ABSTRACT

Nowadays, museums play an important role in the China’s tourism and foreign exchange, which can be recognized as the cultural window of China. Nanjing Museum is one of the most important museums in China, which is definitely a great place for visitors know about history and culture of Jiangsu Province and China.

 Museum text is a branch of tourism texts and it belongs to informative and evocative texts according to Nord’s text typology. Cultural relics are the carrier of human civilization and culture; therefore, how to show the historical connotation and the beauty of them is a big problem. An ideal translation of museum texts should be able to attract the target audience, stimulate their enthusiasm for sightseeing.

Under the guidance of German functionalist theory, by collecting the commentaries and other texts showed in Nanjing museum, this paper analyzes translation brief, skills applied in the C-E translation of museum texts and point out the deficiency. Throughout the analysis, we can see the German functionalism really helps the translation be better.

Key words：museum text; German functionalist theory; translation

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Research Motivation and Objectives-2

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Museum Texts-3

2.2 The Previous Researches on Translation of the Museum Texts-4

Chapter Three OVERVIEW OF GERMAN FUNCTINALISM-7

3.1 Katharina Reiss and the Text Typology-7

3.2 Hans J.Vermeer and his Skopostheorie-8

3.3 Nord’s Translation Theory-8

3.3.1 Function plus loyalty-9

3.3.2 Translation-oriented text analysis-9

Chapter Four ANALYSIS OF MUSEUM TEXTS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH-11

4.1 Translation Brief of the C-E Translation of Texts in Nanjing Museum-11

4.2 Methods Applied in Translation of Texts in Nanjing Museum-12

4.2.1 Literal translation-12

4.2.2 Transliteration-14

4.2.3 Transliteration plus literal translation-14

4.2.4.Omission-15

4.2.5 Paraphrase-17

4.2.6 Annotation-19

4.3 Analysis of Translation Errors in Nanjing Museum-20

4.3.1 Disunity of names of relics-20

4.3.2 Mix of British English and American English-21

4.3.3 Over omission of useful information-21

Chapter Five CONCLUSION-23

REFERENCES-25