On Translation Of Tourist Publicity Materials From Chinese Into English

Tourism is an effective way to promote mutual understanding among the people in different regions or countries. The feasible way for most tourists to obtain tour information is to read tourist publicity materials. It is a kind of overseas tourist - oriented materials mainly recommending history, customs, cuisine and scenic sights of the destination cities or countries. It is self-evident that the quality of its translation will exert a direct influence on tourism economy. So its translation attracts increasing attention from the translation circle. The translation is in nature a cross-cultural communication. Tourist publicity materials are of a special text combining informative function with vocative function, which results in unique translation principles and strategies. Reviewing the translation literatures from home and abroad, the writer will mainly focus on Nida's Dynamic Equivalence, Newmark's Text-type, Bassnett's Cultural Translation and Functionalism in Germany. According to the differences in thought patterns and aesthetic values between the oriental culture and occidental culture, the writer finds out some similarities and vast differences in sentence pattern and style and that the differences outweigh the similarities. On the basis of the previous translators' contributions, the writer summarizes five principles governing the translation of tourist publicity materials from Chinese into English, namely, the principle of faithfulness (one of the Yan Fu's three translation principles), the principle of conciseness, the principle of transmitting Chinese culture, the principle of tourist orientation and the principle of pragmatic equivalence. We also point out that the translator should have cross-cultural awareness, which is reflected on the transference of weights and measures, the translation of names of scenic spots and the processing of cultural information. Finally, on the basis of the above analysis, the writer brings forward five feasible translation strategies, namely, amplification, transliteration plus explanation, reduction, restructuring, analogy.