Acceptability Of English Translation Of Culturally-loaded Expressions In Chinese Tourist Literature: An Intercultural Communication Perspective

Recently, many studies have been conducted on C-E translation of tourist literature, but little efforts have been made on research into the acceptability of either the translation of tourist literature or the translation of certain elements in tourist literature. Therefore, in this paper, the author intends to analyze whether the English translations of culturally-loaded expressions in Chinese tourist literature are acceptable or not from the perspective of intercultural communication.By culturally-loaded expression, the author refers to those Chinese expressions that have distinctive cultural connotations which, when translated literally into English, are difficult for English-speaking people to understand.Based on this definition, the author classified all these culturally-loaded expressions in Chinese tourist literature into three categories: culturally-loaded expressions with English counterparts which have similar cultural connotations; culturally-loaded expressions with English counterparts which have different cultural connotations and culturally-loaded expressions with English counterparts that have no connotations in English culture.After a detailed analysis of English translated versions of these culturally-loaded expressions, the author found that while translating culturally-loaded expressions of the second and third categories, translators tend to produce less acceptable translated versions. These problems can be generally attributed to three reasons: (1) translator's lack of cultural awareness while translating culturally-loaded expressions in Chinese tourist literature; (2) translator's lack of consciousness of the differences in terms of cultural connotation between Chinese culturally-loaded expressions and their English counterparts; (3) translator's underestimation of the participants' adaptation capacity in the course of intercultural communication. Finally, based on these problems, the author proposed a series of possible strategies to enhance the acceptability of English translation of culturally-loaded expressions in Chinese tourist literature from intercultural communication perspective.