Transplantation Of Cultural Seeds In C-E Translation Of Tourism Promotional Texts

China boasts abundant tourism resources ranging from vast territory, long history, brilliant civilization and charming natural scenery to multi-ethnic culture. China's booming tourism industry creates the need to communicate with people from other cultural backgrounds. Therefore, the translated version of tourism promotional texts has become an increasing important medium for the outside world to know China's tourism resources, has received special emphasis and has attracted academic attentions. However, a successful translation of tourism promotional texts from Chinese to English is a rather difficult task and requires the translators to master translation approaches and techniques as well as a sensitive cultural awareness, for this kind of text is full of culture-specific information that plays an irreplaceable part in their communicative functions.With cultural translation theory as its theoretical framework, this thesis explores the feasibility of applying cultural translation theory and its principles as guidelines in the Chinese-English translation of tourism promotional texts on both theory and practice levels. The author argues that the translators should bear in mind that the main purpose of translating tourism promotional texts lies in transmission of both basic information and aesthetic and cultural orientations.This thesis consists in four chapters. Chapter One discusses the theoretical background of this paper and gives the definition of some key terms. Chapter Two reviews previous studies of tourism promotional text in China, analyzes their implications and limitations, and then elaborates the significance of this paper. Chapter Three analyzes the general functions and features of tourism promotional texts and presents necessary translator competence in Chinese-English translation of tourism promotional texts. Chapter Four analyzes three ways and concrete translation strategies in dealing with cultural seeds in tourism promotional texts, and through analysis and comparison, some English versions published before have been offered alternative versions according to cultural translation theory. Through this research, this thesis draws the conclusion that in keeping with cultural translation theory, translators may benefit a lot from adopting a principle of combination of"foreignization and domestication"in their translation efforts aimed at cultural exchange, and many methods can be used in a flexible way to reduce or even eliminate the negative effect of cultural seeds on target readers'acceptability. These methods are addition, omission and borrowing. And omission is not the first choice unless under the situation of limited space, the four-character structure or parallel structures are adopted. Moreover, the improper omission may cause the loss of the cultural messages in the source text and should be adopted carefully. It is hoped that the conclusion drawn by this thesis is of some value in providing some useful guidance for determining translation strategies when faced with cultural seeds.