A Study On The English Translation Of Architecture Names In The Palace Museum

As one of the World Cultural Heritage sites,the Palace Museum embodies the profound culture of our country.Ancient architecture inside the Museum,the carrier of the oriental culture and philosophy,is an essential part of splendid Chinese civilization,and has been attracting people from all over the world.With the increasingly frequent cross-cultural exchanges,the Palace Museum will further play its role of spreading Chinese ancient architectural culture.Therefore,the translation of architecture names in the Palace Museum has also become an intuitive and effective way for cross-cultural communication.Under the Skopos theory,this thesis chooses three main architectural forms(palaces,halls and gates)from the current opening areas at the Palace Museum,The Skopos theory emphasizes the purpose of translations,and requires translators to choose the most appropriate strategies and methods according to the purpose of translation.This theory sets up three basic rules,which are the Skopos rule,the coherence rule and the fidelity rule.The design of Palace Museum is closely related to the Chinese traditional culture.Therefore,the architecture names contain abundant information about the architectural forms,culture connotation and their location.The main purpose of this translation is to convey information in the names and to spread Chinese cultureThe translation strategy of current architecture names is semantic translation plus pinyin.However,the spelling of pinyin is not standard,and the strategy is not conducive to spread the Chinese culture.This thesis suggests that the strategy of pinyin spelling of specific terms + English translating of generic terms,supplemented by the English translation of the full name can meet the requirements of Skopos theory better and achieve the translation purpose.Pinyin spelling of specific terms + English translating of generic terms can maintain the identity of the Chinese architecture names,and avoid the phenomenon of one name with multiple translations,or mistranslation caused by word-for-word translation or misunderstanding.The full name translation can make the target language readers understand the connotation of architecture names.