Mistakes Analysis Of The English Transiation Of Tourism Texts

TTs (tourism texts) include a wide range of texts, but the thesis exclusively focuses on the research of mistakes analysis of English introductions to tourist attractions in China. From the perspective of Skopostheorie, Chinese introductions to tourist attractions perform the informative function of informing prospective foreign tourists interested in the nature, geography, history, customs or whatever of a tourist attraction as well as the operative function of triggering off their impulses of travelling to the tourist attraction in question. However, English introductions to tourist attractions are far from satisfactory. Taking account of this reality, the thesis elaborates on an applicable and practicable methodology of mistakes analysis of TTs (referring only to introductions to tourist attractions in this thesis) under the theoretical guidance of Han J. Vermeer’s Skopostheorie and Katharina Reiss’s text typology.Applied to tourism translation, the skopos theory contributes to determining the intended purpose and readership of target ETTs (English tourism texts) and the choice of macro-strategies for translation. In the framework of Skopostheorie, Reiss’s text typologies help the translator specify the appropriate hierarchy of equivalence levels needed for a particular translation purpose. Based on the analysis of the corpus utilized in the accomplishment of the thesis, the conclusion is drawn that TTs are mainly composed of content-focused and appeal-focused text types. With the skopos rule as the top-ranking rule, while approaching the translation of an appeal-focused TT, the translator should try whatever means available to achieve the same extra-linguistic effect as that of the source TT. In some cases, it does not exclude the necessity of deviating from the content and form of the source TT in order to fulfill that effect. With regard to the content-focused TT, the purpose of it requires that the translator faithfully convey the essential content of the source TT and the target TT be produced in a familiar linguistic form, with the form and non-linguistic effect secondary to the content.Culture is an important factor that the translator has to take into consideration. As a result of cultural differences between China and the western countries, Chinese and westerners have different esthetic tastes in TTs. These differences are reflected in the distinct writing styles, esthetic standards and structural patterns of Chinese and ETTs. By comparing both kinds of TTs, the author thinks, in order to produce a target ETT which satisfies the target English readers’expectations and needs, the translation should (a) delete the redundancy and maintain the objective reproduction;(b) paraphrase or delete poems;(c) present the essential information and avoid overly subjective appeal;(d) adapt to the structural patterns of the target language.On the basis of the comprehensive analysis of Chinese and ETTs, in the author’s opinion, the process of mistakes analysis of target ETTs can be chronologically divided into three phases:analysis of the source CTT, evaluation of the target ETT and improvement of the translation.