| In recent years, China’s inbound tourism has been increasing year by year thanks to the promotion of China’s international image, the open tourism policy and the improvement of tourism facilities. Countless foreign tourists are attracted by China’s various tourism resources, extensive and profound culture and dazzling tourist commodities. As a well-known tourism city, Nanjing, the capital of six ancient dynasties, possesses abundant historical sites and wonderful scenery. The second Youth Olympic Games in 2014 will definitely arouse world wide attention and draw more international tourists. The C-E translation of tourist texts, such as the bilingual boards set up in the scenic spots to introduce the information of the ancient sites, is an important means for the tourists to know about the origin and history of the attractions which is of great value to study and enhance the improvement of the tourism translation.This thesis studies the tourism translation texts of the introduction boards in the scenic spots in enlightenment of functionalist theory, providing some suggestions for amendments and improvement advises for further study. A brief review of studies on tourism, tourism translation and functionalist theory has also been conducted in the thesis.The author makes researches of tourism translation text printed or engraved on the introduction boards in scenic spots of Nanjing under the framework of German functionalists’ theories. Reiss, Vermeer, Mantarri and Nord are the typical representatives of the German functionalist scholars. Putting forward text typology, Reiss considers tourist text possess informative and operative functions. Vermeer puts forward Skopos theory, which deems that the readers’ expectation and response play an important role in estimating the function of the target text. Translators can choose flexible strategies and methods accordingly with much more freedom. According to Mantarri’s theory of translation action, translation is "a complex action to transfer messages across culture and language barriers". So in the translation process, the translator should bear in mind that the sense of cross-culture communication to achieve the expected purpose. According to Nord, who comes up with function plus loyalty, translation should be reader-oriented. Tourism translation should focus on the needs and expectations of the tourists, thus to achieve the expected functions of the translation.By case study of tourism translation texts on instruction boards in scenic spots in Nanjing, this thesis analyzes the traditional translation strategies that frequently used in tourism translation. An empirical analysis has been done to analyze the problems existing in the current translation from the perspectives of diction and collocation, sentences, grammar and pragmatic uses. Based on the analysis of the current problems in tourism translation in Nanjing tourist attractions, the author presents the possible procedures and methods to translate the tourist texts under the guidance of functionalist translation theory. |
