A Communicative Translation Theory-based Approach To The Chinese-English Translation Of Museum Texts In Hubei Provincial Museum

A museum is considered as an indispensable tool and platform for national culture of internal inheritance and external communication, which acquires, retains, researches and exhibits the tangible heritage of humanity and is a microcosm of long history of a country or region. As the birthplace of Chu culture, Hubei Province boasts its provincial museum, namely Hubei Provincial Museum which attracts a large number of domestic and foreign tourists with its unique glamour because of its long history, various forms and rich content. Due to the differences between Eastern and Western cultures, the translation of texts plays a very important role in dissemination of the cultural heritage. However, the quality of the translation has a direct and great impact on cultural exchange and dissemination with foreign countries.However, due to the lack of sufficient attention and theoretical guidance, the translation of museum texts is still baffled. There are also many problems in the translation of museum texts from Hubei Provincial Museum. Furthermore, the study on the translation of museum texts has not yet got enough attention up to now. According to the results retrieved from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, there are basically no exactly the same or similar studies about the object this thesis intends to study:the Chinese-English translation of museum texts in Hubei Provincial Museum. This thesis attempts to study the texts from Hubei Provincial Museum by employing Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory to explore effective strategies for the improvement of translation of museum texts.In the thesis, the collected data, especially the brochures the author has chosen can represent the most valuable treasures among the collections of Hubei Provincial Museum. According to Gideon Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies, the author is able to describe the source texts and compare the source texts with translated texts in order to point out the features of translation and the similarities and differences between the Chinese and English versions. By adopting Eugene A. Nida’s functional equivalence theory, the author classifies and analyzes the similarities and differences between the source and target texts and interprets how the translator handles the cultural difficulties with respect to the source language. Finally, the author adopts Newmark’s communicative translation theory to test and check the effect and influence of communication, namely whether the intended effects of the translated texts for English-speaking tourists and the texts for Chinese-speaking tourists are the same.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One gives a general introduction to this thesis, containing the research background, research purpose, rationale, expected findings and structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is the literature review, which contains the present situation of the study on Chinese-English translation of museum texts in Hubei Provincial Museum. Chapter Three refers to the theoretical framework of this study, focusing on Nida’s functional equivalence theory, Newmark’s communicative translation theory, Gideon Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies and integration of the theories and translation of museum texts. Chapter Four firstly introduces the characteristics of the translation of museum texts and Hubei Provincial Museum, and then concentrates on the strategies and principles for Chinese-English translation of Hubei Provincial Museum texts and some problems and errors based on communicative translation theory. The strategies and principles for Chinese-English translation of museum texts are put forward. Chapter Five is about the summary of the whole thesis, limitations of this study and the recommendations for future research.