Strategies For C-E Translation Of Tourism Publicity Materials From The Functionalist Perspective

It is known to us all that China, the cradle of ancient Chinese civilization whichcovers a total area of9,600,000square kilometers, is a great country with a brillianthistory of over5,000years. It is such a magic country that it abounds in fertile landand splendid culture, attracting foreign friends all over the world. As a carrier ofpromoting Chinese diversified culture, tourist publicity materials (hereinafter referredto as TPM) introduce the natural wonders and cultural relics to the whole world,which plays a vital role in the development of tourism and economy.Most of tourism publicity materials are translated from Chinese into English.Therefore, it can be seen that the translation of TPM is a trademark of certain touristattractions, areas and even China, which is of crucial importance in establishinginternational image. Some scholars have probed into this translation field, but fromthe present literature, articles concerning the translation of TPM mostly discuss aboutpublic signs, names of tourist attractions, names of cuisine culture and the analysis aremainly about errors in single sentences, which have certain limitations.This paper is intended to carry out a comprehensive study in this field and probeinto feasible and effective translation strategies and methods under the framework ofGerman functionlists’ theories. The four representatives of the functionalist theory areall German scholars, Reiss, Vermeer, Mantarri and Nord. Reiss put forward texttypology. Then Vermer came up with Skopos theory. In terms of Reiss’s text typology,TPM is a combination of informative and operative text. From the perspective ofVermer’s Skopos theory, the readership, in other words, their expectation andresponse plays a vital role in evaluating the effect of the translated text, which givesthe translator much more freedom in choosing flexible strategies and methods.Considering Mantarri’s theory of translation action,“translation” is viewed as “aninformation offer” and “a complex action to transfer messages across culture andlanguage barriers”. Based on this, translator should take into consideration the senseof cross-culture communication to to achieve the expected purpose in the process oftranslation. According to Nord’s function plus loyalty, The TPM translation should betourist-oriented to fulfill the functions and purposes of the target texts as expected. Onthe whole, the translator should bear in mind the sense of readership, the sense offunction, the sense of text types and the sense of cross-culture awareness. Based on careful analysis in this thesis, we can see the German functionalisttheory is very applicable to the Chinese-English translation of TPM. In this sense, itcan not only point out translation principles from microcosmic perspective, but alsoprovide feasible concrete translation strategies and methods from macrocosmicperspective for different types of TPM.Chapter1gives an introduction to the background and significance of the study,which provides a research background for further study. Chapter2, the literaturereview part, it examines the basic knowledge about TPM, including its definition,classification and function and reviews the German functionalist theory, which can beapplied to TPM translation and served as the theory framework. Chapter3presentsthe research design, including research questions, research procedure and TPMsample collection. Chapter4goes deeply into the comparison between Chinese andEnglish TPM from the perspective of style, linguistics, culture, aesthetics andsyntactics. Chapter5summarizes common problems in Chinese-English translation ofTPM, which can be classified into four different functional types, namely, linguistictranslation errors, pragmatic translation errors, cultural translation errors anddiscourse translation errors. Chapter6is the most important part. Under theframework of functionalist theory, it puts forward basic principles and feasiblestrategies and methods that translator should follow in the process of translation,aiming at improving translation quality. The last part is a conclusion. To sum up,translator should follow the reader-oriented approach and adopt flexible strategies andmethods to fulfill the intended purpose and function of the source text.The paper aims to be a spur to more profound studies in this area, hoping that itcan offer some guidance for the translation practice of TPM and promote Chineseculture.