Cultural Differences And The Translation Of Tourist Materials

China has vast land and lots of natural resources. Her abundant natural and cultural landscapes as well as the long and splendid history attract tourists from all over the world. With the deepening of reform and open-up policy and especially since China's entry into the world trade organization, an increasing number of foreign tourists frequently come to visit China. This is a golden opportunity as well as a challenge to the development of China's tourist industry. The English version of Chinese tourist materials, as an important way for foreign tourists to know the tourist attractions, has a direct influence on the development of tourist industry. However, at present the quality of translation has much room for improvement. All kinds of translation problems often occur in tourist publications at all levels, which has a big and negative influence on the development of tourist industry. Therefore people pay more and more attention to the translation of tourist materials.This dissertation makes a systematic study of the translation of tourist materials from a cultural perspective with Newmark's Text Typology Theory as the theoretical framework, and explores the proper strategies used in the translation by the contrastive analysis of the cultural and language differences between China and the West. The present author hopes to improve the quality of the translation of tourist materials through this dissertation and helps to promote the overall development of China's tourist industry. The present dissertation consists of six parts: Introduction, four chapters and Conclusion.Introduction briefly introduces the significance, the research methodology and the whole structure of this dissertation.Chapterâ… is review of the origin and development of the contrastive analysis and introduces the study of tourist translation at home and aboard. It puts forward the theoretical basis and analyzes the main points in this theory.Chapterâ…¡makes a comprehensive study of the relationship among language, culture and translation and points out that language is the carrier of culture. Translation is not only the transfer among different languages, but also an inter-cultural communication.Chapterâ…¢expounds the major differences between China and the West from five perspectives: religion, social convention, value, pattern of thought and context, and the cultural differences reflected in the language. These analyses make preparations for the translation of Chinese tourist materials.Chapterâ…£first discusses the common problems in the process of translation and the causes behind them. Then it analyzes the text functions of tourist materials and establishes the principles in translation under the guidance of Text Typology Theory. Finally on the basis of above study, the present author summarizes four translation strategies: amplification, omission, analogy and restructuring. In addition, a lot of examples are employed to prove the feasibility of these strategies.In the end, the present draws a conclusion and points out the limitations of this dissertation with suggestions for the future research.