A Report On The E-C Translation Of Lonely Planet Thailand (Excerpts): Difficulties And Methods In Translating Proper Names In Tourism Texts

The translation report presents a summary of the E-C (English to Chinese) project translation of Upper South Gulf, excerpts from Lonely Planet Thailand,2007. The project is used for personal translation simulation, through which the author hopes to enhance translation ability and summarize related translation methods so as to provide reference for other translators in translating texts of the similar type.Lonely Planet Thailand is one of the guidebooks collected in Lonely Planet travel guides series and belongs to tourism text. In terms of content, the excerpts give a detailed introduction to scenic spots, transportation, accommodation, catering, entertainment, custom in Thailand’s Upper South Gulf. Thus, plenty of proper names concerning history, geography and culture are involved, some of which even originate from languages of non-English origin, such as Thai, French and German. Given the above features, difficulty in the project centers on translation of proper names including hotel names of non-English origin, geographic terms and culture-specific items. Specifically, the difficulty is embodied in translating hotel names of non-English origin, translating geographic terms and delivering background information in culture-specific items.The translation practice was guided by the theory of Reception Aesthetics which was first proposed by Hans Jauss in 1967 and developed in 1982. Guided by the idea of the theory-consideration for target readership, the author centered on and gave sufficient consideration to the target-text readers in translation by adopting homophonic transliteration in translating hotel names, established popular translated names and standard pronunciation of Chinese characters in geographic terms and annotation in cultural-specific items respectively. By adopting these methods, the author, to some extent, has resolved the difficulty in translating proper names by taking target readership into consideration in terms of reading habit, cultural vacancy and aesthetic taste.