On Translation Of Chinese Tourist Culture

In 1845, the foundation of the first travel agency by Thomas Cook symbolized the beginning of modern tourism in the world. China's international tourist industry began in 1954. As more and more tourists from abroad are coming to China to see her world-famous scenic wonders, it is growing vigorously. Now many interpreters, guides are being trained and many people are working on tourist translation. Large numbers of tourist materials have been translated. However, there are some that are not translated well and exquisitely and in want of improvement. In some translations many cultural phenomena have been ignored, and therefore, cultural information cannot be transferred properly. The purpose of my paper is to survey cultural information that is heavily loaded in Chinese tourist texts and to expound the problems in cultural translation especially in tourist culture.Translation is a cross-cultural communication event; it not only concerns the transfer of two languages but also concerns the relationship between language and culture. The barrier to understanding Chinese culture is the vastly different characteristics of the two languages which result from the different ways of thinking, geographic and living conditions. Therefore, The translators should make constant comparisons between the two cultures because translation equivalence in its very sense should be matched in meanings, functions, scopes and feelings in the two cultures. (Wang Zuoliang, 2000:1)In translating, the transmission of cultural information is what matters most and translation theories are indispensable. The author introduces the cross-cultural awareness, the text typology and the criteria of translation to guide the translation. After studying the theories in detail, the author holds that although there is untranslatability in culture translation, when different strategies are employed, cultural terms are translatable and a certain function of a text type is achieved.This thesis consists of five parts: Introduction, three chapters and Conclusion.The introduction is a brief review of the tendency of the translation theory as well as that of modern tourism, which brings to a natural conclusion that cross-culture transfer is important in tourist translation.