A Study Of The Translation Of The Fifth Chapter Of The Language Of Tourism:a Sociolinguistic Perspective Based On Schema Theory

Based on schema theory, this research aims to study the translation of the fifth Chapter of The Language of Tourism and explore the efficient strategies for academic translation. The Language of Tourism by Graham Dann is the very first monograph studying the tourism language from a sociolinguistic perspective, whereas its Chapter 5 mainly investigates the child-like psychological state of tourists in holidays and quotes a lot of other scholar’s comments and some typical excerpts from tourism materials. The language used is featured by academic terms, culture-specific words, obscure words, proper names, long and complex sentences, passive voices and inanimate subjects.According to schema theory, comprehending a text is an interactive process between the reader’s background knowledge and the text. Efficient comprehension requires the translator to relate the textual materials to readers’prior knowledge. Thus, it is the translator’s duty to make the target text fit into the intended readers’schemata. This research mainly focuses on the application of cultural schema, contextual schema and linguistic schema to produce an accurate, professional, and readable translation as well as to activate the proper corresponding schemata of the target readers; and construct new schemata to compensate for readers’ lack of background knowledge. Specifically, the strategies/methods concerning annotation, diction, adopting of the established popular translated names, rendering of four-character phrases and of onomatopoeia, conversion, shift of perspective and reorganization are mainly applied.