ABSTRACT

As a publicity material, tourist material plays an important role in promoting our tourist industry’s development. A premise and complete tourist translation can be conductive to our country’s external image’s establishment and exploit international tourism market. While poor quality translation will have an impact on the target destination’s image, and also hindering its tourist development. When translating, due to the difference of Chinese and Western cultures, the cultural defaults in the tourist material will become the obstacles and hinder the communication of the two cultures. During the practice of translating, if we want to realize successful and complete communication, these elements must be compensated.

  Researchers have found that the translation of tourist materials have various problems, such as linguistic, pragmatics, and cultural, etc. In this thesis, the author analyzes cultural defaults and the reasons from three perspectives: names of historical scenic spots and figures, social customs, and literary works. In many cases, substantially, the compensation to the cultural default is the compensation to the lack of translation. And then the author puts forward the compensation strategies to solve these problems, including supplement of relevant information, omission, normalization, and paraphrasing. Besides, the thesis also points to that due to the dual peculiarities of cultural default in tourist translation, translators should try to change the cultural default’s passive influence into positive one, achieving tourist material’s transitional information, attracting tourists, and market promoting. Last, the thesis puts forward the problems we have now in the translation of tourism material. The key to solve them is to realize coordination treatment, so that we can make the translation of intercultural tourism better. 

Key words: intercultural communication, cultural default, cultural compensation, translation strategy

CONTENTS

摘要

Abstract

1. Introduction  

1.1 Previous study on tourist translation-1

   1.1.1 Research on tourist translation abroad-1

   1.1.2 Research on tourist translation in China-1

1.2 Previous study on cultural default-2

   1.2.1 Research on cultural default abroad-2

   1.2.2 Research on cultural default in China-2

2. Cultural defaults and the relevant reasons

2.1 Cultural defaults-3

   2.1.1 Cultural default in names of historical scenic spots and figures.-3

   2.1.2 Cultural default in social customs-4

   2.1.3 Cultural default in literary works-4

2.2 The relevant reasons-5

   2.2.1 The relevant reasons in names of historical scenic spots and figures-5

   2.2.2 The relevant reasons in social customs-5

   2.2.3 The relevant reasons in literary works-6

3. Compensation for cultural default in tourism translation

3.1 Supplement of relevant information-6

3.2 Omission-7

3.3 Normalization-7

3.4 Paraphrasing-8

4.Conclusion

4.1 Major findings-9

4.2 Limitations-10

References-10

Acknowledgments-12