A Shift Of Text Function

In pace with the burgeoning development of inbound tourism in China, translation of Chinese tourism brochures has aroused increasing attention of translation theorists and practitioners. The present heated debates on tourism translation are mainly targeted at two focuses, namely the means to transfer the implied meanings in culture-loaded terms and the ways to adapt the source texts to the conventions of target language, the later of which is the concern of this thesis.Based on the language functions explicated by German psychologist Karl Buhler, Katharina Reiss, Peter Newmark and Christiane Nord have proposed their own text typology respectively. Despite the nuances in terminology, their text categorizations are all centered on the three dominant functions (informative, expressive and appealing) of texts. Since there merely exists any text of monotype, tourism texts boast a mix of different functions. A comparative discourse analysis on a certain amount of parallel tourist texts manifested that Chinese tourism texts feature informative and expressive functions while their counterparts informative and appealing ones. As a result of the diverse tourism traditions, Chinese tourism texts and those in English have adopted two vastly different ways to trigger tourists' impulses: the former ones with expressive descriptions and the latter with appealing persuasions.The theory of readers' reception claimed readers have horizons of expectation on every piece of writing, which is deeply influenced by their culture. Nida's "principle of equivalent effect" and Newmark's semantic translation all advocated rendering "natural" translations in order to cater the needs of target readers. Functionalists' approaches that regarded the purpose and translation brief assigned by commissioners/initiators as the decisive factors of a translationactivity, have dethroned the source-text-centered translation theories and provided a new dimension in study of pragmatic translation.With an aim to realize the purpose of tourism translation which is to motivate readers to pay visits, the author suggested transforming the expressive landscape descriptions to appealing persuasions. Proceeding from the reader-friendly and fact-based principles of English persuasive writings, the author proposed detailed translation strategies which are evidenced by concrete examples.