ABSTRACT

The tourism website constitutes to one of the major channels for foreign tourists in China to get information of the scenic spots and historical sites. However, the problems that exist in the translation of tourism texts not only hinder the prosperity of Chinese tourism industry, but also cast a shadow over China’s international image. This paper is aimed at seeking methods and strategies to solve the problems with the C-E translation of tourism websites with particular reference to tourism websites of Jiangsu Province by combining Nida’s functional equivalence theory with Vermeer’s Skopostheorie.

Owing to the cultural differences existing in Eastern and Western civilizations, it is often hard for foreign tourists to have a clear and proper understanding for China’s history included in the introductions of the scenic spots. Through an analysis of such concrete problems as grammatical errors, non-unification and Chinglish expressions in the C-E translation of tourism websites of Jiangsu Province, it is suggested that the principles of putting priority on content and meaning equivalence and of taking readers’ response into consideration should be observed in order to attain the closest natural equivalence on the basis of genre analysis and consequently realize the promotional goal of tourism websites translation.

Key Words: C-E Translation; Tourism Websites; Functional equivalence; Skopostheorie

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Previous Studies on Tourism Text Translation-3

2.1.1 Studies abroad-3

2.1.2 Domestic studies-4

2.2 Significance of the Study-4

Chapter Three NIDA’S FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE AND VERMEER’S SKOPOSTHEORIE-6

3.1 A Brief Introduction to Nida’s Functional Equivalence-6

3.1.1 Dynamic equivalence and functional equivalence-6

3.1.2 Application of functional equivalence to tourism text translation-7

3.2 A Brief Introduction to Vermeer’s Skopostheorie-8

3.2.1 Rules in Skopostheorie-8

3.2.2 Application of Skopostheorie to tourism text translation-9

4.1 Summary-9

Chapter Four FEATURES OF AND PROBLEMS WITH THE TRANSLATION OF TOURISM WEBSITES-11

4.1 Features of Tourism Websites Translation -11

4.2 Problems with Tourism Website Translation-12

4.2.1 Grammatical mistakes-12

4.2.2 Chinglish-13

4.2.3 Non-unification-13

4.3 Causes of Problems in Jiangsu Tourism Text translation-14

4.3.1 Inadequate awareness of cultural difference-14

4.3.2 Carelessness and irresponsibility of translators-14

4.4 Summary-15

Chapter Five SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS WITH TOURISM-RELATED WEBSITES TRANSLATION-16

5.1 Strategies for Tourism Texts Translation in Jiangsu-16

5.1.1 Addition-16

5.1.2 Omission-17

5.1.3 Analogy-18

5.1.4 Restructuring-18

5.2 Summary-19

Chapter Six CONCLUSION-20

REFERENCES-22