The Translation Project Report On The Information Loss Found In Translating Of Scenic Spots In The Travel On The Grand Canal In Hangzhou

In translating tourism texts into English, the proper nouns’ translation in scenic spots is frequently confronted with. Difficulties in translating The Travel on the Grand Canal in Hangzhou into English are the information integrity of proper nouns such as the architecture’s title, the title of an emperor’s reign, the dish name, the stage name and the shop’s name. Differing from the concise and direct English expression, the Chinese character embraces abundant meanings. The primary target of translating proper nouns is to present the Chinese connotation in English in a succinct and understandable way to arouse target readers’ interests. The project is centered on the major difficulty on minimizing the information loss of architectures and shops’ names from Chinese to English.In general, the translation method of proper nouns is "the proper noun’s transliteration with the general term’s literal translation", of which the general term is known to the English-speaking country, while the transliteration fails to represent the Chinese information and characteristic. Consequently, other methods should be adopted to reveal proper nouns’ cultural information and even their special meaning. According to the translation principle of the social semiotics which the meaning has been stressed through translating, to minimize the information loss of architectures’ names, three methods are raised, the specific term plus general term with the annotation, the proper noun’s literal translation with the annotation, and the specific term’s free translation with the general term. As for the shops’names, methods are the proper noun’s free translation with the annotation, the proper noun’s literal translation with the general term and the proper noun’s transliteration with the general term.