A Study On Museum Text Sight Translation From The Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

With the development of China’s soft power and cultural exports policy, museumsin China have witnessed a growing number of international tourists, which hasheightened the necessity of the translation and interpretation of museum text. As anintegral part of museums, museum text offer information for visitors to learn aboutChinese history, culture and customs. However, the translation and interpretation ofmuseum text are far from satisfactory. Some museums fail to provide English texts forinternational visitors while some museum text are translated in poor English, in whichcases interpreters are needed to sight interpret the Chinese text for visitors. As a result,the effectiveness of sight translation of museum text has a direct influence on thevisitors’ understanding. Thus, an urgent effort should be made in studying onmuseum text sight translation.In this paper, museum text from Xi’an Maydo Art Museum, Xi’an Tang WestMarket Museum and Shaanxi History Museum are employed as examples to analyzefeatures of English and Chinese museum text and current problems in linguistic,culture and communication. Then principles of museum text sight translation areanalyzed from the perspective of the Skopos Theory, basically based on the skoposrule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. Subsequently the author proposes three practicalmethods of museum text sight translation from the perspective of the Skopos Theoryincluding simplification, explanation and paraphrasing to solve the problems inmuseum text sight translation. This paper is of significance in its sight interpretingapproach to museum text translation and the three practical methods proposed in thepaper may serve as a reference to interpreters in sight translating museum text.