The Application of the Functional Equivalence in the Translation of Chinese Tourist Guide

The Application of the Functional Equivalence in the Translationof Chinese Tourist Guide1IntroductionTourism has become a prosperous industry all over the world. Since the early 1980s, with the development of the reform and opening-up policy, also thanks to the rich tourism resources —high mountains, great rivers and mysterious culture, China has attracted a large number of foreign tourists. The growth of tourism requires not only the rich tourism resources but also an appropriate language to publicize it. Thus, the translation of Chinese tourist guide is especially important.The translation of Chinese tourist guide serves as a bridge between China and the rest of the world. Approp riate translation can arouse the tourists’ interest, so it will be helpful for publicizing China. However, in the process of translation, owing to the cultural differences between China and the Western countries, there must be some difficulties in understanding the translation. Accordingly, great importance has been attached to the translation of Chinese tourist guide. Many translation theories have been put into practice. Among these theories, Nida’s functional equivalence is regarded as an effective way to overcome barriers in the mutual-understanding.Eugene A. Nida is a distinguished American translation theorist. His translation theory has tremendous influence on the Western as well as Chinesetranslation studies. His functional equivalence, which is developed from dynamic equivalence, was introduced into China in the 1980s.Nida gave a clear definition of “dynamic equivalence”in the book The Theory and Practice of Translation in 1969. In this book, dynamic equivalence is defined as “in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language” (Toward a Science of Translating 24). In this definition, dynamic equivalence is defined with “receptor’s response” as its nature.In 1986, in his From One Language to Another, he changed the term to “functional equivalence”.But there is not much difference between the two concepts. He adopts the term “functional equivalence” to stress t he concept of function and to avo id misunderstandings of the term “dyna m ic”,which is mistaken by some persons for something in the sense of impact (Language, Culture and Translating 124). Functional equivalence is defined as “The readers of a translated text should be able to comprehend it to the point that they can conceive of how original readers of the text must have understood and appreciated it”(From One Language to Another118). In the definition, the readers’ reception and response is reflected.The thesis is composed of four parts. Part one is the introduction. Part two is literature review, in which previous studies on the translation of Chinese tourist guide is introduced. Part three presents some translation techniques from the view of reader’s recepti on and response. The last part is the conclusion.2 Literature ReviewMuch research in the translation of Chinese tourist guide has been conducted with different approaches, such as cultranslation approach, contrastive text analysis approach and functionalist approach.The researchers approaching the translation of Chinese tourist guide from the perspective of cultranslation mainly include Jia Shunhou and Zhang Ning.Jia Shun hou, in his article “On the Cultural Adjustment of the Translation of the Chinese Tourist Materials”(90-92) argues that in translation, translators should focus their attention on transferring the cultural message, and the translated versions should reflect Chinese culture so as to arouse the potential curiosity of the foreign tourists.The transformation of cultural factors is also mentioned by Zhang Ning, in t he article “Cultural Factors in the Translation of the Tourist Materials”(3-5).He believes that attention should be paid to the cultural message in tourist materials and its differences between cultures from the following six aspects: historic anecdotes, religion, landscape gardening, national characteristics, cooking culture and mode of thinking. He also believes that the translation of such materials is to transfer messages in the source text to the target text, so the features of tourist materials should be taken into consideration, with the cultural message transformation as the key point. Besides, some appropriate techniques, such as amplification, analogy, omission as well as adaptation, are also offered.The cultranslation approach regards the translation of Chinese tourist guideas a process of transferring culture. It aims at clearing off obstacles that may lead to inefficiency in cross-cultural communication.Many scholars have carried out their contrastive studies between Chinese and English tourist guide, including Gao Jinling and Ji Aimei. The differences between China and the West in philosophy, aesthetics and way of thinking have great influence on the language structure and style of writing.Aesthetic differences between Chinese and Westerners manifested in tourist guide is highlighted in Gao Jinling’s article “The Translation of Descriptive Touring Materials in Light of Sino-Western Aesthetic Modes” (100-103). He analyzes aesthetic differences between Chinese and Westerners, which mainly focuses on the following aspects: representation vs. expression; abstract concepts vs. concrete concepts; poetic pictures vs. picturesque poetry; rich in images vs. exact in depiction; time-oriented description vs. space oriented description. Based on the analysis, he puts forward his point of view about translation of Chinese tourist guide, which is to reduce subjective descriptions to objective ones.In “A Study of the English Version of Qilu Tourism Culture from the Perspective of Cultranslation and Contractive Text Analysis”, Ji Aimei focuses her research on the contrastive discourse analysis between the English version of Qilu tourism culture and the English tourism publications so as to see the different features of the two kinds of tourism English. She finds that