Abstract

The personal pronoun system is one of the distinctive features in Vietnamese as compared to other languages, namely English due to its variety and shade of meaning. This could be highlighted by means of contrasting and comparing the original Vietnamese text and its English version in terms of the translation of the third person singular and plural pronouns used in the short story "The Ivory Comb" by Nguyen Quang Sang. The initial conclusion obtained from the analysis is that Vietnamese personal pronouns provide additional information about the noun phrases that have been mentioned, whereas their English counterparts only reveal the grammatical relationship. In order to level the discrepancy between the two systems of personal pronouns, the translator has consequently resorted to various means, some of which are satisfactory but others seem to be away from the original Vietnamese text.