An Analysis Of C-E Translation Strategies Of Tourism Texts In Shandonprovince

The rapid social development and the opening-up policy of China in the last fewdecades have stimulated the fast development of international tourism industry. Moreand more foreigners wish to travel around China to enjoy the countless natural andcultural scenery and experience different cultures of the great ancient country.Tourism texts, as a means of publicizing the scenic spots, play a leading role inattracting foreigners with both informative and appellative functions. This, of course,will give rise to the need of well-translated tourism texts. However, the quality ofEnglish versions of these tourism texts vary greatly, among which some are ofextremely poor quality and likely to lead to misunderstandings and impact the imageof our country, so it is urgent to improve the C-E translation quality of tourism texts toappeal to more foreign tourists and boost the development of the tourism industry ofChina.In view of this situation, this thesis attempts to probe into the effective ways toenhance the quality of C-E translation of tourism texts (take Shandong Province as anexample) by taking advantage of Eugene A. Nida’s theory of Functional Equivalence,which states that translation means to reproduce the most natural closest equivalent inthe target language and highlights the response of the target language receptors.Therefore, the translation should be receptors-centered and duplicate the “closestnatural equivalent” of the source language texts in the hope of arousing similarresponse between the receptors of the source language and target language. Whetherthe translation can be accepted and understood by the receptors is an importantstandard to evaluate a translation. Shandong Tourism, featured by “Mount Tai, BaotuSpring and Confucius” as well as Qilu culture, famous in China though, isn’t widelyacknowledged around the world. As a result, it is of great necessity to raise theawareness of these scenic spots to foreigners and thus the priority shall be given toproduce high-quality English version of tourism texts. Under the guidance ofFunctional Equivalence, the author will also put forward some suggestions for futureC-E translation of tourism texts based on the problems existing in C-E translation oftourism texts in Shandong: requirements for translators (including noble moralcharacter, sense of responsibility and excellent grasp of professional knowledge) andcorresponding translation strategies (including addition and omission, transliterationand semantic translation, analogy, explanation as well as restructuring) to improve the quality of translation.The author hopes that this thesis will have double significance theoretically andpractically. It is expected that this thesis will be of some help for future translationstudies and tourism text translation as well as promote further development of thetourism industry of China.