A Study Of Translated English Tour Guides From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

After the Opening Policy, the relationship between China and the western worldgrows much tighter than before. As one of the four great ancient civilizations, Chinaattracts visitors from all over the world to testify its beauty with its unique andcharming history and culture. For this reason, the quality of the translated touristguides gets more and more attention. At present, the translation research on touristguides is mostly limited to some techniques and skills, but is lack of support of asystematic theoretical framework. This thesis takes Verschueren’s Adaptation Theoryas framework and tries to discuss the translation of tourist guides from a newperspective.The Adaptation Theory put forward by Verschueren is a comparatively newtheory, but it has strong power to explain language. The main point of the AdaptationTheory is that language is a choice made by the language users in the process of usinglanguage. In order to achieve the communication aim, language users have to adapt tothe structure of the target language and the context. Translation is related to social andcultural contexts. The translation of tourist guides is a complex process of languagechoice in order to make foreign readers get interested in Chinese tourism spots.Therefore, translators should take full consideration to the adaptation of the languagestructure and context. Contextual adaptation includes the adaptation to mental, socialand physical world. Structure adaptation includes the adaptation to the cohesion andsequencing of the language.By using qualitative approach, this thesis analyzes a series of Painter’s TouristMap of Beijing which includes written descriptions of scenery spots, such as thePalace Museum, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. Theaim of this thesis is to analyze how the translators adapt to the target languagestructure and context in the process of translating Chinese into English. The analysis shows that the authorized translated texts have the following features:(1)Linguistically, the order of words and phrases are rearranged in language structure inorder to make the passage more acceptable to the foreign readers. Also properconjunctions are added to adapt to the English habits;(2) Communicatively, therepeated words in the same sentence are reduced to make the passage concise andtight so as to adapt to the mental world of foreign readers; the simplest and most vividexpressions are used to translate the sentences that have unique Chinese features so asto adapt to the social world of foreign readers; annotation explanation to sentencesthat contain special historical or cultural flavors are used to adapt to the physicalworld of foreign readers.