A Report On Chinese-English Translation Of Tourism Texts From The Perspective Of Variational Translation Theory

Since the reform and opening up,China’s tourism industry has developed rapidly,with the volume of inbound and outbound tourism increasing year by year,and China has now become the top tourist destination.In contrast,the translations of domestic scenic spots are often full of errors,which is not conducive to the promotion of domestic tourism to the outside world.This report gives an account of the author’s application of principles and techniques of English translation for tourism texts.The report is based on a task of Chinese-English translation for a tourism promotion project,which was undertaken by the Jinan International Exchange Service Centre(JIESC)for the internationalization of tourism service for Lixia District,Jinan City.Based on the characteristics of the source texts and the problems encountered in the translation process,the translator took variational translation theory proposed by Professor Huang Zhonglian as guidance,to achieve better effects of the translations.Typical examples are selected for illustration and analysis in the report to show the applicability of variational translation theory to tourism texts.The report discusses major adaptation techniques—adding,deleting,editing,narrating,condensing,integrating,and altering—to reproduce the central contents or tenet of the source texts.The report concludes that rather than verbally follow the source texts in tourism translation,the translator has a greater degree of freedom to use adaptation techniques with the source texts according to the special needs of target language readers for tourism promotion purposes.