A Study On Chinese-English Translation Of Tourist Materials From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Translation of tourist materials plays a very important role in promoting tourism. The last few decades have witnessed great prosperity of tourist materials, particularly there are many good C-E tourist products in the two decades. Even though, the current existing situation is that many English versions of Chinese tourist materials are far from satisfactory and fail to achieve the intended function. Therefore, C-E tourist translation deserves an in-depth study.Due to tourist materials are of a special text combining informative function with vocative function, which results in unique translation principles and strategies. Through Reviewing Nida's Functional Equivalence and probe into it deeply, the writer hold that Nida's Functional Equivalence is very instructive and effective in C-E translation of tourist material. Then according to the differences in thought patterns and aesthetic values between the oriental culture and occidental culture, the writer finds out some similarities and vast differences in sentence pattern and style and that the differences outweigh the similarities. Meanwhile, the thesis especially point out that translator should be awareness of cross-culture, this is particularly important in C-E translation of tourist material. Based on these, the thesis summarizes two principles governing the translation of tourist materials from Chinese into English, namely, the principle of the principle of transmitting Chinese culture, the principle of tourist-orientation. Finally, on the basis of the above analysis, the thesis gives five feasible translation methods, namely, amplification, explanation, adaptation, deletion, analogy.Through many examples to demonstrate, the thesis comes to a conclusion: Functional Equivalence is very useful to guide C-E translation of tourist material. In the translation process, the translator is required to bear in mind the intended function of the target text and produce a version that is comprehensible and acceptable to the target reader. Owing to great differences in language and culture, the translation process usually involves considerable adjustments or adaptations of the source text in order to achieve the intended function of the target text.