| With the acceleration of globalization,tourism industry plays a prominent part in the national economy.In order to attract more tourists from all over the world,tourism texts ought to play the role of information transmission.Belonging to the category of public signs,museum commentary has the function of information transmission as well as culture communication,the quantity and quality of which directly affect the development of tourism and the spread of the national culture.Hence,tourism translation should be given more attention to.Playing a great role in translation practice,functional context theory began to form in 1930 s.Functional context is function-oriented for general,which provides a framework for translation practice,as well as the guidance for the translation on cultural factors in intercultural communication.Tourism text is a kind of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication activity.Although tourism text itself is a little complicated to be classified,based on the current research findings,we believe that the translation of museum commentary can be divided into three categories from the context perspective: linguistic-oriented,situational-oriented and cultural-oriented context text.As a kind of practical translation,the translation of museum commentary has its own purpose that is to maximize the realization of the dissemination function of the text,to be keenly concerned to the addressee,to focus on the contextual meaning and to help the target readers eliminate the difficulties and obstacles in reading and communications.German linguist Bussmann(2000)pointed out that “Context refers to all the factors in the communicative situation,no matter it is verbal or non-verbal.” The museum commentary is to show the cultural heritage of the past,the spiritual pursuit of the present,as well as the positive outlook for the future to overseas tourists,by means of translation,introduction,signs and other forms.It plays a crucial role in spreading Chinese culture and enhancing the culture exchanges.This thesis takes museum commentary of tourism texts as a case.With the framework of functional context theory,it observes the features and functions of tourism texts and describes the interactive relation between functional context and text translation.It classifies the museum commentary with the application of function context theory and proposes some strategies for museum commentary text translation.The qualitative method and textual analysis are employed in the thesis.The thesis is composed of the following six parts.Chapter 1 introduces the background,questions,methodology and data collection of the research as well as the significance and general organization of the thesis.Chapter 2 discusses the general features and functions of tourism texts and then it reviews the previous research on tourism texts.Chapter 3 reviews the theoretical framework and discusses the relation between functional context and translation.Chapter 4 concerns itself with categorization of contextual types.In this chapter,museum commentary texts are analyzed in terms of the application of functional context to the translation of museum commentary texts.Chapter 5 presents the author's main findings,i.e.some translation strategies for museum commentary texts.Literal translation can be achieved by simplification and generalization,adaptation by persuasive adaptation and conversion of function and free translation by information restructuring and culture filtering.Chapter 6 concludes the main findings and limitations on the translation of tourism texts in this thesis.The research shows that functional context theory can provide guidance for Chinese-English translation of tourism texts.There are internal relations between the features of tourism texts,context and translation.The aspects that determine the choice and use of translation strategies include not only the features and function of the text but also the cognition and the expectation of the target readers. |
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