The Influences Of Thought Pattern On Discourse In Chinese And English Tourism Texts

Thought pattern refers to the mode of thinking or the way of reasoning that is commonly adopted by a group of people, and it has great influences on discourse. Due to different geographical location, natural condition, social-economic and philosophical background as well as different language system, people of China and English-speaking countries share different thought patterns. The Chinese prefer image, subjective and synthetic thinking patterns, while the English thought patterns tend to be abstract, objective and analytic.In this thesis, the influences of thought patterns on discourse are reflected through the discussion of Chinese-English translation of tourism texts. Under the influences of thought patterns, the organization of Chinese tourism texts is different with that of the English tourism texts in many ways. Generally speaking, the discourse of the Chinese tourism texts has many circular structures, while an English discourse is always linear; a Chinese discourse often adopts a general-specific order while an English discourse is always in the reverse order; a Chinese discourse often takes an interrelated mode in which man and nature are closely connected, while an English discourse tends to take an isolated mood, which always creates the atmosphere that man and nature are objectively separate; a Chinese discourse tends to be concrete, while an English discourse tends to be abstract.In this thesis, the above analyses are further applied to discuss the translation strategies of tourism texts from Chinese to English. The main translation method is restructuring, which takes the English thought patterns and discourse structures as the reference during C-E translation. Besides, adding, omitting and adapting are strategies that shall be used in Chinese-English translation of tourism texts while thought patterns and the influences on discourse are taken into consideration. All these methods are used so that the translation can correspond to the English thought patterns and discourse structures, and can realize the informative, expressive and persuasive functions in the same way as the original Chinese tourism texts.