A Study On The C-E Translation Of Food Brochures From The Perspective Of Newmark’s Text Typology

In recent years, China-ASEAN Expo has become an important platform for China and ASEAN countries to conduct economic and trade cooperation as well as cultural exchanges. More and more enterprises from China and ASEAN countries are eager to further exploit domestic and international markets as well as seek more opportunities for cooperation and investments through this platform. In order to facilitate the exchanges and cooperation with the outside world, Chinese-English brochures have been widely used by enterprises from China and ASEAN countries to publicize and promote their products, services and cultures. In fact, C-E brochures have become one of the important propaganda means of enterprises, and more importantly, they represent the image of the enterprise, even the country to some extent.Although enterprises from China and ASEAN countries have realized the importance of C-E brochures, and numerous scholars have conducted researches on the C-E translation of brochures and offered valuable insights on such translation, their researches, however, still have some limitations. On the one hand, their studies on the C-E translation of brochures were conducted mainly from the perspective of Skopos theory, only a few studies have touched upon other research angles. On the other hand, their research objects mostly refer to C-E tourist brochures or C-E hotel brochures rather than other C-E brochures, such as food brochures, clothing brochures and medical brochures, etc. In fact, the C-E translation of brochures still has many problems, which will hinder target readers’ smooth understanding toward the source texts, cause the failure of communicative function of texts, weaken the effect of publicity of enterprises to some extent, and obstruct enterprises’ communication and cooperation with the outside world effectively. In view of the above factors, the present thesis does a tentative study on the C-E translation of food brochures from the perspective of Newmark’s text typology, aiming at discovering appropriate translation principles, strategies and methods to address the current translation problems in the C-E food brochures and improve the translation quality of food brochures.By combining comparative and qualitative research methods, this thesis conducts an in-depth and systemic analysis on C-E food brochures collected from the China-ASEAN Expo. After comparing and analyzing both kinds of food brochures, the present study has the following findings:firstly, food brochures have informative and vocative functions, of which the vocative function plays a predominant role, thus, they belong to vocative texts. Secondly, there are many differences on cultural, stylistic and linguistic levels between Chinese and English food brochures. However, translators often pay little attention to these differences in translation, which consequently results in various translation errors in the C-E food brochures. Thirdly, these translation errors can be divided mainly into three categories, namely, errors on functional, cultural and linguistic levels. Fourthly, the main problem in the C-E food brochures at present is that the informative and vocative functions of source language texts cannot realize effectively in the target language texts, which is caused by the above three translation errors. Based on the analysis of those translation errors, the present author proposes two translation principles for the C-E translation of food brochures, that is,"function-oriented principle" and "reader-centered principle". Then, in the light of these two principles, Newmark’s communicative translation approach and analysis of specific examples, the author proposes that one can adopt translation methods like literal translation, omission, addition and reconstruction flexibly in translating food brochures to maximize the translation quality and realize the intended functions of the target language texts.This thesis mainly discusses the translation problems in the C-E food brochures collected from the China-ASEAN Expo, and proposes appropriate solutions for such problems according to Newmark’s text typology. Theoretically, the present thesis proves that Newmark’s text typology is a feasible theory for guiding studies on the C-E translation of food brochures; practically, the thesis provides more flexible translation methods and sensible solutions for various translation errors in the C-E translation of food brochures.