Author Nguyen Thien Nam (left) and Associate Professor Bui Phung.
I met him on the first afternoon of the English class for the young teachers of the Vietnamese Department in early 1981. At that time, we were 18 newly graduated teachers, personally recruited by Mr. Hoang Trong Phien, Head of the Department from the 21st Course, Faculty of Literature, Hanoi University of Science, to prepare to send them to teach Vietnamese on the battlefield in Cambodia. With the vision of a leader with heart and vision, Professor Hoang Trong Phien proposed that the Ministry of Universities and Vocational Secondary Schools provide funding for 1 year of English training for this class of young teachers, not Khmer.
The first three teachers invited to teach this English class were Mr. Bui Phung, a teacher at the Vietnamese Department, Mr. Le Tuan, a former interpreter of the Four-Party Military Commission, and Mr. Tran Van.
At the first opening ceremony in the 4th floor hall of building B7 bis, Mr. Phien introduced Mr. Bui Phung and Mr. Le Tuan to us. About Mr. Phung, Mr. Phien said: "Mr. Phung is one of the "pillars" of English in Vietnam today, I would like to repeat that he is one of the "pillars" of English in Vietnam today". Mr. Phung laughed, a laugh that I had probably never heard before, resounding, hearty and extremely confident. We were also surprised by his strong appearance, at that time, Vietnamese people in general were thin, but Mr. Phung was an exception, he was tall and big like a Westerner. Another thing that surprised me was that this Mr. Bui Phung was the "old man" Bui Phung that I had read about in Shakespeare's play collections, published in the early 60s with the names of 2 translators: Bui Phung and Bui Y. It turned out that Bui Y was Bui Phung's uncle and Bui Phung was only 18 years old when he translated Shakespeare.
After the opening, the class took a short break before class started. Mr. Phung asked, “Does anyone know any English?” My classmates pointed at me because I had studied English in college and could read some professional documents. But I said, “I can’t speak.” The teacher said, “Just say it.” I remember saying, “I want to speak English very much but I don’t know how to do it well,” with a Vietnamese accent. The teacher said, “Yeah, it sounds like English or something.”
In 1981, learning English was not as easy as it is now. We studied without books and had to copy lessons from a book that the teacher had compiled. Mr. Le Tuan used a book that he was compiling, and Mr. Van used a self-study English book by Vu Ta Lam. When I studied with Mr. Phung, I really understood how to start learning to speak English. He told us to start with very simple things like daily chores, write a little bit every day and then practice speaking those simple things. His English was excellent, sometimes I was shocked when I saw him speaking English with British and Australian people. One day in class, he said: "You have to learn a foreign language early, because it's too late now, it's hard to master it." I asked: "When did you start learning? Who taught you?" He replied: "That's a long story." I asked: "But you have never been abroad, and you are self-taught, so how can you speak all kinds of English, Australian, and American accents?" He smiled and said, "This profession requires a lot of effort." Not only English and French, but he also used Russian and Chinese to teach Vietnamese conveniently. He was a person with special foreign language skills and surprisingly diligent beyond his romantic appearance. He personally wrote tens of thousands of pages of dictionaries, English textbooks, and translations of dozens of novels. All with ink pens and later ballpoint pens. His cultural background and that of many intellectuals of his generation are something that the younger generations cannot have.
After about 9 months, we finished our course and prepared for the trip to Cambodia. Every time I returned from Cambodia, I visited my teacher and through him, I got to know many people who were "admirers" of his English. I remember one time around the winter of 1983, I came back for Tet and invited my teacher to dinner at Ly Quoc Su (at that time, there were only about 4 restaurants in Hanoi). While my teachers and students were talking, a group of sailors on an ocean liner came to our table to greet our teacher and said, "We have been to many countries by ship and used your dictionary a lot. Today, we are honored to meet you. We would like to give you some packs of 3-number cigarettes" (555). At that time, 3-number cigarettes were very luxurious. My teacher said, "That's great, I'll give them to Trinh" (my eldest son).
