Genre Analysis Of English Translation Of Hotel Overviews From A Functional Perspective

This thesis is aimed at exploring ways of improving the quality of Chinese hoteloverviews’ English translation by answering “what to write” and “how to write” fortranslated overviews. With data from six large hotel groups operating in China, thisthesis attempts to use German functionalism and genre analysis to study hoteloverviews. The ESP school model is first used to compare the structural andlexico-grammatical features of the original English overviews and translated ones.Then suggestions on adjusting translated hotel overviews are given from thefunctional perspective.Through analysis, the move-step structure of English hotel overviews is found. Itis also found that the main structural elements of original English overviews andtranslated ones are quite similar, but they are described in different ways. The originalEnglish overviews, compared with translated overviews, describe the hotel location ina more detailed way and solicit response more directly; the part of establishingcredentials in original English overviews is quite concise, for the aspects like historyand background are rarely mentioned. At the lexico-grammatical level, the tone inoriginal English overviews is warmer with the use of the first and second person aswell as the imperative mood. Some conventional expressions of hotel overviews arealso found and listed. Finally, this thesis summarizes suggestions for translators toconsider in the translation of hotel overviews to facilitate the realization of textpurposes.