A Study Of C-E Translation Failures Of Museum Texts From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

With the rapid development of China?s tourism industry, museums in China attract more and more international tourists each year, which has heightened the necessity of the translation of museum texts. In order to help the visitors, most museums have provided English museum texts for them. However, the translation of museum texts is far from being satisfactory due to various factors. Some problems are often found, and sometimes these problems even impose negative effect on the spread of Chinese culture and history.In view of the above observations and consideration, this thesis conducts a study of the translation failures in the C-E translation of the texts in Shanghai Museum under the guidance of Nida?s functional equivalence theory. The thesis aims to explore effective techniques to avoid the failures.In order to explore effective techniques to translate museum texts, 50 examples from Shanghai Museum are cited and analyzed. Through careful study, the following findings are generated. Firstly, there are translation failures in the C-E translation of the texts in Shanghai Museum. And the translation failures are caused by the following two factors: misunderstanding of certain linguistic items and lack of cultural information. Secondly, Nida?s functional equivalence theory can shed light on the analysis of the translation failures in the museum texts, in a sense, guide the translation of museum texts. Thirdly, the practical translation techniques like transliteration, simplification and addition are effective in avoiding the translation failures.It is hoped that this study may enrich the applicability of Functional Equivalence Theory in practical translation and can be used as a valuable reference and guidance by those who are engaged in the translation of museum texts. Moreover, it is expected that the study can arouse more attention of scholars to conduct further studies in this field.