A Research Report On The Translation Of Travel Essays

As one of the most important forms of literature, a travel essay carries richtourism information and extensive personal emotions. It is epochal on time, sociallybroad and a type of significant literature material about specific time periods andregionally social lives. Travel writing is one important path to realizing the culturalexchange of tourism and the development of people’s spiritual dimensions. Due to thecharacteristics of travel essays that contain lots of distinguished personal marks, Ifound this type of prose quite intriguing and fascinating. And as a cross-culturecommunicator, personally I have a great passion willing to translate them into Chinese.Out of interests, four travel essays from a column in the magazine of NationalGeographic Traveler by the same author, Daisann McLane have been selected. Whatshe sees, feels and thinks during her traveling has been conveyed to the target readersthrough my creation of language.This thesis is intended to sum up the experience of the translation practice onthese four travel essays mainly under the guidance of Nida’s theory of functionalequivalence. And it is divided into4parts. Chapter One includes an introduction tothe author and an analysis of the source texts, followed by Chapter Two that is anoverview of the whole translation practice. Chapter Three is the main body of thisreport, specific translation strategies have been listed: Explanatory translation;translation of a spoken language style; rewriting; amplification and addition;domesticating translation of idioms. Some corresponding examples also have beenspecifically provided along with the thought-process of the difficulties encountered.The second half of this chapter, which is considered the most important part, theappreciation of the aesthetic perspectives of translation is also for open discussion.The whole principle of mine on the job of translation was to be an artistic andaesthetic language creator on a faithfulness basis. The last chapter is the conclusionwhich sums up what has been gained from the work of translation as an Englishlearner and a bilingualism adopter. Hopefully this report can work as a guidanceprofessionally and play its part as a helpful factor to promoting cultural exchange.