On Image Construction In Translating Tourism Texts From Perspective Of Imagology

With the development of China’s tourism industry,tourism translation texts have become an important window for the world to understand China and played a very important role in the promotion of China’s cultural image.Tourism translation is not only the "self-construction" of China’s cultural image,but also one of the important ways to spread China’s cultural image to the world.This thesis discusses the image constructed in the translation of tourism texts from the perspective of imagology.The study examines China’s cultural image constructed in《走遍中国——优秀导游词精选(综合篇)》and its English translation Touring China Selected Tour Commentaries(1st ed.),exploring how the images created in the Chinese and English tourism texts differ,what are the reasons,and what translation strategies,methods and techniques are used to achieve such effect.The thesis starts with the three dimensions of image construction(context,text and intertext)proposed by Leerssen to analyze the images in tourism texts.The contextual level mainly includes the historical,political and social contexts.It is the external environment in which the text is produced and can provide a basis for selection of text and translation strategy.The textual level focuses on the images within the text,mainly from the three levels of "lexical level,hierarchical relationships and storyline" proposed by Pageaux,and analyzes the process of image construction.At the intertextual level,examples of tourism text translation are analyzed from three aspects:referential intertextuality,generic intertextuality and functional intertextuality,reflecting the mutual reference and absorption among texts..Through the above three levels of analysis,the role of tourism translation texts in the construction of "self-image" can be found.At the context level,with reform and opening up,as well as the tourism industry development and policy support,China has to take the initiative to go to the world and show its image through translation works,and the English translation of Touring China Selected Tour Commentaries(1st ed.)was born under the sponsorship of the National Tourism Administration.At the textual level,the translator adopts addition,omission and rewriting to enhance or weaken images in the source text,so as to construct images:the translator strengthens the calligraphic value of the Xi’an Museum of Stele Forest by adding positive descriptive words;the translator weakens the contrast between "barbarism and indoctrination" in the original text by rewriting the"cruelty" of pottery making techniques;the translation moderates the image of Qinshihuang’s brutality by omitting the description of his atrocities and retaining the description of his achievements in the text.At the level of intertextuality,considering the readers’receptiveness,reference and absorption among texts play an important role in constructing and disseminating images.This thesis explores the application of imagology in tourism translation,which expands the field of imagology research to a certain extent and presents a fresh viewpoint on tourism translation research,with certain inspiration for subsequent translation research and practice.