Contrastive Research On Hotel Naming In Chinese And English

The present thesis attempts to make a contrastive research on English and Chinese hotel names. The data for the research contain 1000 English hotel names and 1000 Chinese hotel names collected from the main cities of China, USA and Britain. With the theories of phonetics, phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, contrastive research and cross-cultural communication, the author contrasts English and Chinese hotel names from both micro-perspective and macro-perspective, summarizes common and different features of Chinese and English hotel names, and then puts forward some ways to translate hotel names.On the basis of former study on brand names and hotel names, this thesis first makes a special study of the common features of English and Chinese hotel names. For example, hotel name is a special kind of brand name; hotel names usually have modifier(s) - and– the–modified structure; hotel names have common functions etc.Then, using system analysis method and quantitative research, the author explores the different features of English and Chinese hotel names from linguistic and cultural perspectives. For example, the differences in speech sounds, phonological rhetoric figures, syllable structure, cultural differences, choice of words or characters in names etc.On the basis of the above research, the author then discusses principles of translation proposed by Yan Fu, Nada, Liu Miqing and Guo Rui, and puts forward four ways to translate different kinds of hotel names from English into Chinese or vice versa, namely, transliteration, literal translation, free translation and thorough translation.The research is significant because it not only provides reference for the study on culturology and linguistics as well as theoretical support and practical guidance for hotel naming and translating but also raises the awareness of globalization, Chinese native culture and cross-cultural communication.