Skopos Theory Applied To Translating Chinese Hotel Introduction Texts

With the opening up of China and the rapid development of the tertiary industry in the pastfew decades, more and more oversea visitors choose China as their destinations of traveling andbusiness trips, which brings on a booming hotel industry in China. A hotel introduction textusually serves as the first impression for the visitors by offering the main information of the hotel,such as the time of establishment, location, accommodation and restaurant, the service featuresof the hotel, and so on. A good translation of hotel introduction texts helps to attract the attentionof oversea visitors, to promote the image of the hotel, and to enhance the development of tourismand business in the area.Hotel introduction texts are full of cultural elements, which bring great difficulty to thetranslation. Meanwhile, due to the differences in the modes of thinking and values betweenChinese and native English speakers, great differences can also be found in the diction, theoverall structure and narrative perspective of hotel introduction texts. Therefore, it is importantto translate Chinese hotel introduction texts in a way to conform to the reading habits andcultural expectations of the target readers.Guided by Skopos theory, this thesis aims to probe into the English translation of Chinesehotel introduction texts. Skopos theory, as an influential translation theory emerging fromGermany in the1970s, regards translation as an integrated part of cross-cultural communication,and holds that different translation strategies and methods should be applied according to theskopoi, or functions, of the text. It emphasizes the achievement of the functions of translation inthe target text on the basis of a source text analysis.The author of this thesis is to analyze some typical hotel introduction texts collected partlyfrom some hotel brochures and partly from the websites of some hotels in China. The thesis aimsto explore the translation problems in hotel introduction texts, with the focus on the culturalelements, and to put forward some translation strategies to solve the problems. From the analysisof some typical texts, it is found that while translating Chinese introduction texts, the translatorshould not adhere to the syntax, nor the content, of the source texts. Instead, they should applydifferent translation strategies so as to meet the expectations of the target readers, and to achievethe intended functions of hotel introduction texts in the target language and culture.