The C-E Translation Study Of Guides' Commentary From The Perspective Of Nord's Functionalist Theory

With the booming development of tourist industry, the high quality of guides' commentary becomes an urgent need. The paper is designed under this background. In the paper, the author explores the C-E translation of guides'commentary from the perspective of Nord's functionalist theory.Jin Huikang defines guides'commentary as a series of written materials for tour guides to make interpretation for tourists on the way or on the scenic-spot, with the main function of helping tourists understand the natural landscape, folk customs, local specialties, local flavor snacks, historical sites and cultural heritages, etc. Nord's functionalist theory, with its special attention to the practical translation, can be applied into the translation of guides'commentary.Nord disagrees taking equivalence as the translation standard, nor does she agrees with the skopos theory of Venneer, who considers that the sole raison d'etre of source text is the information source from which the target text draws from. Functionality and loyalty are the two pillars of Nord's theory. According to Nord, within the framework of "functionality plus loyalty", translators can focus on particular source text aspects and disregard others, if this is required by the target text skopos. However, in such cases they would be obliged, in view of their loyalty towards the source text sender, to specify exactly which source text aspects have been taken into account and which have been neglected. Taking functionality and loyalty as her pillars, Nord proposes the four steps of translation process, which are the skopos; source-text analysis and translation strategy; categorizing translation problems and a functional hierarchy of translation problems. The difficulties encountered in the C-E translation of guides'commentary are presented in chapter four. They are abundant quotations of ancient Chinese texts; times, dynasties and title of emperor's reign; proper names and abundant four-character phrases. The difficulties are analyzed from the perspective of Nord's functionalist theory in chapter five. First the skopos of translation is defined as the representing of the source text's referential and appellative function. Then through the analysis of the extratextual factors of Chinese guides'commentary, it can be noticed that the intention of its producer or sender directs not only to domestic tourists, but also to foreign tourists. Thus, the instrumental translation is chosen. Next, the intratextual factors of these four translation difficulties are analyzed and the translation problems are defined. Through the source-text analysis and its comparison with the skopos, the translation problems are hierarchized, the treating order of them is defined and their solving techniques are proposed. They are paraphrasing, adaptation, omission and addition. In the end, these techniques are further proved by examples.