Equivalence in Translation of English - Vietnamese Public Relations Terminology: A Corpus - Based Study

Abstract

This study investigates the patterns of equivalence in the translation of English public relations (PR) terminology into Vietnamese, using a corpus-based approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Drawing on a dataset of 2,106 English public relations terms and their observed Vietnamese renderings, the research identifies seven structural types of equivalence (word-word, word-phrase, phrase-word, phrase-phrase, word->word, word->phrase, and phrase->phrase) and nine quantitative ratios ranging from 1:1 to 1:9. The analysis reveals that phrase-based translation overwhelmingly dominates, with the phras-/>phrase category accounting for 48.53%, while one-to-many correspondence (56.41%) is more common than one-to-one equivalence (43.59%). The prevalence of 1:2 and 1:3 ratios indicates that English PR terms often correspond to multiple Vietnamese variants, reflecting both conceptual asymmetry and terminological innovation. These patterns suggest that the Vietnamese PR lexicon is undergoing a dynamic phase of lexical expansion and conceptual negotiation, consistent with Kageura’s (2002) and Cabré’s (1999) models of terminological evolution. By integrating quantitative corpus evidence with translation theory, this study contributes to a usage-based understanding of equivalence and provides empirical insights into the localization and standardization of PR terminology in Vietnam.