A Study Of English Translation Of Hebei Tourism Texts From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Tourism is the biggest one among the world cultural service industry, and China is expected to become the world's leading tourist destination. Hebei, the only province with seashore, plain, lakes, hills and plateau in China, is abundant with tourism resources, which makes tourism as its main cultural and economic industry. How to better introduce Hebei to the world is largely determined by the quality of tourism translation. However, the current situation of English translation of Hebei tourism texts is far from satisfactory. Many problems and faults still exist in the translation, which impedes the communication between the cultures.Theoretically, many researchers and scholars have made their efforts to study tourism translation in the perspective of different theories, such as relevant theory, equivalence translation approaches, and functionalist approaches, etc. The studies mainly emphasize on the linguistic perspective and cross-cultural communication. Although a few scholars have researched it from the angle of functionalism, the application of functionalist approaches, especially the Skopostheorie, to the practice of tourism translation deserves an in-depth study.This thesis aims to study the English translation of Hebei tourism texts from the perspective of Skopostheorie in the German Functionalist Approaches, find out the problems and deficiencies, and indicate the directions for improvement. According to Skopostheorie, translation is considered as an intercultural and communicational action which has its intended functions and purposes. It is the intended purpose that justifies the translation process and strategies. With the guidance of this theory, the author first analyzes the functions and purposes of tourism texts translation. As a kind of publicity material, tourism texts translation is intended to provide accurate tourist information to the foreign tourists, attract the potential tourists to visit China and promote the extensive and profound Chinese culture to the world. Then according to the differences in thought patterns and aesthetic values between Chinese culture and western culture, a comparative study about the language features of Chinese and English tourism texts is conducted. Based on the above analysis, the author presents two important translation principles, namely the target-reader-centered principle and culture-oriented principle, as well as proposes several translation methods such as transliteration plus paraphrase for proper terms, amplification of cultural information, omission of Chinese-featured expressions, cultural analogy and so on. Guided by the principles, the problems in the current translation of Hebei tourism texts are analyzed with examples. Finally, the author proposes that tourism texts translation is supposed to achieve the operative function and the communicative purpose rather than simply pursue literal equivalence or equal transmission of information. In the process of translation, the translator should always bear in mind the functions and purposes of the translation, take into account the differences of lingual and cultural features between Chinese and English tourism texts, and the target readers'acceptability, adopt flexible translation strategies and methods instead of rigidly adhering to the form and content of the source text, and produce a version capable of achieving the intended functions and purposes.It is expected that the present thesis will be of some help for the tourism translation practice and eventually help the improvement of Hebei tourism texts translation and promote Hebei tourism culture.