In 1986, I returned to Hanoi for more than a year and was called by the teacher to join the group writing Vietnamese textbooks for foreigners (usually called K textbooks, because the main purpose was to serve the needs of teaching and learning Vietnamese in Cambodia at that time). At that time, the teacher was trusted by the Faculty, the School and the Ministry to be in charge of editing this book series. At that time, I realized that the teacher's way of urging lessons was really fierce. After only 3 months, our group completed 2 volumes, which were actually written by only 3 people: Mr. Vu Van Thi, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuan and me. At that time, I was also the Secretary of the Youth Union of the Faculty and we organized an English class for the Youth Union, with some older people enthusiastically participating such as Ms. Bich Thanh, Mr. Pham Tuan Khoa... We invited the teacher to teach again, in addition to the teacher, we invited Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hung, Mr. Vu Ngoc Tu and 3 native students who volunteered to help teach. It was the English class of the Youth Union but it was ideal because they were the best English teachers at that time. I personally made the program, invited Mr. Hung to teach listening, Mr. Tu to teach grammar and speaking, and 3 foreign students to teach speaking. This class was held 5 afternoons a week.
Wherever Mr. Phung sat, people often burst out laughing because of his sense of humor and his ability to control situations. Professor Nguyen Lai told him when we were present: "You are always attractive". He had some sayings that made listeners laugh at first but then startled, the more they thought about it, the more reasonable they became. For example, when teaching English, he often said: "I am a teacher. A teacher is a teacher". After retiring, he made a business card with 2 lines:
Bui Phung,
Retired teacher.
The teacher said, “Be a man, my boy, when you retire and write on your business cardRetired teacher, that is enough”. Recently when I visited Mr. Thach Giang, the first head of the Vietnamese language group, Mr. Giang said about Mr. Phung: “Mr. Bui Phung is a philosophy of life”.
In 1990, when Mr. Dinh Van Duc's term ended, the Ministry of Universities and Vocational Secondary Schools had a policy to directly elect the Principal and the Dean of the Faculty. The results were announced at the election. At that time, in the exciting atmosphere of "Innovation", the election of the Principal and the Dean of the Faculty at the Universities was equally "fun". He was not a Party member, but young teachers in the Faculty like us wanted him to be the Dean of the Faculty, hoping to create a new atmosphere. The election initially had 4 candidates and in the end he was elected as the Dean of the Faculty. I remember the day before the election, I raised a question that people could ask him: "You are not a Party member, how will you resolve the relationship with the Party Cell and lead the unit?". I "gave him a tip": he just said "The Party paved the way for me". The next day, there was a similar question, the teacher answered, “I am not a Party member but I follow the leadership of the Party and the Party has paved the way for me, if I were the Head of the Department, I would still follow the leadership of the Party to move the Department of Vietnamese forward”.
During the years he was the Dean of the Faculty, I studied abroad in Japan. Later, when he retired from management, I occasionally invited him out for drinks to listen to his profound and informative stories. Every time he released a new book, he would call me, and we would go out for drinks, and I would bring the books he gave me home. On my bookshelf at home, there is a whole shelf of books he gave me. Each book has his signature and a sentence. Sometimes:For Nam, how can I say it all?. Sometimes:For Nam, Autumn is coming and happy; Sometimes:For Thien Nam, remembering the old days;when:Dedicated to Nguyen Thien Nam, 'Let's dispel the eternal sorrow'… But there was also one time, after he retired, due to some misunderstanding, he wrote a sentence on a page of his book for me:"God still gives us today"That day, after hearing me "say it again clearly", the teacher felt much more comfortable.
When the teacher had a sad event when his wife, Thuan, passed away due to a brain tumor, there was a funny story like this. That day, the teacher called me, and I went to his house. He asked me to post the sad news on Hanoi Television. He said he had asked Ms. Huong (an acquaintance of his) to ask Mr. Dao Quang Thep, the Deputy General Director of the station at that time, to post it in time. When I went to the station, met Mr. Dao Quang Thep and told him about the teacher's request through his friend Ms. Huong. He told me: "Okay, don't worry, I will handle it right away", and he called the staff to inform the department in charge that "You need help with this right away because Ms. Thuan is the wife of Mr. Bui Phung, his friend, Colonel, Doctor of History". I almost burst out laughing (In fact, the teacher had never been in the army and was not a doctor of history, but the Deputy General Director of Hanoi Television wanted to emphasize the importance of the staff to do it right away, so he added the position and academic title). Later I told this story to my teacher, he said: "This guy Dao Quang Thep, is really good".
