Translation Of Chinese Cultural Relic Texts In Hunan Provincial Museum: A Perspective Of Instrumental Translation

A museum, as the place of collecting, conserving, exhibiting and studying naturaland human cultural relics, makes the great contribution to the social development andcultural inheritance. Hunan Provincial Museum, as the famous museum of China,attracts many visitors at home and overseas by its collection with long history andprofound cultural value. It is the cultural relic texts that play as the bridge that help thevisitor conquers the blocks of cultural differences. Therefore it is extremely necessaryto study the cultural relic texts in order to make the museum and the cultural relic textsitself play a more great role in introducing Chinese historical culture.Now, cultural relic texts of English version come to appear in museums as Chinaopens more to the world. However, its effect weakens in the trans-lingual andtrans-cultural communication because there are so many differences in the geography,history, politics and cultural, etc. In the meanwhile, there are problems of cultural relictexts of English version itself, especially in the textual and linguistic characteristics.Compared to the texts of foreign museum, our cultural relic texts of English versionare not that readable and require improvements.With the help of instrumental translation theory and the method of comparativeanalysis and induction-summarization, this thesis studies the translation of Chinesecultural relic texts in Hunan Provincial Museum from the textual and linguistic aspectswith the reference of the texts in foreign museums, especially those in Englishmuseums.It is discovered that the texts of English version in Hunan Provincial Museumadopt the word-for-word translation from Chinese to English and just show the obviousinformation about the cultural relics, for example, the appearance; however, those textsof English version is rich in content and introduces more information about the texture,techniques and historical background. First of all, on the textual structure, the formerintroduces the relics in induction structure but the latter in deduction structure. Second,on the text style, the former uses more parallel and antithesis sentences or the famouspoems and proverbs, but the latter uses the plain, simple and easily-understoodsentences or words. Third, on the sentence structures, the former puts the importantinformation in the end of the sentences but the latter in the beginning of the sentences.Fourth, the former adopts more active voice but the latter more passive voice. At last,on the stylistic features, the former prefer to use flowery adjectives, but the latter is more straightforward and rational. Therefore it concludes that the cultural relic texts ofEnglish version in Chinese museums should more refer to the textual and linguisticcharacteristics of the cultural relic texts in foreign museums and adopts the familiarand easily explicable way of thinking in the language of English. Based on thesediscoveries, four translation strategies, including adding related information or thespecial introduction to the unique Chinese historical relic, and modulating theinformation sequences or sentence structure. This thesis can provide the theoreticalreference to the cultural relic texts of English version studies, especially to the text inHunan Provincial Museum.