A Study Of Compensation Strategies In Tourist Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Theory

Under the guidance of functional theory especially the skopos theory and text typology, this thesis is intended to study tourist brochures and travel signs translating. This thesis puts forward some compensation strategies by means of analyzing cultural, aesthetic and pragmatic features of tourist brochures and travel signs as well as problems exist in sample texts. In Chapter three, tourist brochure translating is analyzed from the viewpoint of culture, aesthetics and syntax. To deal with the cultural default, compensation by isolation and compensation by integration are strategies often applied, which can fill the blank of culture background. In case that some cultural information is too remote to the target reader and need not to be translated, compensation strategy "deletion" can be used in such occasion. As for aesthetic interests are differs in different culture background, according to skopos theory the translator should meet the readers'aesthetic interest so that the translation can fulfill its vocative function. In this thesis compensation strategies like "compensation with a different device" and "compensation with the same device" are introduced to compensate rhetorical features. The last part of chapter three discusses differences of surface structure in Chinese and English and also poses some compensation strategies. Chapter four is about translating of travel signs. This chapter is divided into four parts:first part is a brief introduction to travel signs while the remaining three parts discuss mistakes in travel sign translating from angle of view of linguistic level, pragmatic level and cultural level. Surely, compensation strategies are also posed in this Chapter.According to skopos theory, the standard of applied translation should be the expected communicative effect rather than formal equivalence or figurative features. Still, many applied texts have customary forms such as travel signs, so in order to raise communication efficiency it is usually necessary to change the original form. But after studying a large amount of bi-lingual sample texts, it can be found that many of them are not satisfactory. Many translators blindly pursue "equivalence" without awareness of pragmatic loss. This thesis advances some proper compensation strategies for translating of tourist brochures and travel signs and proves the importance of functional compensation.