English Translation Of Chinese Tourism Texts From A Perspective Of Intercultural Communication

The boom of international tourism has greatly increased communication among people from different cultural backgrounds. The needs for intercultural communication boost the translation of tourism texts. However, a survey of present English versions in our tourist market has revealed many problems. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate what lies behind the problems and to help translators improve the quality of tourism texts translation. The thesis puts forward a statement that English translation of Chinese tourism texts should be done from a perspective of intercultural communication.The thesis firstly conducts a systematic investigation of two sets of authentic tourism texts in terms of linguistic, stylistic and rhetoric features. Secondly, on the basis of contrastive analysis of those findings, a formulation is made of the linguistic and cultural norms for this type of text writing both in Chinese and English. Thirdly, the thesis elaborates on the influences of such norms of a culture in which a tourism text is created and a translation is produced. Finally, with the aid of a case study of the translation of a typical Chinese tourism text, the paper summarizes the problems in the translation and points out that the lack of awareness of intercultural communication is an important reason that causes many problems of unacceptable translation when its translator unintentionally carries over his/her own linguistic and cultural patterns into the target text.In a word, the thesis proves that the problems in the English translation of Chinese tourism texts are mainly caused by three factors. First, the translator fails to realize the cultural norm in the source text. Second, he/she transfers the norms in English versions. Third, he/she doesn't realize that translation is a channel of intercultural communication so the factors such as initiators'intentions and the readers'expectations are not considered.