A Report On The C-E Translation Of Discovery Of Hubei Province (Excerpt)

Located in the middle plain of Yangtze River,Central China,Hubei Province is rich in natural and cultural tourism resources.However,due to the limitation in the quantity and quality of the translation of the related tourism texts,the process of advancing its tourism resources to the international stage has also been restricted.In order to further increase the popularity of Hubei Province in international tourism,it is necessary to study the translation of tourism texts of this region.The book Discovery of Hubei Province offers detailed tourism information of nine key tourist cities and regions in Hubei Province,serving as a practical guide for those who are intended to come for a visit.By translating this text into English,it will be able to attract more foreign tourists to Hubei Province,so as to expand the international influence of the region.The paper takes the English translation of Discovery of Hubei Province as the research object.Guided by Reiss' text type theory,it is aimed to explore the translation methods of Chinese tourism texts.According to Reiss,texts can be divided into four types,namely,content-focused texts,form-focused texts,appeal-focused texts and audio-visual texts.It is the type of the text that determines the proper translation approaches.The translation material employed in this paper isa practical tourism text,which mainly provides objective tourism information with the purpose to attract readers to make a trip to the destination.Therefore,it falls into a complex text type that gives priority to informative function followed by vocative function.On the one hand,the informative function is reproduced by revealing the implicit information in the names of scenic spots,explaining the specific information of culture-loaded expressions and adjusting the internal information logic in prose-like sentences.To this end,translation methods of free translation,amplification and reorganization are adopted respectively.On the other hand,the first person “we” and second person“you” are frequently seen in English tourism texts to shorten the distance between the text and readers.However,Chinese tourism texts tend to adopt subject-free sentences.Consequently,the author adds the second person to the subject-free sentences properly to achieve the vocative function of the target text.At the same time,the intricate quotations from classical works and other over-loaded information in the original text are omitted to reduce the reading burden for English readers so that they can keep the interest of reading,hence to realize the vocative function of the target text.The paper applies Reiss' text type theory to the translation practice of a Chinese tourism text,making a summary of five specific translation methods to achieve the informative and vocative functions of thetranslated text.These methods are closely combined with the characteristics of the tourism text so as to maximize the above two functions of the target text.The study may contribute to the external promotion of Yichang's tourism resources in a sense,hence to facilitate the development of local economy and culture.Meanwhile,it may be of certain referential value in the translation of tourism texts and relevant research in the future.