Abstract:According to what the World Tourism Organization predicted, China in the next decade will be one of the world’s largest tourist destinations. By 2020, China will overtake the other countries, to become the world’s largest tourist destination country. For China, it is not only an opportunity but also a challenge. The development of tourism on the economy plays an active part; however, in different degrees poor translation of the text of travel affects the image of Chinese tourist destination. The translation of tourism text is a cultural exchange process, and is also the language of the conversion process, so the translation of English tourism texts plays a decisive role. This thesis attempts to discuss the phenomenon of lexical vacancy caused by culture differences in the English translation of tourism texts. The first part simply introduces the characteristics and influences of the Chinese–English translation of tourism texts, and analysis of the text in the tourism problems in translation, and leads to the influence of lexical vacancy in the tourism translation. The second part, based on the introduction of lexical vacancy, mainly analyzes with examples the causes of lexical vacancy and methods to deal with lexical vacancy. The third part concentrates on the process of tourism translation, and puts forward to ideas that the translator should have the awareness of cultural differences, and summarize four common techniques to copy with lexical vacancy in tourism texts.
Key words: tourism texts; lexical vacancy; culture differences; influence
摘要:根据世界旅游组织预测，中国在未来的十几年中将成为全世界最大的旅游目的地国家之一。到2020年，中国将超过其他国家，成为世界第一大旅游目的地国家。对于我国来说，这既是机遇又是挑战。旅游业的发展对经济起到积极的作用，然而，翻译低劣的旅游文本不同程度地影响了中国旅游大国的形象。旅游文本的翻译是一个文化交流的过程也是语言转换的过程，旅游文本的中英文翻译起到了决定性的作用。本文重点论述旅游文本汉英翻译中的由于文化差异造成的词汇空缺现象，具体从三方面分析：首先，对旅游文本翻译的特点和重要影响作了简单的介绍，并分析在旅游文本翻译中出现的问题，进而引出词汇空缺对旅游文本翻译的影响。然后，在介绍词汇空缺的基础上，结合实例对在旅游文本翻译中造成词汇空缺的原因及其相对应的翻译对策进行详细的分析。最后一部分针对词汇空缺论述在旅游文本翻译过程中，强调了译者要有文化差异意识的敏感度，以及总结了一些常规的翻译技巧。
关键词：旅游文本；词汇空缺；文化差异；影响
With increasing cultural exchanges between the East and the West, more and more people have come to realize that the importance of the tourism industry, especially after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and successful holding the 29th Olympic Games. Then the quality of tourism texts becomes one of the most important factors to influence tourism industry’s long term prospects. Need of the development of tourism industry requires tourism texts not only to be understood by foreign tourists but also promote the development of Chinese and western economic and cultural exchange.
It is known that each country has own cultural traits. And when these cultural features are reflected in applied texts, they may lead to the phenomenon of lexical vacancy. Obviously this phenomenon of lexical vacancy directly influences the quality of tourism texts. In other words, cultural difference and lexical vacancy are inseparable. As we have mentioned above, cultures are separated into material cultures and spiritual cultures, both of them have impact on the lexical vacancy. According to examples and analysis of lexical vacancy in tourism texts, we can conclude that lexical vacancy of languages reflects two very different cultures, and lexical vacancy is the most important part of different cultural exchanges. Successful cultural interchange demands that translation of lexical vacancy is appropriate and best. Therefore, it’s necessary to familiar with cultural origin of lexical vacancy, properly use translational techniques, such as literal translation, semantic translation, liberal translation, annotation and so on.
