A Functionalist Approach To English Translation Of Chinese Tour Guide Manuals

Traveling is a kind of cultural activity. The major function of the tourist materials is to give tourists information and induce people to travel and visit through promoting and introducing the specific tourist spots. Therefore, the ultimate purpose of the travel translation is to attract foreign tourists and introduce Chinese culture to them through conveying information. According to Functionalism, translation is a purposeful activity. When translating, a translator should take into concern the purpose of translation and the specific conditions of the target readers and then translate the multi-resource information in the original work selectively.Starting from a functionalist approach, this thesis attempts to discuss the ways of processing the cultural information in translating the Chinese tour guide manuals by analyzing the characteristics of tour guide manuals and other materials and comparing the differences between Chinese and Western culture.In the introduction the author of this thesis briefly introduces the theoretical basis and significance of processing cultural information in translating tourist guide manuals as well as the purpose and characteristics of tourist guide manual translation.The first chapter of the thesis is an overview of literature. It reviews the origin and development of functionalism and states the major concepts and theories of different functionalists in different phases.In Chapter II, starting from the assumption that travel translation is a kind of cross-culture communication, the author analyses the cultural elements existing in travel translation and functionalism and compares the differences between Chinese and Western culture.Through analyzing the function of tourist manuals and the purposeof travel translation, Chapter III touches upon a few rules in practical travel translation, i.e. the Chinese culture oriented rule and the target text oriented rule. It also seeks to conclude a few ways of processing cultural information in travel translation and take notice a few questions such as the choice of wording and the addressee's sensitivity. Then it analyzes tourists' psychological aspects in travel translation from different views.Chapter IV lists the contentions among different translators on the translation of the same source text, including the amount of information transferred in the translation, different translations due to the different understanding of the cultural origin in the source text, contentions over the translation of the well-known dishes, and the acceptability of the tour slogan translation.Then in conclusion the author summarizes the whole thesis and states the significance of the research.