A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Landscape Of Travel:The Work Of Tourism In Rural Ethnic China(Excerpts)

This thesis is a translation report,consisting of an English-Chinese translation project and its report.The source text is derived from sections 4-9 of chapter 3 of A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China written by American anthropologist Jenny Chio.The source text,an ethnographic study of Ping’an and Upper Jidao(two ethnic minority villages in China),is an informative text.It introduces the influence of mobility on tourism subjects and tourism development of the two villages and expounds the views of villagers in these villages on tourism development with a rigorous structure and strict logic.The functional equivalence theory,proposed by Eugene A.Nida,a famous American translation theorist,is the guiding theory for this translation project.Based on the functional equivalence theory and its four standards,namely,conveying information,conveying the spirit and manner of the original,having natural and fluent expressions and producing a similar response,this report selects 19 typical cases of the source text and analyzes the translation at the lexical,syntactic and textual levels.At the lexical level,prepositions are frequently used,and the source text can be translated according to the context and word collocation.Besides,part of speech can be converted if necessary.In addition,according to the differences between Chinese and English,the long English expressions can be translated into the appropriate Chinese four-character phrases.At the syntactic level,the translation of passive voice and long and complex sentences is discussed.Shifting of voice and restructuring can be used to achieve equivalence of E-C translation and to enhance readability.At the textual level,amplification,conversion and other means are employed flexibly to achieve the cohesion and coherence of the translation.Based on this translation project,conclusions were drawn as follows: when translating informative texts,translators should focus on conveying information and not be restricted by the complicated sentence structure of the source text to achieve functional equivalence between the source text and the target text.Moreover,translation methods can be adopted flexibly according to expression requirements.This report is expected to provide a reference for the Chinese translation of ethnographic studies.