An Analysis Of Tourism Text Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Theory

China is playing an increasingly important role in global and local affairs.2008Beijing Olympic Games and2010Shanghai World Expo were strong evidences for China’sinternational status. In the mean time, traditional Chinese culture appeals to a great numberof foreigners to visit China and thus boosts the cross-culture communication betweenChina and other countries. The quality of tourism texts is of great importance as it haseffects on China’s tourism industry and China’s image in the world because tourism textsare the main channel for foreigners to have a better understanding of China and its tourismresources.However, the current Chinese-English(C-E) tourism text translation in China still lagsbehind in many ways as a result of many limitations: unqualified translators lead tosubstandard tourism text translation; the emergence of online translation provides space forshoddy translation, all of which will undermine the introductory and promotional goals ofC-E tourism texts. Therefore, it is really urgent for us to introduce a systematic theory intoC-E tourism text translation and it is against this backdrop that the author conducts aresearch in this regard and brings several suggestions for future C-E tourism texttranslation.According to skopos theory, translators should revise and adjust original texts withspecific translation strategy under different translation purpose so as to offset the gapbetween Chinese and English. Guided by functional theory, the translation strategyemphasizing free translation and translation effect is recognized as the best strategy forpublicity translation. Compared with the pavilions’ texts and their translations on ShanghaiWorld Expo Website, the author noticed that almost all the translations reflect functionalprinciples. Questionnaire is used to collect data and to make this paper more persuasive.Through questionnaire, the author analyzed reader’s responses and the proper C-E tourismtranslation strategies.