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摘 要:博物館展览文案的翻译质量在宣传推广中华文明和自然遗产方面起着重要作用,因此双语文案的编写工作具有重大意义。总结了的特点:信息量大、解说性强、文字优美,并且与文物紧密契合、蕴含丰富的内涵。从文本类型上看,博物馆展览文案属于信息型文本。以广东省博物馆为例,应用纽马克的翻译理论指导博物馆展览文案的翻译实践,从用词、造句、文化元素等方面进行阐述。同时,运用交际翻译的策略,对涉及的翻译问题及技巧进行深入探讨。
关键词:博物馆展览文案 纽马克理论 交际翻译
Abstract Translation of the museum’s publicity materials plays a crucial role in introducing the Chinese culture and natural heritages to foreign visitors. This article discussed about the features of the museum’s publicity materials, then it summarized the informative, expositive, rhetoric, visible and cultural features. Similarly, the translation should also have such characteristics. According to Newmark’s text typology, the museum’s publicity materials belong to the category of informative text. The author studied several examples from the publicity materials of Guangdong Museum. All the examples are analyzed either from the lexical, syntactic or cultural perspective. Furthermore, the article discusses specific problems and techniques used in the translation in order to evaluate and improve the target texts with communicative translation.
Keywords the museum’s publicity materials, Newmark’s theory, communicative translation
0 Introduction
A museum is responsible for the acquisition, preservation, display and research of the collected natural and cultural relics. It is a non-profit organization, which serves the purpose of educationand entertainment. Since 2008, most Chinese museums have been open to the public and offered free admission inciting an increased number of visitors to museums. The museum has become an important window to public service, and an important platform for the cultural exchange between domestic and foreign cultures. Translation of the museum’s publicity materials plays a crucial role in introducing Chinese culture and natural resources to foreign visitors, who have great interest in collections. Therefore, the effective translation of the museum’s publicity materials is of great significance. Unfortunately, as the museum industry in China started later than it did in most western countries, the study on translation of the museum’s publicity materials has been neglected for a long time. Therefore, the need for us to research on translation of the museum’s publicity materials is imminent.
This article mainly applies Newmark’s text type classification and communicative translation. Peter Newmark is a famous scholar in the field of translation studies with experienced translation techniques. His major contribution is the distinction between communicative translation and semantic translation, which is relevant to text type classification. 1 Literature review
Translation of the museum’s publicity materials is not a novel idea, but as mentioned above communicative translation is seldom used as material for research. In general, translation of the museum’s publicity materials can be divided into two parts. One is the collection translation, which mainly consists of the interpretive texts of the collections, the titles of the collections, and exhibition atlas. The other part is the exhibition content not included in the collection translation. The content here is essentially only the introduction and explanation of the history and development of the exhibition.
Mu[1] is the first one to publish an article about collections in 1991. He discussed the faithfulness and smoothness of the collection translation, and mentioned word choices.Li[2] published the second paper concerning the titles of the collections, and revealed its cultural implication at the surface, middle and deep levels. In the following years, Wang and Yang[3]published the first book on the names of collected items, and this book has become important and popular among translators for museums domestic. The book has a Chinese-English glossary of collections and functions as a dictionary, despite some inaccuracy. Huang[4] applied cognitive theory to the collection translation of antique names and pointed out that the features of antique names express the basic traits of human cognition. Li[5] wrote her thesis using the theories of domestication and foreignization in the collection translation. Her study analyzed the translations based on underlying factors that can determine the translator strategies. Ding[6-7] wrote her thesis and article about Newmark’s theory related with museum. These researcheshave discussed the collections from translation strategies of domestication and foreignization, translation criteria of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" and translation principles of smoothness and faithfulness. However, these aspects are too general to follow during the translation practice. Similarly, the strategies used in museum translation are always including domestication, foreignization, relevance theory, and intercultural communication.
In China, the researches on translation of the museum’s publicity materials started from 1990s. In the early 20th century, from 2001 to 2007, the articles in this area were limited to discussing the faithfulness and smoothness of the translated materials; after 2007, some scholars began to approach the topic from the angles of domestication and foreignization. At the same time some scholars introduced Skopos theory into the research. By doing extensive reviews, the author discovered that no scholar wrote a thesis or a dissertation on this topic, to say nothing of any translation strategies in this field. Yet no systematic research has been done on the museum’s publicity materials from the perspective of communicative translation.The translation research on collections will attract more attention than on exhibitions. The researchers in this area are mainly divided into two categories, one group belongs to the theoretical linguists, and the other relies on their own working experience. Looking at geographical position, the researches focused more on places that have rich culture heritage resources and cities involved in foreign trade, such as Beijing, Shanxi, Henan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Zhejiang. From the previous review, the author finds that there are no dissertations on museum translation. Though translation strategies are used and have been discussed in this field, no systematic research has been done on the museum’s publicity materials from the perspective of communicative translation. The majority of past researches focus on translation of the names of collected items and famous museums. Here, the author will attempt to systematically research the museum’s publicity materials from the perspective of communicative translation.
