A Study Of Tourism Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory-based On A Handbook For Xi’’an

Tourism industry has been developing fast all over the world. People love to have a trip to other countries and enjoy the local culture there. However, different languages have been the obstacles to the international tourism. Hence, tourism translation is of great importance to a better communication. In fact, there are many problems in tourism translation because the lack of guidance by theory.Proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance Theory is based on pragmatics and it combines human cognition with communication. Along with the development of Relevance Theory, many scholars have applied it to other fields and made great achievement. Therefore, this thesis studies tourism translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory with the purpose to improve the quality of tourism translation.Relevance Theory is applicable for the study of tourism translation because the tourism activity is a kind of communication. In fact, translation can be regarded as an interlingual dual ostensive-inferential communication process. Three important concepts of Relevance Theory are adopted in this thesis. With the principles of the ostensive-inferential communication, the context & cognitive environment and the optimal relevance, tourism translation can be improved a lot.As the first book to introduce tourist materials of Xi’an, A Handbook for Xi’an, with both Chinese and English versions, plays an important role for tour guides to grasp the high-quality English translation about Xi’an as well as for foreign tourists to have a better knowledge of Xi’an by their own. However, this book has not been studied on with any theory. Hence, this thesis is of significance to study tourism translation under the guidance of Relevance Theory. The problems during tourism translation are analyzed and some practicable translation methods are put forward.