The Application Of Translation Variation Theory To Translating Tourism Texts

Translation variation has long been common device in the translation practice, such as those adaptations used in advertisement, trans-edit in news publications or the translation and rewriting in literature. Unfortunately, they are only-admitted as the devices in each field, and even viewed as a challenge to the translation theories. They are considered as a kind of betrayal to the source writers and texts. After abundant study of translation variation works, Professor Huang Zhonglian (黄忠康) proposed his Translation Variation Theory, which aiming to provide a complete theoretical foundation and framework for translation variation. This theory has highly expanded the scope and the pattern of Chinese translation theories, and has been the multi-dimensioned theoretic system pioneer in Chinese scholars. However, as a theory in its beginning, it needs further test and development.This thesis tries to apply this theory to the Chinese-English tourism text translation, with the aim to test this theory and verify his assumptions. The texts used as source texts in this paper refer to the Chinese written texts printed in the tourism guide publications circulated in the society or within certain domains, or those published on websites, by publishing houses, tourist agents or the government departments, introducing the texts from scenic spots, resources, tourism facilities and so on, with the aim to give foreign tourists understandable and detailed descriptions about those tourism products arid to arouse their desire to come for a visit. These texts may carry much Chinese historical and cultural information, and most of them are written in the way of typical Chinese thinking and with many features of Chinese language. The common complete translation of tourism text always proves to be a failure translation in the cross-cultural communication, since the cultural images and information tend to be lost in translation processes or missed by the foreign readers even though they are correctly translated, not to mention the language effects intended by the initiators. So the translators need to make modifications of the texts and try to realize the text function. Translation Variation Theory provides a series of strategies as well as theoretic backup here.In this paper, the detailed introduction and argumentation for Translation Variation Theory are given, and classification and analyses for the Chinese tourism introduction texts. Combined with the illustrations on a group of tourism texts, the author further argues in support for the necessity and benefits of the appliance of translation variation, and provides the advisable strategies and subsidiaries for it.In addition, a few questions involved in some controversies arising in translation studies are discussed, including the scope of translation (whether translation variation can be included into the scope of translation), translation variation or faithfulness and translation variation vs. complete translation.The thesis also pays attention to the criticisms of the theory. Since Prof. Huang’s basic study lies on Yan Fu’s (严复) translation thought and his own experiences, he mainly focuses on the information importation, which has great influence on the formation of his theory. A lot of cultural information in the Chinese tourism introduction texts makes Translation Variation Theory a necessity. But introducing cultural items doesn’t seem as simple as bringing in the latest foreign knowledge. After his study of this theory and his real practices, the author finds that, due to cultural differences, translation of Chinese traditional messages, much deletion and condensation of information and the rearrangement of the message sequences are not the most favorable methods, and even efficiency is not the only aim in tourism translation. Cultural issues should be understood and learnt with not only readability but also persuasive power in the target texts, which can win the recognition and interests of the readers. For Chinese-English translation, that is "creativeness" instead of "condensation", should be given prominence to for translation variation to achieve better effects in cross-cultural communication.