功能翻译理论视角下云南旅游文本英译的平行文本比较研究

发布时间：2017-08-03 09:55

CHAPTER ONE   INTRODUCTION  

1.1 Rationale and Significance of the Study 
World Tourism Organization defines “tourism” as follows: “tourism comprises  the  activities  of  persons  traveling  to  and  staying  in  place outside  their  usual  environment  for  not  more  than  one  consecutive  year for  leisure,  business  and  other  purposes  not  related  to  the  exercise  of  an activity  remunerated  from  within  the  place  visited”2.  It  can  be  seen  that tourism is an activity that gives people the chance to experience different life  styles  in  different  places.  As  the  potential  travelers  may  have  little knowledge of the destinations, they usually search on the internet to learn more  before  embarking  on  the  journey.  Therefore,  tourist  text,  the  text introducing a particular scenic spot, plays an essential role.  With  the  dramatic  development  of  China’s  tourism  industry,  the study on tourism text translation has been very popular and important in China.  Since  the  English  translations  serve  as  the  national  image  and publicize  our  tourism  resources  to  the  outside  world,  the  quality  of tourism text translation is of great research value. In addition, despite the boom  of  Yunnan  tourism,  a  considerable  amount  of  the  existing translations or English versions of scenic spots introductions are far from satisfactory. To improve English translation of tourism texts and make it more appealing to the foreign tourists, the author of this thesis intends to carry out a parallel text comparative study of Yunnan tourism texts under the guidance of functionalist translation theory.  
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1.2 Research Questions 
This  current  comparative  study  on  Chinese  and  English  versions  of Yunnan  tourism  text  intends  to  explore  the  following  three  specific questions: (1) What are the features of the Chinese tourism texts of Yunnan and the English versions written by foreign professionals in terms of structure, language and function? (2) What  are  the  linguistic,  structural  and  functional  problems existing in the English translation of Yunnan tourism texts? And how can parallel text comparison help to address these problems? (3) What are the functionalist translation strategies for improving the poorly translated tourism texts? 
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW  

2.1 Previous Studies on Tourism Text Translation 
As it is of great practical value, a considerable amount of researches have  been  made  on  tourism  text  translation  from  various  approaches, such  as  contrastive  text  analysis,  cross-cultural  approach,  cognitive psychology approach, relevance-theoretical approach, empirical approach, theme-highlighting  approach,  functionalist  approach,  and  also  parallel text  approach.  Before  conducting  the  current  study,  it  is  better  to  review these enlightening researches approaches one by one as followed.Scholars like Jia Wenbo, Gao Jinling, Ji Aimei studied tourism text translation through a contrastive text analysis approach. Jia Wenbo (2003) compared  English  and  Chinese  tourism  materials  from  the  aspects  of writing styles and rhetorical conventions and came to the conclusion that being  aware  of  the  aesthetic  differences  between  the  source  text  reader and the target text reader is crucial for translators. Gao Jinling (2003) also highlighted  the  aesthetic  differences  between  the  Chinese  and  the Westerners  in  tourism  text,  holding  that  the  C-E  translation  of  tourism text  boils  down  to  reducing  subjective  descriptions  to  objective  ones.  Ji Aimei  (2002)  conducted  a  contrastive  analysis  of  the  English  translation of Qilu tourism culture and English tourism publications in order to find out their different characteristics and found out that the difference lies in impersonality, formality, diction and way of introducing historical culture in tourism text. Being  aware  of  the  mismatches  of  genre  conventions  between English  and  Chinese  tourism  texts,  translators  can  make  necessary adjustments and produce the target text which is tailored to the target text readers’ cognitive ability and aesthetic expectations. 
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2.2 Summary
Each  of  these  approaches  to  the  C-E  translation  of  tourism  text  has its  pros  and  cons.  The  cross-cultural  approach  has  liberated  the  tourism text translation from the linguistic level, delving into the cultural factors. Contrastive  text  analysis  approach, cognitive  psychology  approach  and functionalist  approach  are  all  oriented  towards  the  target  text  reader  to some  extent  by  taking  into  consideration  of  their  linguistic  context, cognitive  factors  and  target  text  readers’  responses.  In  this  sense,  they have  all  diverted  from  the  “faithful  to  the  original”  principle,  which hardly  works  in  the  C-E  translation  of  tourism  text  anyway  due  to  the complicated cultural factors. In addition, they all agree that the target text readers’ response justifies the translator’s adjustment. Thus, however, the translator’s  subjectivity  plays  a  great  role.  The  empirical  approach  picks out  the  frequently  made  mistakes  and  provides  practical  strategies  in tourism  text  translation  based  on  the  translators’  hands-on  experience. The  functionalists  hold  that  the  purpose  of  tourism  text  translation  is  to persuade more tourists actually make a visit to the tourist destination, and thus  the  purpose  of  translation  comes  first.  The  parallel  text  approach serves  as  a  tool  to  improve  Chinese  tourism  text  translation  by  referring its English counterparts.   
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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............. 15 
3.1 Introduction to Tourism Text .......... 15 
3.1.1 Definition of Tourism Text ............ 15 
3.1.2 Typology of Tourism Text ............. 15 
3.2 Basic Concepts of Functionalist Translation Theory ............. 17
3.3 Nord’s Source-text Analysis ........... 19 
3.4 Parallel Text Comparison ..... 21 
3.5 A Top-down Functionalist Translation Procedure ........ 22
CHAPTER  FOUR  FUNCTIONALIST  TRANSLATION-ORIENTED  TEXT ANALYSIS ........ 25 
4.1 Extratextual Factors of Yunnan Tourism Parallel Texts ......... 25
4.2 Intratextual Factors of Yunnan Tourism Parallel Texts .......... 29
CHAPTER  FIVE  TRANSLATION  EVALUATION  AND  PROBLEM EXPLORING ....... 65 
5.1 Evaluation Standard of Tourism Text Translation ........ 65 
5.2 Sample Evaluation and Improvement ...... 66 
5.3 Problems of Yunnan Tourism Text Translation and Their ...... 78 

