A Study On C-E Translation Strategies In City Publicity Materials From The Theoretical Perspective Of Text Function

Publicity, which refers to the spread and promotion of messages concerned aboutChinese issues to other countries by means of mass media, is one of the crucial means tolet the world know more of China and to let China be more globalized. With theeffective implementation of China’s reform and open-up policies as well as its rapiddevelopment of economy, translation work for publicity purpose is becomingincreasingly important. Such being the case, the translation of textual publicity materialsis viewed as an extremely important aspect, for its quality has a direct influence onChina’s cultural exchange with foreign countries. Nevertheless, there’s much to bedesired in terms of its research scope when all its guiding principles, which aregenerally acknowledged as neither quite systematic nor deep-going, being taken intoaccount.This paper analyzes the text functions of publicity materials, and discusses thetranslation strategies of city publicity materials from the theoretical view of textfunction combined with the features of this type. Text function is recognized as one ofmajor theoretic concepts of the Functional School of translation. From the perspectiveof linguistic function, those who actually can closely associate translation activities withtext function and can clearly expound on the relations between textual function typesand translation strategies mainly include Katherina Reiss, Christiane Nord (both fromGerman) and Peter Newmark (from Britain). In accordance with the Function Theory,Reiss has come up with her Text Typology and has it connected with translation. In herview, her theory may help translators determine an appropriate equivalence degreerequired in a translation task. She then classified the texts into three types, namely,informative, expressive, and operative. And she finally concluded the features and theirrelations with the other translation methods as well. Deeply influenced by her teacherReiss’ Text Typology, Christiane Nord divides the text into four according to languagefunction, which are―referential function‖,―expressive function‖,―appellative function‖, and―phatic function‖. What Nord emphasizes is―translation-oriented text analysis‖which means that once the translator knows the source text’s function, he/she willcompare it with what the initiator requires to be, identify or exclude the uselesselements that can be dealt with in the process of translation. The famous Britishtranslator Peter Newmark, who is considered as a theorist emphasizes practice, makesuse of the Language Function Theory revised by R. Jacobson, that is, three functions oflanguage: expressive function, informative function, and vocative function and putsforward correspondent translation strategies according to the functions, and divides thetranslation into semantic translation and communicative translation. The former refersto that the text is loyal to the author and expresses the author’s original meaning, and thelatter means the text is loyal to readers and acceptable for them. Besides, Newmarkpoints out that most texts have all of the three functions at the same time, with moreemphasis on one of them.This paper aims at the translation of city publicity materials in China, and passagesare mainly selected from the journal China Today and the book Historical Cities inChina. The content is about such aspects as geography, history, economy, and culture ofcities in China. First, the text functions of city publicity materials are analyzed and theconclusion is that this type has three text functions, namely, informative function,expressive function, and vocative function, among which the informative is the primaryone. Accordingly, the key standard in the translation process is to make the informationaccepted by the target readers clearly and comfortably, without any obstacles ormisunderstandings. The analyses about the selected passages are mainly from the levelof words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs, including the translation of proper names,like names of places, historical persons, local properties, the translation of Chinesefour-character set phrases, the translation of rhetorical expressions, and the translationof segments, adjusting the construction, addition and deletion.The author of this treatise deems that her research into the subject is neither acomplete nor an in-depth one chiefly due to her inadequate accumulation of knowledgeand her limited ability to do academic research. By giving a preliminary study of it fromthe perspective of textual function, she earnestly hopes that, with more and more in-China translators and scholars being involved in it, a more systematic and anall-round set of corresponding translation theories will be utilized to guide ourtranslation practice, to enable us to do a better job in disseminating China to the outsideworld, and eventually, to fulfill the purpose of strengthening China’s cultural exchangewith foeign countries.