A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And American University Introductions On The Internet

The university introduction on the Internet, as an efficient instrument for the public to know the school, has special symbolic meaning and embraces unique information. It is not only regarded as "the window dressing" of the university, but also a guide for the international students to know its education information. In the world of Internet, the university introduction on the Internet plays a very important role in the promotion of international exchange and cooperation in higher education. The university can build up worldwide reputations in the domain of international education through its introduction on the Internet. Therefore, it is necessary and essential for the university to promote its international image and publicize itself to the international community through its introduction on the Internet.With the Skopos theory as the theoretical foundation, this thesis takes a qualitative method and a quantitative method for a study of Chinese and American university introductions on the Internet and then offers principles and strategies for translating Chinese ones into English. With30Chinese university introduction texts on the Internet and30American ones as well, this thesis investigates their distinctive features from the perspective of linguistics and culture so that some principles and strategies have been put forward for translating Chinese university introductions into English. It shows that they differ from each other both linguistically and culturally.Firstly, the linguistic differences are as follow:(1) At the lexical level, the Chinese university introductions tend to employ expressive adjectives and four-character structures, while the American ones to use simple and concise expressions;(2) At the syntactical level, the Chinese introductions contain more sentential topic chains than the American ones, each of which is often composed of more clauses than each English one.(3) At the textual level, the Chinese university introductions are longer than the American ones;(4) At the stylistic level, the Chinese university introductions are more formal than the American ones, whose dictions are conversation-like.Secondly, the cultural differences are as follow:(1) The Chinese university introductions on the Internet tend to highlight more national or provincial honorable titles and awards than the American ones;(2) the Chinese university introductions list more distinguished figures in order to emphasize the leading role of their universities than the American ones;(3) There are more cultural-specific terms in the Chinese university introductions on the Internet than the American ones;(4) the American university introductions on the Internet have more information about the campus budget and finance than the Chinese ones.Based on these differences, this thesis argues that to translate Chinese university introductions into English should follow the principles of being idiomatic, comprehensible and acceptable with some translation strategies such as literal translation with cultural notes, deletion and adaptation.This thesis concludes that the Skopos theory may help translators translate Chinese university introductions into English. According to the theory, the translators will have to adapt the content of the Chinese texts to the English context, bearing in mind the cultural differences between English and Chinese so that the English versions will be improved to play their roles as expected.