A Report: Chinese-English Translation Of The Summer Palace Introduction From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Chinese tourism is increasingly attracting foreign tourists. Many of them want toexperience the cultural tourism in China. They’d like to choose the traditional Chinesegardens and palaces as one of their destinations. Because those attractions embody profoundtraditional Chinese culture with long history. For this reason, it is important to do a good jobin the Chinese-English translation of the tourism introduction of Chinese gardens and palaces,which is conducive to introduce our culture and attract foreign tourists’ interest.Skopostheorie can be used as a guidance when translating the tourism text. Because thistheory considers that the target text depends on the purpose of translation and the readers. Thepurpose, usually, is communication. To achieve this purpose, translators can choose differenttranslation strategies which are determined by the targeted purpose or function of thetranslation. That is the “Skopos Rule”. What’s more, the Chinese-English translation of thetourism text is to produce a text for the readers aiming at culture communication, which is inline of the content of the Skopostheorie.Under the guidance of Skopostheorie, I translated two tourism introduction (a short oneto tell how to translate the non-literary information，a long one to tanslate the literary andcultural infomation), of the Summer Palace involving the history, religion culture andcharacteristics of the traditional Chinese gardens and palaces. This translation report boilsdown to five parts including the introduction (project description), Skopostheorie overview,the content of the translation, summary of the translation strategies and the epilogue. The firstpart tells the selection process of original texts, its features and the preparation phase. Thesecond part gives a brief introduction of the theory applied in the translation. The third partelaborates how I translated the texts from six typical aspects. The fourth part summarizes thestrategies used in the translation. The last part is the epilogue and points out the room forimprovement.This translation project and report take the application of the Skopostheorie in thetranslation of the Summer Palace introduction as an example, hoping that the theory and thetranslation strategies will be instructive for the translation of other traditional Chinese gardensintroduction or tourism texts.