Functionalist Approaches To The Translation Of Sichuan Tourist Texts

With the successful host of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the perfect finish of 2010 Shanghai International Expo, China is more open than before to welcome millions of foreign tourists travel in China. As a major channel of providing tourist information, C-E tourism translation plays a paramount important role of promoting Chinese international tourism industry. However, many English versions of Chinese tourist texts are far from satisfactory and fail to achieve the function as intended. What's more, it seems that there is not a systematic theory to guide the translation of tourist texts. Therefore, C-E tourism translation deserves an in-depth study. This research focusing on Sichuan tourist resources attempts to prove that functionalist approach can be applied to improve the publicity effects of tourist texts. Based on the functionalist translation theory, the author makes a case study of Sichuan tourist texts translation and attempts to find effective strategies to improve the translation quality of Sichuan tourism.Functionalist translation theory is a broad term including German Skopos Theory, Nida's principle of dynamic/functional equivalence and Newmark's text-type classifications and semantic vs. communicative translation. Functionalist approach insists that the successful translation is the one that can achieve the intended function in the target language. The primary functions of tourist texts are informativity and appeal. According to the functionalist approach, source text is considered as"offer of information"which can be adapted and adjusted in the process of translation. Therefore, the key of translating tourist texts is to fulfill the intended vocative function, i.e. to attract readers to travel in China.Owing to its advantageous geographic location, gorgeous natural scenery, long humanity history and brilliant food culture, Sichuan attracts worldwide tourists. This research takes Sichuan tourist texts as case study, and classifies the texts into five categories and compares the language features and cultural differences between Chinese and English tourist texts. Through the detailed comparison, it can be found that Chinese tourist texts and English tourist texts are different both in style and content. Chinese tourist texts incline to employ flowery diction, rhetoric devices and abundant quotation of Chinese allusions to pursue the perfect harmony of the sound, form and meaning, while English texts are always organized in a concise, logical and informal way. Their cultural differences lie in aesthetic conventions, values and traditions. In addition, Chinese and English tourist texts also have different focuses in providing various kinds of information. On the basis of these differences and under the theoretical guideline of functionalist approach, this study points out that tourist texts translation should be tourist-oriented and aims at delivering Chinese culture to others so as to eventually accomplish the intended function. Accordingly, the author proposes a number of translation strategies for the practical texts including literal translation, amplification, deletion, adaptation and analogy, which can increase the acceptability and achieve the intended function of the target text.