An Adaptation-theoretic Approach To The Translation Of Chinese Landscape Descriptions

China has become one of the largest tourist destinations in the world ever since its entry to the WTO. Its diverse geological structures leave us breathtaking natural beauty, which are absolutely irresistible appealing to the foreigners. The booming of tourism in China calls for extensive research on the translation of tourist texts in general, and landscape descriptions in particular.This thesis, based on Jef. Verschueren's theory of linguistic adaptation, makes a somewhat detailed analysis of the process of translating Chinese landscape descriptions into English. It puts tourism translation under a unified theoretic framework in order to examine the uniqueness and complexity of tourism translation.Translation involves language as well as culture, translation of Chinese landscape descriptions is no exception. Cultural differences lead to different writing styles. Before it goes into deep theoretic analysis, the thesis makes a comparative analysis of the differences between Chinese and English tourist texts. The thesis spares no space to study the examples of the translation of Chinese landscape descriptions, which aims to unfold the process of choice making between utterers and to reveal the embodiment of adaptation in translating Chinese landscape descriptions. It attempts to establish a pragmatic framework for the translation of landscape descriptions.The thesis discusses how a sequence of linguistic choices is made in translating Chinese landscape descriptions. It focuses on the three properties (i.e. variability, negotiability and adaptability) of choice making which shed light upon the seemingly simple yet complicated process of translation. It holds that the translation of Chinese landscape descriptions is a dynamic process operating on context-structure relationships at various levels of the writer's salience. The thesis mainly approaches the translation of Chinese landscape descriptions from four aspects, namely adaptation to the physical, social, mental world and linguistic context.It is therefore concluded that, the translation of Chinese landscape descriptions is also a process of choice making and dynamic adaptation. The translator should not only adapt to the communicative contexts of the ST and TT, but also adapt to the different linguistic norms. Consequently the research findings have great implications for further research in the paradigm, as well as translation studies and cross-cultural communication.