On Chinese-English Translation Of Tour Guide Manuals

David Lodge, in his novel Paradise News, proclaims tourism half seriously as the new global religion. What Lodge describes is definitely the extreme form of travel phenomenon, however, this phenomenon does sweep the world with unstopped energy like a seaquake. Meanwhile, According to On The Tourism Impact of Olympic Games, the previous Olympic Games have had promoted the inbound tourism of the host countries to a great extent and brought great profits to the countries. 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is just around the corner, thus it is urgent to keep a close eye on the inbound tourism and do our bits to seize this opportunity to publicize Chinese culture. However, looking around the present tourism materials translation, it cannot be denied that the present situation is far from satisfactory, which has led to communication failure and will eventually damage the international image of china. As an English learner as well as a part-time English tour guide, what I want to do is to make a systematic study of the Chinese-English tour guide manuals, the importance of which is of no dispute.On the basis of the writer's vast reading on numerous articles about Chinese-English tourist publicities, this dissertation focuses on making a more systematic and comprehensive study on the English translation of tour guide manuals from a new perspective of Functionalist theory which few people have touched upon since the majority of researchers have probed into the tourism translation either from their personal practice and experience or from the trans-cultural perspective and pragmatics.From the perspective of functionalist theory, the whole thesis is devoted to the translation strategies and methods of C-E tour guide manuals. It is generally acknowledged by most experts and scholars that international tourism is a kind of cross-culture communication and the translation of tour guide manuals is a kind of cross-cultural translation. As far as cultural translation is mentioned, there are two major translation strategies: Domestication and Foreignizaiton, which are seemingly contradictory and have aroused a long-time dispute. How to end the long-established dispute? Here the author proposes the functionalist theory, with skopos or purpose as its main principle. With the analysis of the skopos of the tour guide manuals, we can conclude that the translators should bear the cultural awareness and service awareness in mind. On the one hand, among various questions in translating process, a considerable part is communicative difficulties due to the cultural differences reflected in every aspect as to people's way of life, way of acting, way of thinking, way of speaking, historical customs, conventions, moral norms, aesthetic interests, etc. Therefore, cross-culture awareness is a must for a translator who should always be tourist-oriented and as ready as tour guides are in promoting Chinese culture. On the other hand, it's very important to give the foreign tourists the right information about the Chinese culture with the best"service", such as being humor or fun according to their cultural background. Here the consumption psychology is also employed to make the tourism translation more specialized. Besides, the author also states several useful specific translation methods under the guideline of the combined strategy of domestication and foreignization as an integral part with the principle of skopos-awareness and points out the errors in tourism translation in Hangzhou.In summary, this research is valuable in two ways. On one hand, it can solve the long dispute of domestication and foreignizaiton with the functionalist theory as the principle and provide the scientific strategy for the Chinese-English tour guide manual translation. On the other hand, through the study of strategies for cultural elements in tourist translation, it can awaken translators to the cross-culture awareness, which can better serve the purposes of tourist materials-attracting more and more foreigners to come to China for a visit, and informing foreign visitors about Chinese culture. Meanwhile, the proposed methods also take tourists'interest and consumption psychology into consideration, which will make them of more practical significance. All in all, this research tends to contribute to the international tourism industry and translation field.