the two kinds of tourism English are different in impersonality, formality, diction andthe way to introduce historical culture involved in tourism.The contrastive text analysis approach, through comparing the language features and style of writing between English and Chinese tourist guide, they all agree that English tourist guide mainly focus on presenting information on the geographical surroundings of tourist attractions and cultural heritage. While Chinese versions pay more attention to the social status of tourism resources and also give prominence to the scenery and humanistic features of scenic spots.The research on the translation of Chinese tourist guide from the functionalist perspective is mainly based on the skopos theory.On the basis of the three rules within the framework of skopos theory, namely, the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule, Chen Gang (30-35) proposes in his book Tourism Translation and Guide-Interpreting three basic criteria for the translation of tourist materials: a) Faithfulness (The translated version should be faithful to the content of the source text which includes historical stories, geographical descriptions, cultural background, etc.);b) Expressiveness (This refers not only to the intertextual coherence of the target text, but also the adaptation to the features of tourism language); c)Elegance(The translated version should preserve the aesthetic element in tourism language). In his point of view, the major principles guiding the English translation of Chinese tourist materials are: to be tourist-oriented and to aim at promoting Chinese culture.Research from the perspective of functionalism adopts skopos theory toguide the translation of Chinese tourist guide. It can be concluded that the translation of Chinese tourist guide should adapt to the English writing style so as to fulfill the vocative and informative functions.As for those studies on the translation of Chinese tourist guide, there are systematic theoretical instructions. However, the target-language reader’s response is not sufficiently emphasized. There is still a long way to establish a complete and satisfactory theoretical framework in this newly developed field. The author of the thesis holds that Nida’s functional equivalence works in guiding the translation of Chinese tourist guide, because Nida’s concept of translating shifts from “the form of message” to “the response to the receptor”(Translating Meaning1), thus avoiding a rigid linguistic translation from the source text to the target text.3 The Application of the Functional Equivalence in the Translation of Chinese Tourist GuideThe translation of Chinese tourist guide plays an important role in pub licizing and promoting Chinese tourism, so it is necessary to adopt different translation techniques to help transferring information to the tourists. In this part, the author analyzes the application of the functional equivalence in the translation of Chinese tourist guide. In order to present information to the target-language readers as much as possible, priority should be given to the reception and response of the target-language readers.3.1 The Importance of the Receptor“Receptor” is the addressee o f the translations who actually reads or listens to the target text after it is produced. Nida attaches great importance to the role of receptor and the relationship between receptor and message by saying, “It is essential that functional equivalence be stated primarily in terms of a comparison of the way in which the original receptors understood and appreciated the text and the way in which receptors of translated text understand and appreciate the translated text.” (Language, Culture and Translating116). “In producing a functional equivalent translation one must be constantly aware of the capacity and motivation of receptors” (Jin Di & Nida 89). In other words, how to translate a tourist guide first depends on whether the target receptors can understand it or not. The receptors of the tourist guide have direct connection with the effect of dissemination of Chinese tourism. If the readers can not understand the translated tourist guide properly, the translation is surely a failure. Therefore, the primary requirement for translation is that the translated version should be understood or accepted by the receptors, for translation is meaningless if it is treated in isolation from the decoding ability of its target receptors (Han Xu 32).It is of great importance to estimate the extent to which receptors correctly understand and appreciate the translated text; what’s more, according to Nida, ideal situation is that the target receptor’s response to the target text should be essentially the same to the original receptors’ response to the original text. Tosome extent, receptors of the tourist guide can be regarded as communicators. They convey what they see and feel to other tourists who have never been to China yet. In fact, they are a bridge between China and the Western countries. Thus the receptor of the translation is of great importance.3.2 Techniques Used in the Translation of Chinese Tourist GuideBased on the essence of the functional equivalence, some translation techniques are used to guide the translation of Chinese tourist. By using these techniques, the translation is adjusted from different perspectives to achieve a roughly equivalent response between the target language readers and the source languages readers.3.2.1 ConversionConversion is an approach to achieve the functional equivalence and increase readability of the translation in order to help the target-language readers comprehend the source text. Considering the target-language reader’s recepti on and response, the translator can convert affirmative sentence into negative sentence or vice versa, or conversion between simple sentence and compound sentence or passive voice and active voice. The following examples will illustrate these methods respectively. Firstly, conversion occurs between the affirmative sentence and the negative sentence.(1)西湖的景色真是美不胜收。