This paper resulted from the author's study of the translation into English of the Vietnamese terms of address and reference used in four short stories, A Marker on the Side of the Boat, A Very Late Afternoon, The General Retires, Without a King", and selected chapters of two novels, The Sorrow of War and A Novel Without a Name#. The study investigates the strategies adopted in the translation of the terms and the degree to which these strategies are effective in conveying the rich nuances of the terms. It was found that both the source language (SL)-oriented and target language (TL)-oriented approaches were utilized. However, the translations of all the texts adhered more extensively to the principles of the TL- oriented translation approach. This resulted in a substantial loss of the socio-cultural meanings and pragmatic implications of the richly nuanced Vietnamese terms of address and reference. Those meanings and implications were found to be essential for an adequate understanding of the original texts. In rare cases, however, where the translators adopted the SL-oriented strategy to transfer the linguistic and socio-cultural elements of the original terms, they were successful in conveying the meanings and implications intended by the original writers through their use of the terms, thus helping the target readers develop a similar understanding of the target texts as the original readers would have of the source texts. The study raised the need for translators of Vietnamese-English literary texts, especially in treating terms of address and reference, to pay close attention to the linguistic and cultural elements of the source texts.