On Translation Strategies Of Cultural Vacancy In Chinese Tourist Materials

Nowadays tourism has become one of the most important and fast growing industries in the world. Meanwhile, China is a great oriental country boasting wonderful landscapes and natural resources as well as abundant historical heritages and cultural relics with its five- thousand-year history. Especially after the Beijing Olympic Games and the Shanghai World Expo, more and more people will come to visit China. Various kinds of tourist materials are an important window for these foreigners to get to know the Chinese culture and her history. Thus, the translation of Chinese tourist materials especially for those materials with unique Chinese cultural characters thrives and is facing more and more challenges in the choice of appropriate strategies. Some Chinese translators and scholars are paying more and more attention to the translation strategies of tourism culture and have made plenty of useful researches on it, but the research fruits are still not satisfactory.This thesis is designed to provide a comprehensive study in this field and explore proper translation approaches of cultural vacancy in tourist materials under the guidance of the dynamic choice of domestication and foreignization. This thesis consists of four chapters besides the introduction and conclusion. Chapter two mainly focuses on cultural vacancy in tourist materials. Firstly this thesis introduces the definition of cultural vacancy and tourist materials, and then probes into the cultural vacancies taken on in tourist materials. Chapter three is the theoretical bases of the study. The two translation strategies concerning with the translation of culture is introduced, namely, domestication and foreignzition. The author quotes Venuti and Nida'view on this theory as the theoretical basis, and puts forward the disputes as well as the constraining factors for the choice between these two strategies. Chapter four mainly concerns with the translation of cultural vacancy in tourist materials. Firstly, it brings about the problems existed in the translation of cultural vacancy in tourist materials and then puts forwards that we should make a dynamic choice between domestication and foreignization in the translation of cultural vacancy in tourist materials with the consideration of its function and purpose, etc. Chapter five proposes several suggested practical translation approaches under the guidance of principles for translation of tourist materials as well as the dynamic choice of domestication and foreignization so as to better convey the cultural information by classifying the examples collected. To be specific, all the proposed translation approaches are based on the characteristics of cultural vacancy in Chinese tourist materials. The final part is Conclusion, which is a final summary of this thesis. It provides some suggestions for Chinese tourist culture translators, and points out the practical value of this thesis.