Error Analysis In English Translation Of Chinese Tourism Texts From The Perspective Of Nord’s Functionalist Theory

Upon the coming of21st century, China is enjoying a booming in its tourism industry. Every year, a large number of foreign visitors come to China to experience the magnificent natural beauty as well as Chinese longstanding culture. In order to impose the international visitors with a better understanding of Chinese culture, both English and Chinese version of tourist attractions have been widely employed. However, in the current English translation of Chinese tourism texts, there are some problems. It is observed that a few of the translations fail to achieve the purpose of promoting Chinese culture as a result of neglecting the knowledge background of the target readers and tourists. Translating Chinese tourism text into English is regarded as a new study topic and many scholars have studied it from various angels. These include the Reception Aesthetics, Relevance Theory, and Intercultural Communication etc. Regarding Reiss’s text typology, Vermeer’s Skopos Theory, as well as Nord’s "Function plus Loyalty" as its focuses, German Functionalism attaches emphasis on the purpose of translation, getting rid of the limits of "equivalence-based" theory. The features and functions of tourist text determine that its translation from Chinese to English should not use word for word translation. Considering the cultural background of the target readers, the translator should target at the target readers and tourists and adopts suitable translation strategies. By this way, the translated version will be fitted to the culture and codes of target language and the communicative effect will be achieved.This thesis introduces the German Functionalism Theory into the study of English translation of tourism texts. According to the research, Chinese tourism text differ from English tourism text in a number of ways, thus certain strategies should be adopted in C-E tourism text translation for the realization of translation function. German Functionalism Theory emphasizes that the translation skopos determines the translation strategies and that the translated version should achieve communicative function in the target language context. Thus this theory can explain the problems in the English translation of Chinese tourism texts and provide the guidance to C-E Tourism Text translation.Tourism texts can be mainly classified into tourism attraction introduction, tourist sight slogan and tourism advertisement. This thesis mainly studies the first category of tourism text, i.e, tourist attraction introduction. The author has made analysis on three errors in the English translation of Chinese tourism text from the following perspectives:linguistic errors, pragmatic errors, and cultural errors. Errors on linguistic level are exemplified by word-for-word translation, spelling mistakes, inappropriate diction and loose structure; errors on pragmatic level can be shown in improper names of tourism attractions and Chinglish; errors on cultural level include mistranslation of culture-bound words and Chinese poems. In light of the three rules of Nord’s Functionalist Theory, which are the rule of intertextual coherence, the rule of intratextual coherence and the rule of skopos, the author proposes, accordingly, the translation strategies of tourism text translation. They are literal translation, transliteration plus explanation, adding, omission, and rewriting.The Chinese culture boasts both broadness and profoundness, so it is no easy job translating the tourism text well. This paper thus attempts to analyze the problems in English translation of Chinese tourism text according to German Functionalism and put forward strategies to it. It is hoped that the research results of this paper will offer some guidance for further study of tourist text translation.