A Report On The English Translation Of Museum Commentary

Translation of museum commentary plays an important role in cross-cultural communication.In form,museum commentary is a kind of public notices and signs.In content,it belongs to tourism text.As for the linguistic style,museum commentary is concise and vivid.Commentary of China Cement Industry Museum is chosen as the translation text.It involves many technical terms related to the equipment names and the industrial processes.At the same time,history of the museum is introduced in long paragraphs in the commentary.Moreover,there are many sentences showing the interaction between the interpreter and the visitors.Combined with the characteristics of commentary,translation strategies related to relevance theory are used in this report to analyse the source text.In Gutt's opinion,there are two ways to achieve explicature.They are indirect translation and direct translation.The former one pays attention to keeping resemblance in cognitive effects while the latter one pays attention to keeping resemblance in linguistic properties.They two are referred to domestication and foreignization in translation.Both of them are mainly used in this report.In details,literal translation,transliteration,omission,reconstructing,literal translation plus explanation are used to realize the optimal relevance.In this way,the report highlights the language style of source text and shows its information and connotation clearly.