2 Theoretical framework
2.1 The priorities for text analysis
Many theorists have divided the texts according to subject-matter (literature, institutions, technology, etc.), but it is perhaps more reasonable to begin with the famous German scholar Karl ’s statement[8] on the functions of language. Karl
关键词:博物馆展览文案 纽马克理论 交际翻译
Abstract Translation of the museum’s publicity materials plays a crucial role in introducing the Chinese culture and natural heritages to foreign visitors. This article discussed about the features of the museum’s publicity materials, then it summarized the informative, expositive, rhetoric, visible and cultural features. Similarly, the translation should also have such characteristics. According to Newmark’s text typology, the museum’s publicity materials belong to the category of informative text. The author studied several examples from the publicity materials of Guangdong Museum. All the examples are analyzed either from the lexical, syntactic or cultural perspective. Furthermore, the article discusses specific problems and techniques used in the translation in order to evaluate and improve the target texts with communicative translation.
Keywords the museum’s publicity materials, Newmark’s theory, communicative translation
0 Introduction
A museum is responsible for the acquisition, preservation, display and research of the collected natural and cultural relics. It is a non-profit organization, which serves the purpose of educationand entertainment. Since 2008, most Chinese museums have been open to the public and offered free admission inciting an increased number of visitors to museums. The museum has become an important window to public service, and an important platform for the cultural exchange between domestic and foreign cultures. Translation of the museum’s publicity materials plays a crucial role in introducing Chinese culture and natural resources to foreign visitors, who have great interest in collections. Therefore, the effective translation of the museum’s publicity materials is of great significance. Unfortunately, as the museum industry in China started later than it did in most western countries, the study on translation of the museum’s publicity materials has been neglected for a long time. Therefore, the need for us to research on translation of the museum’s publicity materials is imminent.
This article mainly applies Newmark’s text type classification and communicative translation. Peter Newmark is a famous scholar in the field of translation studies with experienced translation techniques. His major contribution is the distinction between communicative translation and semantic translation, which is relevant to text type classification. 1 Literature review
Translation of the museum’s publicity materials is not a novel idea, but as mentioned above communicative translation is seldom used as material for research. In general, translation of the museum’s publicity materials can be divided into two parts. One is the collection translation, which mainly consists of the interpretive texts of the collections, the titles of the collections, and exhibition atlas. The other part is the exhibition content not included in the collection translation. The content here is essentially only the introduction and explanation of the history and development of the exhibition.
Mu[1] is the first one to publish an article about collections in 1991. He discussed the faithfulness and smoothness of the collection translation, and mentioned word choices.Li[2] published the second paper concerning the titles of the collections, and revealed its cultural implication at the surface, middle and deep levels. In the following years, Wang and Yang[3]published the first book on the names of collected items, and this book has become important and popular among translators for museums domestic. The book has a Chinese-English glossary of collections and functions as a dictionary, despite some inaccuracy. Huang[4] applied cognitive theory to the collection translation of antique names and pointed out that the features of antique names express the basic traits of human cognition. Li[5] wrote her thesis using the theories of domestication and foreignization in the collection translation. Her study analyzed the translations based on underlying factors that can determine the translator strategies. Ding[6-7] wrote her thesis and article about Newmark’s theory related with museum. These researcheshave discussed the collections from translation strategies of domestication and foreignization, translation criteria of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" and translation principles of smoothness and faithfulness. However, these aspects are too general to follow during the translation practice. Similarly, the strategies used in museum translation are always including domestication, foreignization, relevance theory, and intercultural communication.
In China, the researches on translation of the museum’s publicity materials started from 1990s. In the early 20th century, from 2001 to 2007, the articles in this area were limited to discussing the faithfulness and smoothness of the translated materials; after 2007, some scholars began to approach the topic from the angles of domestication and foreignization. At the same time some scholars introduced Skopos theory into the research. By doing extensive reviews, the author discovered that no scholar wrote a thesis or a dissertation on this topic, to say nothing of any translation strategies in this field. Yet no systematic research has been done on the museum’s publicity materials from the perspective of communicative translation.The translation research on collections will attract more attention than on exhibitions. The researchers in this area are mainly divided into two categories, one group belongs to the theoretical linguists, and the other relies on their own working experience. Looking at geographical position, the researches focused more on places that have rich culture heritage resources and cities involved in foreign trade, such as Beijing, Shanxi, Henan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Zhejiang. From the previous review, the author finds that there are no dissertations on museum translation. Though translation strategies are used and have been discussed in this field, no systematic research has been done on the museum’s publicity materials from the perspective of communicative translation. The majority of past researches focus on translation of the names of collected items and famous museums. Here, the author will attempt to systematically research the museum’s publicity materials from the perspective of communicative translation.
2 Theoretical framework
2.1 The priorities for text analysis
Many theorists have divided the texts according to subject-matter (literature, institutions, technology, etc.), but it is perhaps more reasonable to begin with the famous German scholar Karl ’s statement[8] on the functions of language. Karl