Translation Of Tourist Public Materials--A Study Guided By Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory

With the increase of the country's economic strength, more and more international visitors pour into China, enjoying picturesque scenery, experiencing the unique Chinese culture. In view of this situation, a large number of cities, especially the tourism cities translate tourist materials, including scenic spots, tourist attractions and tourist brochures into English, which will be the most convenient approach for them to know China; what's more, those tourist materials will be one of the most important medium to publicize the Chinese culture and enhance the tourism industry. Therefore, the translation of tourist public materials has attracted increasing attention. However, the author considers the current situation of tourist translation still fails to live up to the expectation of many international tourists by looking through scenic spots and tourist attractions from different cities in China. The main reason is that Chinese and English belong to two linguistic families, whose cultural backgrounds are so different from each other. In many cases, mistranslations may occur. What is evident and understandable for the Chinese may turn out to be unclear or unintelligible for the English.The tourist material is a specific text which is heavily culturally loaded, mainly covering the historical relics, scenery rich in religious sense, the art of gardening, food, national customs and the thinking mode. In order to translate those cultural sectors, it should be on the basis of the translation theory and the translation methods. Moreover, the purpose of tourist materials effectively transfer information and attract international tourists. It should be reader-oriented and worked from the target reader's perspective and catered to the demand of the target readers. From this perspective, Nida's theory focuses on the receptor-oriented put the target reader's response as the top priority. As Nida points out,"Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalence of the source message, first in terms of meaning, and secondly in terms of style."(Nida, 1982:12) In this sense, Nida's theory is a good theoretical foundation for studying the translation of tourist public materials. The result of it will be of great significance and assistance to the translation in spotting the existing problems and producing better translation versions.In the last chapter, the author proposes the requirements for the translators, who try to cultivate their sense of cultural awareness which is reflected on the transference of weights and measures, the processing of cultural information. Apart from grasping the knowledge of the target language, the translators should be possessed of some strategies or methods, such as amplification, analogy, rewriting and deletion, which are applied to the practical usage to improve the quality of translation.