CHAPTER FIVE TRANSLATION EVALUATION AND PROBLEM EXPLORING  

5.1 Evaluation Standard of Tourism Text Translation   

The preceding chapter has given a detailed study of the extratextual and  intratextual  factors  in  the  Chinese  tourism  texts  of  Yunnan  and  the English  tourism  texts  of  Yunnan  written  by  foreign  professionals.  It  is obvious that the Chinese tourism texts of Yunnan differ greatly from the English ones written by foreign professionals. In functionalist translation, Nord  proposes  a  top-down  approach  to  cope  with  the  text  translation.  In the framework of this model, the translation starts on the pragmatic level by  analyzing  the  target  text  skopos,  that  is,  by  deciding  on  the  intended function  of  the  translation.  The  second  step  is  the  analysis  of  the  source text.  There  are  elements  that  will  have  to  be  kept  and  ones  that  should adapt  to  the  target  readers’  response  and  expectations.  Referring  to  the parallel  text  will  help  figure  out  the  two  types  of  elements  and  structure the target text. Therefore, in this part, the author will examine if the target text  adapts  to  the  target  readers’  cultural  expectations,  thinking  patterns and  language  norms,  if  the  target  text  conveys  the  key  information  and fulfills the translation purpose.  

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CONCLUSION 

In  view  of  the  importance  of  tourism  text  translation  in  promoting Yunnan  tourism,  this  thesis  makes  an  attempt  to  conduct  a  parallel  text comparative  study  on  the  English  translation  of  Yunnan  tourism  text  by applying functional translation theory to illustrate the translation process. As a kind of popular literature serving ordinary tourists, tourism text has two  functions:  to  convey  information  and  to  inspire  action.  As  tourism text  is  a  mixture  of  informative,  expressive  and  vocative  information, conveying  information  is  the  prerequisite  and  persuading  the  readers  to travel is the purpose.  In the light of Reiss’s text typology and the functionalist translation theory, the translators can have a clear idea of the text type of what they are translating and accordingly what translation brief they should have in mind, what translation strategies to adopt, and what effect they to produce in  the  target  text,  and  referring  to  the  parallel  text  can  help  filter  the source text information and structure the target text. Therefore, this thesis believes that functionalist translation theory is the most sensible guide to successful tourism text translation and parallel text comparison is the tool to  help  achieve  functional  equivalence  and  thus  reach  the  purpose  of tourism text translation. 
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Reference documents (omitted) 

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