giáo dục tự do* or *giáo dục phóng khoáng*. But *giáo dục khai
phóng *sounds better, at least for now.
*VSG: *Kindly offer any suggestions in translating the following terms.
* Arts and letters
* Great Books: It's a teaching of mine, and I've yet to come up with
something satisfactory.
* Endowed chair: I've seen it translated it as *giáo sư gắn danh*, which
sounds cacophonous my ears. What may sound better?
* Fellow: Fellowship is *học bổng*, but how is an academic "fellow" called
in Vietnamese?
Tuan Hoang
Pepperdine University
Thaveeporn Vasavakul Thaveeporn at mail.kvsinter.com
Wed Jun 15 22:22:46 PDT 2016
Dear Anh Tuan,
The term " khai phóng" was used by the Republic of Vietnam as one of its three education principles, the other two being "quoc gia" or nation and "nhan ban" or humanism. It is Ok to refer to "liberty" but it is not about the field of study per se. I am interested on how Vietnamese educators will react to the notion of liberal arts.
I have to look around/ask maybe ask friends in the field of linguistics on how to translate the terms on your list. Will have to get back to you later.
I have been mostly working in the areas of governance and it is a challenge to convey some of the concepts related to public administration/governance to Vietnamese scholars and practitioners.
Best,
Thaveeporn
David Brown nworbd at gmail.com
Thu Jun 16 20:48:37 PDT 2016
To me, *giáo dục khai phóng* sounds terrible as a Vietnamese term for *liberal
arts*.
In the Vietnamese context, *khóa học nhân vân* is already established as
the equivalent of *arts and sciences* as we use that term in US
institutions of higher learning.
It seems to me that 'khai phóng' in the FUV context is just another bad
translation, like 'mỹ thuật tự do'.(in Obama's Hanoi speech as first posted
by the US Embassy) Khai phóng appears to mean liberate or emancipate, as
in 'Tổng thống A. Lincoln đã khai phóng các dân nô lệ' rather than
'liberal.'
According to Nguyễn Định Hoa, *khai* = declare, state, testify, and *phóng*
= let go, release. Nothing to do with education there. I don't find *khai
phóng* in any of my contemporary Vietnamese-English dictionaries, nor have
I ever seen/heard it used.
Of course,* khai phóng* could be a Vietnamese rendering, via nốm, of a
modern era Chinese coinage. That would explain it, but it wouldn't make it
correct.
Regards, David Brown
Edward G. Miller Edward.G.Miller at dartmouth.edu
Fri Jun 17 06:14:29 PDT 2016
David:
Thanks for your thoughts on “khai phóng.” Could you please cite an example in which “khóa học nhân vân” is used as an equivalent as the English “arts and sciences”? A literal rendering of “khóa học nhân vân” would be something like “human sciences.” I have seen this term used in Vietnam, but my impression is that it is being used to refer to the disciplines that are called “the humanities” in English—and which most scholars at North American and European universities would agree are manifestly NOT scientific disciplines. Moreover, I think most would say that these disciplines collectively comprise only part of what is referenced by “arts and sciences.” For both of these reasons, rendering “khóa học nhân vân” as “arts and sciences” seems problematic.
It is true, of course, that the term “khóa học xã hội và nhân vân” is widely used in Vietnam—but this is almost always rendered as “social sciences and humanities,” and which therefore also seems to be inadequate as a rendering of “liberal arts,” since it appears to exclude the “hard” scientific disciplines.
Best regards,
Ed
Edward Miller
Associate Professor of History
Dartmouth College
6107 Carson Hall, Hanover, NH 03755
Edward.Miller at Dartmouth.edu<mailto:Edward.Miller at Dartmouth.edu>
http://history.dartmouth.edu/people/edward-miller
dan hoang hoangdanlieu at yahoo.com
Fri Jun 17 09:18:13 PDT 2016
Dear VSG,I look for the explanations of Liberal Arts at the Wikipedia and at this link What is Liberal Arts Education? and by these explanations, liberal arts cover different sciences, including humanities and social sciences, and more others. So Liberal Arts is as someone's translation in Vietnamese as "Giáo dục khai phóng" seems a good match for the term; or maybe "Khoa học khai phóng". Just only a thought - I am not good at English and I am not a linguist so maybe my thought is not so good to translate the term.
Lieu (VNU Hanoi)
Tuan Hoang tuannyriver at gmail.com
Fri Jun 17 15:03:03 PDT 2016
*Endowed chair & academic ranks. * I found a couple of links of translated
terms for the American and French systems of higher ed. On the US link,
most translations sound good to me except, alas, "endowed professor": *giáo
sư ưu tú *or *giáo sư đặc biệt. *The search goes on.
*http://tuduymoivegiaoduc.blogspot.com/2015/10/he-thong-phan-bac-giang-vien-ai-hoc-tai.html
<http://tuduymoivegiaoduc.blogspot.com/2015/10/he-thong-phan-bac-giang-vien-ai-hoc-tai.html>http://tuduymoivegiaoduc.blogspot.com/2015/10/he-thong-phan-bac-hoc-thuat-academic.html
<http://tuduymoivegiaoduc.blogspot.com/2015/10/he-thong-phan-bac-hoc-thuat-academic.html>*
*Khai Phóng*. There may be something to David's point... I think this
term may not appear at all these days but probably used more often among
educational circles under the State of Vietnam and the RVN. The three
basic goals of this education were *nhân bản, dân tộc, khai phóng*: humane,
nationalist, and liberal (my probably imprecise translations, especially
the last). *Khai phóng *was influenced in part by the ideal *l'ecole
unique* popularized in France during the first two or three decades of
twentieth century. I wish someone can enlighten us here, but I think this
ideal was more about inclusion of students from different classes and
background than about content and curriculum. Whoever translating "liberal
arts" as *giáo dục khai phóng* might have taken after a looser and, shall
we say, more liberal interpretation of the term *khai phóng. *
It may not be a bad thing, though, since linguistic changes sometimes
deviate from once-commonly accepted meaning. "Hopefully" as it is commonly
used now doesn't mean the same as it did fifty years ago.
*Great Books. *Answering my own question, I've thought of several
possibilities - *sách quý, sách cổ, sách thánh hiền *- but think the most
approximate term is *kinh điển*. It's more akin to "canon" than "great
books" or "classics," but I guess I can live with this translation.
Happy weekend!
Tuan Hoang
Pepperdine University
David Marr david.marr at anu.edu.au
Mon Jun 20 18:20:10 PDT 2016
This exchange reminds me of efforts a century ago to render hundreds of curious French terms into Vietnamese.
Sometimes the solution was to take the sound of the French word and render it in quoc ngu. Maybe ‘liberal arts’ should go that route?
When I was a liberal arts student (Dartmouth ’59), the main objective was to expose us to a wide range of ideas and disciplines, at least for the first two years. From memory that included a ‘Great Books’ freshman course, a natural science, a social science, and a foreign language. Here in Australia that approach has lost out to occupational categories. But with youths now facing the likelihood of several different occupations/specializations in their lifetimes, liberal arts may prepare them better…
David Marr
ANU