A Report On C-E Translation Of A West Hunan Reader(Excerpt)

With the increasing development of opening-up, the economy in China has been booming and thus boosting the tourism industry. The aim of this translation practice is to popularize unique tourist attractions of western Hunan, spread outstanding ethnic minority culture, stimulate readers’ desire for traveling and thus promote the local economy. Besides, to deal with the difficulties faced in the process of translating, the author of this report has found out proper solutions through reading parallel texts and translation theories. Hence, this practice could provide translators who also focus on tourism texts characterized by cultural traits with some practical ways and useful experience.At present, tourist attractions in the first-tier cities benefiting from the external publicity are far more popular than those in western Hunan, which remain the first choice for most foreign tourists. Under this circumstance, the purpose of the book of A Western Hunan Reader is to promote ethnic minority culture and tourist attractions, containing a full range of information about history, nature, society and culture of western Hunan. The author of this report picks Section two in Chapter seven as translation material covering the most representative tourist attractions in Western Hunan. This translation report consists of four parts. Part one introduces the background of the task and the meaning of this practice. Part two describes the process of translating, including the preparation for translation, translation theory, translation process and review after translation. Part three analyzes major translation difficulties and solution, the key part of this report. Difficulties encountering in the process of translating refer to culturally-loaded words, transference of culture-loaded images and detached sentences. The author comes up with appropriate methods through reading parallel texts and relevant translation theories, including literal translation, paraphrase, shift of perspective, division and combination. Part four summarizes experience and shortcomings during this translation practice.