A Survey Of The Translations Of Tourist Materials For Major Scenic Spots In Wuhan

Wuhan is one of China’s historical and cultural cities. It abounds in cultural heritages including339places of interest,103revolutionary memorials,13major historical sites under national protection and156under provincial and municipal protection. Among the famous scenic spots are Yellow Crane Tower, East Lake, Guiyuan Temple, Memorial Hall of the Revolution in1911, and Jianghan Road. These historic sites and scenic spots with Chinese characteristics attract a great many tourists from home and abroad every year, so it is desirable to introduce them to the rest of the world by standard Chinese-English bilingual tourist texts. Involving natural and humanistic landscape, customs, history, traditional culture, cross-cultural factors, etc., the translation of tourist texts requires the translator to have bilingual proficiency, cultural competence and translation skills. The acceptable tourist texts not only convey effective information to the foreign tourists, but arouse their interest in visiting the scenic spot as well.The good translation of tourist materials is an important guidebook for the foreign tourists to know the scenic spots whereas a non-standard translation text will give them a bad impression of Wuhan’s tourist service. Examining carefully the bilingual texts introducing the scenic spots, we can find there is still much room for improvement in the translation of signs, travel guides, the introduction and the English texts of the tourist service, for many translating mistakes can find expression in the tourist materials in them, which of course affect the city’s image and hamper the advancement of Wuhan’s tourism.Based on the translation text available and information collected on the internet, this thesis attempts to address the problems in the translation of tourist materials for major scenic spots (the Yellow Crane Tower, Hubei Provincial Museum, East Lake Scenic Spot and Wuhan Botanical Garden, CAS) in Wuhan. It firstly gives an overview of the background of the investigation and the status quo of the translation in the aforesaid scenic spots, and then sorts out the translating problems existing in the tourist materials which cover the travel brochure, the sign post and introduction, and goes on to analyze the discrepancies between Chinese and English. At last, the report discusses what strategies and methods should be adopted in the translation of tourist texts and suggests possible improvement by offering the author’s own versions.