Cover page of Vietnamese-English Dictionary
There was a time when there was only one thick Vietnamese-English dictionary of the teacher published by the University Publishing House. Then, this dictionary was supplemented by the teacher, in a series of subsequent reprints, gradually growing larger. It can be said without exaggeration that any Vietnamese at that time who wanted to learn English seriously had this dictionary. That dictionary appeared on most bookshelves of intellectuals in Vietnam and abroad. In 1988, I met an American, a veteran in Vietnam, working for a charity organization in Cambodia, he was making a Khmer-Vietnamese-English dictionary, and he asked me to check it again. He showed me the Vietnamese-English dictionary of Bui Phung published in Hong Kong (considered a copyright violation) that he relied on to make the Vietnamese-English part. Later, when I returned to Hanoi, I told this to the teacher, he was very happy and said: "There, my books are published abroad". His contributions to the development of English in Vietnam were later recognized by the state with the "State Prize for Science and Technology for the Vietnamese-English Dictionary, first time in 2000".
The first time he went abroad was to Hawaii to teach Vietnamese. The second time he was invited to London for his contributions to the development of English. In London, he met his childhood friend, Mr. Do Van, who was working at the Vietnamese Service of BBC. When he returned home, he often talked about this trip and the stories he had with Mr. Do Van.
When I was working in the International Relations Department, I sometimes went out drinking with him. One day I tried to contact him but couldn't get through. After a few days, Ms. Ha, his second wife, called me and said that he was in an emergency and was having heart surgery at Viet Duc. I rushed in, he had finished the surgery and was in the post-operative room. I only saw Ms. Ha and Mr. Trinh, his eldest son.
A few days later, at noon on September 1, 2007, I received a text message from Tu Anh, the teacher's daughter, informing me that teacher Phung had passed away. Looking back, I saw several missed calls from Tu Anh. I hurried to 75 Mai Hac De. The family had met and prepared everything: on September 3, they would hold a funeral and take the teacher back to Van Dien. I informed the Faculty and the School. Those were holidays, many people were not in Hanoi. The teacher passed away unexpectedly. Teacher Do Thanh, a classmate of the first class of Hanoi University, who studied with the teacher in the Vietnamese Language Department, then the Vietnamese Language Department, with the teacher until his retirement, wrote some poems to the teacher after saying goodbye to his friend in the afterlife, including a few lines:
Live like a waterfall
Die quietly like a river…
……………………
The dictionary is so thick
Is anyone thicker?
It has been 7 years since you left. It has been 34 years since the first afternoon I met you. Oh, time!
1/9/2013 – 1/9/2014
Associate Professor Bui Phung, Former Head of the Vietnamese Language Department, Hanoi National University, born in 1936, hometown: Ha Nam, graduated from the 1st Course of the Literature Department, Hanoi National University. He worked at the Vietnamese Language Department, Hanoi National University (later the Department of Vietnamese Language and Culture for Foreigners, now the Department of Vietnamese Studies and Language, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU) from 1959 to 1996. He passed away on September 1, 2007.
He has published nearly 100 works: English - Vietnamese Dictionary, Vietnamese - English Dictionary, American - Vietnamese Dictionary, various English tool books, nearly 35,000 printed pages in many publishers: Education, Social Sciences, World, Youth, Literature, Culture, Hanoi, Women
Main works:.
Translation
It can be said that Bui Phung's English-Vietnamese dictionary, which won the State Prize for Science and Technology, has made important contributions to Vietnam's integration process with the world, contributing to improving people's knowledge, especially after the Doi Moi period, and even up to now, when there has not been a Vietnamese-English dictionary that has created a greater influence in terms of science and usage value.
Author:Nguyen Thien Nam
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