C-E Translation Of Tourism Texts From The Perspective Of Functionalist Theory

Since China conducted reform and opening-up policy twenty years ago, tourism hasdeveloped so rapidly and tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world come toChina to have an experience of the unique Chinese culture and its customs. At the sametime, more and more Chinese are eager to go abroad to touch the outside world. Andconsequently, tourism becomes the best way of cross-cultural communication betweenChina and world.With the development of tourism, the translation of tourism texts has already becomean essential part for tourists who go abroad for a visit. Chen gang, a celebrated Chineseprofessor who focuses his research on the translation of tourism texts and interculturalcommunication, once defined tourism texts translation in his monograph tourismtranslation and tourist guide like this:“Tourism translation is made for tourism activities,tourism field and tourism industry, so it belongs to professional translation”.(Chengang.1997:56) Generally speaking, tourism translation is an interpersonal activitywhich involves language, society, and psychology. Tourism texts belong to applied texts. Ithas two major functions: one is information transmission, and the other is emotion appealing, so its language expression must be accurate, popular, clear, attractive andunderstandable for readers who have different educational backgrounds.Compared with that in foreign countries, the development of tourism translation inChina started late. However, its development speed has passed that in most countries. Inrecent years, tourism translation in China has got great achievement for the contributionmade by scholars and relative staffs. However, problems still exist. For example, there is nosystematic theory as a guide for tourism translation in China. Besides, some research onlyfocus on the translation of tourism texts or tourist guider’s oral language, but few of themserve for the translation of acoustic information and the translation of tourism website;most of the research focuses on international tourists, and only a few serve for Chinesetourists who go abroad for a visit, so this thesis is designed to find solutions to thoseproblems and offer suggestions for the further study of tourism translation in China.This thesis, based on the German Functionalist theory, will discuss how to choosesuitable translation strategies in the context of TL so as to meet the aesthetic requirement oftarget language readers and realize the communicative function of the version. It is hopedthat this thesis can provide a new thought for those who are concerned with theoreticalstudy and practical work of tourism translation in China.Translation, as a subjective activity, involves many aspects, so any kind of pure theorycan’t explain the translation phenomena very well. In recent years, translators have alreadyturned their research focus from pure linguistic function study to the significance of appliedtranslation. The translation theory focusing on applied translation abroad is various, such asPeter Newmark’s “Semantic Translation” and “Communicative Translation”, Nida’s“Principle of Functional Equivalence” and German Functionalist Theory (Zhang Meifang,2005:12). The scholars still have great dispute over which translation theory is moreappropriate for applied translation. With the help of Karl Buhler’s view of linguisticfunction, German functionalist theory was born in1970s and has been developed by severaltheorists. Now it has been considered as one of the most suitable theories for appliedtranslation. According to Skopostheorie, translation is an activity with certain purposes, inwhich a translator must decide the translation strategies mainly according to the translationpurpose and needs of target readers. In this thesis, the author defines translation criterion oftourism text by Reiss’s theory of texts typology at first, that is to say,“The translation of tourism texts should take the translation purpose as its highest criterion and try tocoordinate the relation between the original text and the version so as to meet the needs oftarget readers”. After that, this thesis carries out a detailed analysis on the factors whichhave great influence on the selection of translation strategies. These factors include: theTranslator’s Purpose, Text Type, Linguistic Structure, Cultural Traditions, and TargetReaders.After the research, a conclusion has been made like this: functionalist theory entitlestranslators more right to choose suitable translation strategies such as omission, adaptation,paraphrase, amplification, rewriting so as to satisfy the needs of TL reader as much as hecan, so there is no doubt that functionalist theory is one of the most appropriate andreasonable translation theories for applied translation.