The Theory Of Chinese-english Tourist Translation: Problems And Countermeasures

China’s tourism, especially inbound tourism has undergone an unprecedenteddevelopment ever since the implementation of reform and opening up in1978. Anincreasing number of foreigners would like to gain a deeper understanding of Chinavia travelling in China, thus there comes a need for high-quality C-E touristtranslations. However, in reality, it is ironic that many problems still exist in currentC-E tourist translations. It is under this context that the author of this thesis wants toconduct this study, in which typical C-E translation problems can be summarized andstudied carefully in order to find out the root reasons and give some suggestions totreat those problems.This thesis is made up of four chapters. The first chapter is literature review,which is a critical review of relevant research results in pragmatic translation andtourist translation home and abroad. Researches on tourist texts begin earlier inWestern countries, but there are few studies particularly on C-E tourist translation.Nevertheless, some remarkable achievements made by Nida, Peter Newmark andGerman Functionalist School have laid solid theoretical ground for C-E touristtranslation studies. Relevant studies in China are usually made from the perspective ofcultural difference or linguistics. It is not until2004when Functionalist translationtheories were introduced into China to study pragmatic translation. Some scholarshave pointed out then that pragmatic translation including tourist translation shall betreated differently from literary translation due to their different purposes oftranslating.Chapter Two is a comprehensive summary of problems found in present C-Etourist translation. Based on Lin Wusun’s categorization of foreign publicity problems,the problems in this chapter are classified into two groups: the conspicuous problemsand inconspicuous problems. The former refer to those which can be spotted easilysuch as problems of Pinyin, capitalization and grammar, etc. Different fromconspicuous problems, inconspicuous ones are those difficult to find out at the first sight but can harm communicative effects by causing confusion or misunderstandingor even annoying the readership.Chapter Three is an analysis of reasons for both conspicuous and inconspicuousproblems listed in chapter two. For conspicuous problems, the author of this thesispointed out that the root reason lies in translators’ working attitude and thesupervision. It is hoped that this can arouse the supervisors’ attention to currenta-bit-disorderly China’s translation market and make some improvements for it. Themain part of this chapter discusses reasons for inconspicuous problems first from theperspective of cultural difference and then that of translators. The author of this thesisbelieves that due to influence of traditional translation approaches, some translatorsare not able to flexibly understand the meaning of “faithfulness” in translation butimpose approaches for literary translation onto pragmatic translation like touristtranslation.Chapter Four has listed three specific translation methods for C-E touristtranslation, i.e. amplification, omission and adaptation. All of the three methods areput forward based upon current tourist translation problems. With each method, thereare abundant examples with detailed explanation for its applicable conditions, sowhen applying them into translation practice, translators can choose proper methodsunder proper conditions.The conclusion drawn from the thesis is that difficulties in translating C-E touristtranslation are resulted from differences between Chinese and Western culture andthat as a typical type of pragmatic translation, tourist translation shall be treateddifferently from literary transaltion. Therefore, when translating pragmatic texts liketourist publicity materials, translators need to have the alertness to cross-culturalcommunication and take flexible appraches to make the translations meet thereadership’s needs.