Translation Of Tourism Materials Into English Under The Guidance Of Norm Theory: Problems And Strategies

Against the backdrop of the economic globalization, China with its ancient advanced culture is attracting more and more foreign tourists. The translation of tourism materials into English plays an essential role in promoting the development of China’s tourism industry. However, there are so many problems in tourism materials translation that the tourism publicity has been negatively influenced. Thus it is of practical value to conduct a research into the translation of tourism materials into English.Currently, the theories which can be used to guide the translation of tourism materials are generally the skopos theory, the German functionalist translation theory and the functional equivalence theory etc. The norm theory, presented and developed by Toury and other scholars, can be used in translating researches from a brand new perspective, making the transition from context to culture and society in translating researches. It provides more and more systematic methods for solving problems in the process of translation.The research is based on the translation of the tourism materials of the Baotu Spring Park in Jinan. First of all, it presents current researches on the translation of tourism materials and points out the deficiencies in translation. Then it analyses the features of English and Chinese tourism materials making clear the fundamental questions on translating tourism materials. Under the guidance of norm theory—— Initial norms and operational norms, this thesis maps out the strategy that the target version must be compatible to the target norm in order to achieve the best result. This strategy, which can be implemented on four levels: rhetoric, cultural words, idioms and sentences, and text coherence, is expounded in tackling problems of translating tourism materials by way of observation and comparison.