On C-E Translation Of Tourist Materials From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the rapid development of the tourism in recent years, a large number of foreign tourists choose China as their destination. How to introduce these tourism resources and cultures of our country to them becomes the focus of attention. TMT, covering a wide territory of nature, geography, architecture, culture, etc., is not merely a transformation between languages, but also a cross-cultural communication. Whether it can be translated properly concerns China's image abroad as well as the promotion of China's cultural communication with foreign countries. As a result, the study on TMT has become an imperative.Viewing from the perspective of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, this thesis gives an in-depth analysis of the C-E translation of TMs and aims to bring linguistic, social, cultural, and psychological factors in TMT into a coherent, integral framework so as to broaden the range of study on TMT. According to Adaptation Theory, using language must consist of the continuous making of linguistic choices, consciously or unconsciously, for language-internal and language-external reasons (Verschueren, 2000:55-56). Adaptability is a property of language and adaptation-making is to approach points of satisfaction for particular communicative ends. The predominant purpose of TMT is to stimulate the potential tourists' motivation to buy a particular targeted tourism product and meanwhile to arouse their interest in the traveling activity. As one party in communication, the TMs translator, has to make various choices and adaptations during the process of translation. By making a comparison of different levels between the ST and TT, this thesis probes into the different yet interrelated constraints involved in TMT and explains how the translator makes adaptations to them.TMT, as one branch of pragmatic translation, is an emerging and promising field for translation study. Laying emphasis on the transmission of information and its publicity effect, TMT is ultimately evaluated by its acceptability among tourists. Therefore the translator should orient himself/ herself to the TL or target readers by means of various strategies.By resorting to Verschueren's points that structure and context constitute the contents of adaptability, in the main part of this thesis, the author explores the structural adaptation in TMT from the stylistic, sound, lexical and syntactic level. And mental world and social world of tourists in contextual correlates are also playing their roles for the translator's adaptation strategies. Finally, the author summarizes the process of TMT: TMT is a dynamic choice-making process involving certain degree of salience for the purpose of achieving adaptability in terms of structural and contextual correlates.In conclusion, the present study purports to open further the door for new, alternative approaches for TMT and sheds lights on the TMs translator, therefore further enhances the acceptability of the TT.