A Report On The Translation Of Lonely Planet:Rarotonga,Samoa&Tonga(Excerpts)

In recent decades,tourism has become a strategic pillar industry of the national economy in China.As globalization deepens,Chinese people are not only fond of domestic tourism,they also tend to travel abroad.Compared with traditional package tour,nowadays people prefer free travel.With the help of guidebooks and network,they can build itinerary according to the situation and interests.Nowadays,most of the guidebooks with wide coverage in the world are written in English.For the convenience of Chinese tourists,translation of guidebooks becomes particularly important.However,quite a few domestic translation studies in tourism English mainly concentrate on the introduction to tourist attractions and publicity-orientated materials,while the researches on translation of English guidebooks are very limited.This translation report is a summary of the translator's personal translation practice of some chapters in Lonely Planet:Rarotonga,Samoa and Tonga,and specific examples are presented to clarify translation strategies adopted.Lonely Planet Global Limited is a large publisher of guidebooks.Lonely Planet:Rarotonga,Samoa and Tonga is a volume belonging to its guidebook series.With respect to the content,it mainly introduces the travel information of the three island countries in the South Pacific-Rarotonga,Samoa and Tonga.Based on the informative function and the vocative function,the translator finds four characteristics of the language in the source text:exotic words,dynamic description,poetic language as well as humorous expressions.In this translation project,the translator believes that the target text should reflect the same characteristics of the language in the source text.Meanwhile,the translator has to pay attention to the reading habit of target readers and makes sure that they can figure out such travel information in spite of the differences between English and Chinese.When dealing with exotic words,the translator should focus on the presentation of exotic elements.For the sake of conveying dynamic description,the translator can add more verbs to enrich the description,even onomatopoeic words when necessary.As for the translation of poetic language,four-character terms can be employed to enhance the reader's aesthetic enjoyment.In addition,for the humorous language in the guidebook,the translator can apply colloquial language and buzzwords to maintain the readability and interest of the source text.