Table of all translations of the fox's secret here.
The Fox's Secret:
On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. Translation into Vietnamese
| (Vietnamese translations) | ▶ Here is my secret. It is very simple | ▼ One sees clearly only with the heart | ▶ What is essential is invisible to the eyes |
The essence of the Fox's Secret in Le Petit Prince: On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur -- It is only with the heart that one can see rightly (Katherine Woods' translation).
Here I want to look at how this sentence is handled by Vietnamese translators, particularly how each translator has arrived at slightly different versions.
This will be the shortest page of all, for several reasons:
- Of the three Oriental languages covered here, Vietnamese presents the least differences in translating from the French.
- There are fewer Vietnamese translations for us to consider (I have only four, five if the two variants of Nguyễn Thành Long's translation are counted).
- I am, to my regret, still a beginner in Vietnamese, so I am relying on textbooks and my own intuitions about language in general.
The basic sentence pattern is:
BASIC SENTENCE PATTERN |
||
Subject |
Verb |
Object |
Người ta on 'one' |
nhìn thấy voit 'see' |
[...] |
Unlike either Chinese or Japanese, Vietnamese has a personal pronoun similar to French on 'one'. The pronoun is người ta, meaning 'one, we, they, someone, people in general'. Người ta is used as a fairly standard translation of French on, and all translators use it.
If we add 'with the heart', the pattern is as follows. The prepositional phrase comes at the end.
ADDING 'WITH THE HEART' |
|||
Subject |
Verb |
Object |
Prepositional phrase |
Người ta 'one' |
nhìn thấy 'see' |
[...] |
bằng trái tim 'with the heart' |
The instrumental use of avec is usually expressed in Vietnamese using bằng 'with', which is chosen by two translators.
TRANSLATION OF AVEC
|
|
bằng [trái tim] 'with [heart]' |
2 |
với [trái tim] 'with [heart]' |
2 |
| Total | 4 |
Two translators instead use với. While strictly speaking this means 'accompanied by', với actually has a broad range of uses. One meaning of với is 'with', 'based on', 'using', 'because of', etc. It is used to express conditions ('on the condition that'), methods, and attitudes.
Finally, one translator uses là before the Prepositional phrase: là với trái tim. Là is often regarded as equivalent to the copula (i.e., the verb 'to be') but this is a case where the analysis as 'copula' doesn't quite work. Là converts the Prepositional phrase into a predicate construction, thus also emphasising it.
Translating ne ... que 'only':
The Vietnamese equivalent of ne .. que ('only') is chỉ, which behaves very much like English 'only'. That is, chỉ normally precedes the verb, but in the interest of clarity can be placed at various places in the sentence, depending on the word acting as the focus. The addition of chỉ does not bring about any change in word order. A textbook example:
'ONLY' IN VIETNAMESE |
||||||
Subject |
Verb |
Object |
Sentence final |
|||
Chỉ 'only' |
nó 'he' |
ghét 'hates' |
tôi 'I/me' |
thôi |
||
Nó 'he' |
chỉ 'only' |
ghét 'hates' |
tôi 'I/me' |
thôi |
||
Nó 'he' |
ghét 'hates' |
chỉ 'only' |
tôi 'I/me' |
thôi |
||
The meaning of the first is 'Only he (and no one else) hates me'. The second means 'He only hates me (he doesn't love me)'. The third means 'He hates only me (and no one else)'. The sentence-final particle thôi here forms a set with chỉ.
Chỉ can be simply added before the verb, which is what all translators do.
TRANSLATING NE ... QUE ('ONLY') |
||||
Subject |
Only |
Verb |
Object |
Prepositional phrase |
Người ta 'one' |
chỉ 'one' |
nhìn thấy 'see' |
[...] |
bằng trái tim 'with the heart' |
(It's interesting that chỉ is related to the Chinese word 只 zhǐ, also meaning 'only'. However, despite the etymological link, chỉ is quite different in its grammatical behaviour.)
'Can'
All the Vietnamese translations use only a plain form of the verb, rather than an auxiliary verb like English 'can'. (In Vietnamese, 'can see' is expressed in a number of ways, including có thể thấy, thấy được, and có thể thấy được. None of the translators use such forms). The Vietnamese translations are thus closest to the French original verb voit, which does not use an auxiliary verb.
The adverb follows the verb, as in French. (The object, which is not spelled out in any of the Vietnamese translations, is now omitted from the table.)
ADDING BIEN |
||||
Subject |
Only |
Verb |
Adverb |
Prepositional phrase |
Người ta on 'one' |
chỉ ne ... que 'only' |
nhìn thấy voit 'see' |
rõ bien 'clearly' |
bằng trái tim avec le coeur 'with the heart' |
Compared to the variation seen in the Japanese and (particularly) the Chinese translations, variations in the Vietnamese are relatively minor.
The Vietnamese word for 'to look' is nhìn. This is normally followed by the word thấy 'to see, to perceive'. The resulting compound nhìn thấy has the meaning 'to see'. Thấy can also be used by itself, or with verbs like nghe 'listen, hear', as in nghe thấy 'to hear'.
In this, nhìn thấy closely resembles the Chinese resultative 看見 / 看见 kànjiàn, which uses the verb 看 kàn 'to look' followed by the verb 見 / 见 jiàn 'to see, perceive'. However, Vietnamese does not have 'potential resultative' forms like Chinese.
TRANSLATING VOIR |
|
nhìn thấy 'sees' |
3 |
thấy 'sees, perceives' |
1 |
| Total | 4 |
Of the four translations that we have, three use nhìn thấy (i.e., 'look' + 'perceive') and one uses only thấy (i.e., 'see, perceive').
Bien is expressed with words meaning 'clearly' or 'truly clearly':
TRANSLATION OF BIEN
|
||
| 'truly' | 'clearly' | Occurrences |
| -- | rõ 'clear' |
2 |
| thật 'truly, really' |
rõ 'clear' |
1 |
| thật 'truly, really' |
rõ ràng 'clear; evident; plain' |
1 |
| Total | 4 |
|
Thật means 'really, truly'; rõ means 'evident, clear, plain, obvious', rõ ràng similarly means 'clear, evident, plain'.
The Vietnamese word tim refers either to the physiological heart, or to the heart as 'centre'. But accompanied by the classifier trái, i.e., as trái tim, it becomes a rather literary expression for the heart as the seat of emotions. It's also the standard Vietnamese translation for French cœur. This is the form used by all four translators.
TRANSLATION OF LE COEUR
|
|
trái tim 'the heart' |
2 |
trái tim mình 'one's heart' |
1 |
cả trái tim 'the whole heart' |
1 |
Total |
4 |
In translating le cœur, there are two small variations on the part of a couple of translators.
- One translator uses trái tim mình, meaning 'one's heart'.
- One translator uses cả trái tim, 'with all the heart', or 'the whole heart'.
There are also pages on the French original, the English translations, the Chinese translations, and the Japanese translations.
