The Translation Of Tourist Materials From A Cultural-Context Perspective

Traveling has long existed in human history;however, it is only in the past decades that tourism has become an important sector in economy. And now, tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, sometimes called a "sunrise industry". With the acceleration of global economic growth and international exchanges, the transnational tourism has become an important trend. But the development of tourism in China is still on an initial stage compared with developed countries for lack of experience and efficient management. However, the irresistible charm from thousands of years' Chinese culture and China's opening -up policy has attracted an increasing number of foreign visitors to China.The booming of tourism calls for publicity aimed at tourists. As a result, a host of tourist publicity materials have been published, including Chinese versions, English versions and Chinese-English versions, of publicity booklets, tourist maps, tourist magazines. The contents of tourist materials should cover not only the positions, transportation and facilities, scenic spots, services in tourist destinations, but also the decisive factor, namely culture accumulated in various tourist resources. Culture is accumulated in various tourist resources, such as ethnic catering, ethnic customs, names of scenic spots including names of natural scenery.The main purpose of tourists is to get a better understanding of Chinese culture, rather than just enjoy natural beauty, which demands the translation of tourist materials not only from the linguistic perspective, but also from the cultural perspective. Here, the translation of tourist materials means, instead of transferring the Chinese version into corresponding foreign words in a word-for-word manner, the discovering and conveying of the cultural message embodied. However, a large number of problems appear in currently translated tourist materials owing to various factors, which have brought about serious negative impact on China's tourism and left poor impressions of China and its long-cherishedculture on the rest of the world. Though voices calling for changes in this regard can be heard, the poor translation quality still poses a serious problem for the further development of tourism in China. We have picked up some poor translation of tourist materials and pointed out the causes of them. Furthermore, we will attempt to explore suitable methods to deal with these problems with some concrete and workable translating techniques under the guidance of the context theory.This thesis is composed of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion.The introduction states the current situation of tourism in the world, research background, research objective and theoretical framework. It also outlines the structure of the thesis.Four chapters constitute the main part of this thesis. Chapter One introduces the theoretical basis of the thesis and the current situation of tourist material translation and of research on tourist material translation at home. This part mentions translating methods adopted by scholars and translators. It also makes a brief review of the theory of context and of cultural context.Chapter Two studies not only the characteristics of tourist material texts, but also the relationships among culture, tourism, language and translation. The author holds that tourist material texts are informative and vocative. To experience cultural otherness is the motive for traveling. Therefore, tourist material translation is expected to maintain and convey the cultural uniqueness as much as possible.Chapter Three mainly discusses cultural connotations of scenic spots and choice of strategies in translating names of scenic spots and in transferring the Chinese culture internalized in other kinds of tourist materials. We should take advantage of the cultural context theory in analyzing and exploring cultural connotations of tourist materials, especially materials concerning names of scenic spots. And we should oroduce English translations that meet the demands of spreading Chineseculture and being acceptable to foreign tourists by adopting workable translating methods.Chapter Four dwells on the translation of other forms of tourist materials, including the translation of publicity materials, of couplets, of texts introducing a specific scenic spot, of safety notices in scenic spots, and so on. These materials themselves embody deep cultural message, therefore, their translation should particularly interpret culture. In this part, we focus on the translation of couplets and of notices, for they are not given due attention up to now. We hold that translation of couplets needs the exploration of cultural connotations. If inevitable, we sacrifice their forms to convey its culture and meaning.The conclusion of the thesis presented points out that the translation of tourist materials is a rather new subject. No wonder many problems exist. Problems in tourist material translation are exerting serious and negative impact on tourist development. Therefore, an improvement over the quality of tourist material translation is the need for the further development of tourist industry. That problems appear repeatedly in the previous translation not only calls for great attention, but also urges us to explore new approaches. The adoption of cultural context theory in the current thesis offers a new attempt to cope with those problems. The translator shoulders the responsibility of improving the quality of tourist material translation by combining the cultural context theory with appropriate translating techniques after carefully analyzing characteristics of tourist materials. Nevertheless, further efforts are needed in the future translation of tourist materials and research on it.