C-E Translation Of Names Of Kaiping Watchtowers From The Text Typology Approach

Kaiping Diaolou and Villages is the 35 thworld heritage site of China.Diaolou, watchtowers, is taken as an important carrier of culture of overseas Chinese. The English translation of their names plays an indispensable role in the international publicity of this kind of culture.Texts can be divided into informative texts, expressive texts and operative texts in accordance with Reiss’ s Text Typology. Each name of watchtowers carries abundant and complete meanings, such as ownership,characteristics of the towers, historical culture or affections of the owners;thus, it can be seen as an individual “text”. Names of watchtowers will be classified into three groups: informative names, expressive names and mixed names based on Reiss’ s Text Typology. Informative names, with logical expressions and content-focused text focus as its characteristics,require plain translation that conveys the meaning clearly and concisely;expressive names feature aesthetic language and a form-focused text,whose translation should adopt an identifying method and a perspective of the author; while mixed names combine the features and translation requirements of two or more types of names. As for each group of names,different translation methods will be concluded in the thesis, including transliteration, literal translation, free translation, adaptation, literaltranslation plus explanatory translation and transliteration plus free translation, each of which aims at more accurate realization of the main communicative intentions of different groups of names of the watchtowers.