Application Of Functionalist Theory To The C-E Translation Of Beijing Tourist Material Texts

With the development of international tourism in China, especially with the successful holding of 29th Olympic Games in Beijing China, C-E tourism translation has become more and more important. But unfortunately, the inaccuracy or error of tourist translations may constantly mislead the target readers in understanding. Therefore, C-E tourism translation deserves an immediate and in-depth research.Functionalist translation theory not only combines translation research with language function, but also attaches great importance to the role of text function in translation, which provides very useful and practical guidelines for the translation practice. However, C-E Tourism translation aims at providing traveling information for foreign people, arousing their interest to visit China, and enhancing the mutual understanding between the Chinese people and other people in the world. The intended function of the target translator has to keep in mind the text in the target situation which is a key factor in the translation. Therefore, this thesis is based on functionalist translation theory of German school and takes Beijing tourist materials or texts as cases for further study of the tourism translation from the perspective for functionalism.To study and solve the above-mentioned problems, the author has made a special trip to heritage sight in Beijing to collect the tourism materials or texts (including the materials of the introductions of scenic spots and tourist brochures), which makes the paper more practical and somewhat valuable.Firstly, the thesis makes a historical review in which the formation and evolution of functionalist translation theory are elaborated and its main ideas are summed up. Secondly, the features of tourist materials are introduced. Tourist texts are investigated from functionalist translation perspective. Through contrastive study of Chinese and English tourist materials, the differences of expressions and language functions between them seem to be tangible. Thirdly, by taking Beijing tourist materials as cases to analyze translation problems in Beijing tourist texts the present author tries to find out the causes behind theses problems and touches upon Chinese-English translation methods and relevant strategies. Finally, based on an analysis of many examples, the author comes to a conclusion: functionalist approaches, particularly Skopos Theory, are useful to guide C-E tourism translation. In the translation process, the translator should know how to deal with cultural differences between source text and target text and should not confine himself to the form and content of the source text. By applying functionalist approaches to the translation of tourist materials, we firmly believe that a translator would be able to produce a version that is comprehensible and acceptable to the target readers, thus achieving the purpose of cross-cultural communication or promoting Chinese culture.