英语毕业论文设计-基于文本类型理论的高校简介英译策略研究.docx

Abstract

Since China has made rapid advances in strengthening its cooperation with overseas universities, golden opportunities are offered for students both in and outside China to pursue their further education as exchange students, which in turn indicates China’s aspiration of making its universities more competitive and involving in more international co-operations. Thus, university profile, as a window to the outside world, plays a vital role in strengthening a university’s international prestige.
Peter Newmark, the distinguished translation theorist in England, mainly divides text into three types in terms of the language functions of the source text, they are: informative, expressive and vocative texts. This paper, by resorting to comparative analyses, discusses the stylistic distinctions among three representative university profiles on their official websites in Gansu Province and two university profiles’ parallel texts in English-speaking countries. Through this research, it can be found that most texts of the university profiles belong to the informative text and vocative text, with moderate expressive text displayed. Thus, in translating university profile, translators must begin with confirming the text type from the source text and study target culture and then choose the proper functions to correspond with them. This paper tries to offer some translation strategies under guide of the text type theory in translating university profile.

Key words: university profile; text type theory; translation strategies

摘要

随着中国高校与国外大学合作的加强，越来越多的中国学生走出国门到海外留学。同时，国内的许多大学也纷纷迎来了外国留学生，这都表明中国的高校正在走向国际化。因此，作为高校对外宣传窗口的大学英文简介发挥了越来越重要的作用。
英国当代著名翻译理论家彼特·纽马克将文本类型划分为三大类，分别为信息型文本﹑表达型文本﹑和呼唤型文本。本文通过对三所代表性高校官方简介的英文译本和两所英语国家大学简介的平行文本进行对比分析，作者发现大多数高校简介属于信息型文本和呼唤型文本，而表达型文本较少。因此在翻译过程中，译者首先需要确定原文的文本类型，然后考察目的语读者的文化，之后研究其对应的翻译策略，最后实现文本的交际功能。鉴于此，本文力求在纽马克文本类型理论指导下为高校简介的英译提供一些翻译策略。

关键词：高校简介；文本类型理论；翻译策略

Contents

Abstract I
摘要 II
1 Introduction 1
2 A Review of the Studies on the Translation of University Profile 1
3 Peter Newmark’s Text Type Theory 2
3.1 Informative Text 2
3.2 Expressive Text 3
3.3 Vocative Text 4
4 Strategies for Translating University Profile 4
4.1 Translation of the Informative Text 5
4.1.1 Free Translation 5
4.1.2 Cultural Equivalence 6
4.1.3Addition 9
4.2 Translation of the Vocative Text 11
4.2.1 Deletion 11
4.2.2 Rewriting 13
4.2.3 Subordination 14
5 Conclusion 14
Bibliography 16
Acknowledgments 17

IV

1 Introduction
With the development of China’s higher education, a large number of university websites in China have gradually become a window to present school images, offering useful information and providing a variety of online services. Generally, most Chinese university websites are bilingual in both Chinese and English. In recent years, with the expansion of Chinese universities’ scope of exchanges and cooperation and the furtherance of internationalization and globalization, the English websites of Chinese university are drawing more and more attention from foreign visitors and their importance is growing with great momentum.
By reviewing university profiles on the basis of text type theory, this paper is a study that adopts parallel and contrastive textual analysis, which covers the profiles of outstanding universities in Gansu Province and in the English-speaking countries. The author tries to classify texts into different categories according to text type theory. And with different text type, their corresponding translation strategies are different from each other.
2 A Review of the Studies on the Translation of University Profile
For quite a long period of time, studies of literature translation have been dominating in translation field and many scholars did not pay much attention to the study of Chinese-English translation of publicity materials. It is not until the early 1980s that translational scholars attached importance to the translation of publicity materials, so did the translation of university profile. Since Zhong Weihe and Zhong Yu (1999) firstly introduced the German functionalist approach to China, there were numerous scholars who have been attempting to study translation in this field.
Zhang Xinjun and Yang Hui（2003）designed a questionnaire on the premise that the target reader holds the right of deciding the effectiveness and validity of information. The aim of their study was to find out how the target reader would respond to the translated versions of Chinese university profiles in 2003. They further dug out translation deficiencies that existed in this type of translation and they offered some strategies to deal with those problems. Though they made a conclusion that these translation versions faced some problems including the unsuitable length of the text and some improper information selection, redundancy, Chinglish, and grammatical mistakes etc, their research scope was not expanded enough.
Lu Ning (2007) , in her paper Skopos Theory and Translation Errors in the English-version Webage Profiles of Chinese Universities and the Underlying Problems, conducted a quantitative study of the Chinese -English translation versions of university profiles by calculating linguistic and cultural translation errors that existed in those websites. Then she put forward some corresponding translation strategies. However, her study still has some drawbacks, for instance, she did not give an integrated investigation on the characteristics of the university profiles in English speaking countries.
Han Mengqi (2008), pointed out in On the Translation Mistakes in English Webpages of Institutions of Higher Learning, that translation errors in terms of linguistic, culture and so on are very common in the English version of the university of higher education in China, and this has caused negative effects on their publicity and even may damage their images in the long run.
After the discussion on the relevant studies done in the field of Chinese-English translation of university profiles, pointing out the limitations of the previous studies, which partially restates the necessity of the present study.
3 Peter Newmark’s Text Type Theory
Peter Newmark was one of the main figures in the founding of translation studies in the English-speaking world in twentieth century. He illustrated his translation theories in a series of works, such as A Textbook of Translation (1988), Paragraphs on Translation (1989), About Translation (1991), More Paragraphs on Translation (1998).
In Newmark’s published book A Textbook of Translation, he clarifies text based on a new model. Newmark mainly divides source text into three types in terms of the language functions of the source text, they are: informative, expressive, vocative texts. In his book A Textbook of Translation, the major characteristics of each text type are summarized as follows:
(1)Informative text: information-oriented, mainly conveying knowledge and opinions, the language employed to transmit the information is logical or referential, the content is the main focus of the communication.
(2)Expressive text: source text writer-oriented text, with the focused aesthetic aspect of language is focused and the form of the message is important.
(3)Vocative text: focusing on the equivalent function of the text in order to appeal or persuade the reader or “receiver” of the text to act in a certain way.
3.1 Informative Text
In Newmark’s point of view, informative text covers a wide range of text types, such as news reports, press comments, inventories of merchandise, instructions, educational works, patent specifications, treaties, official documents, non-fiction books of all sorts, and other technical fields.
The main function of informative text is to inform the reader about objects and phenomena in reality. For example, commentaries are usually distinctive in their literary styles which may show individualistic styles. However, they still belong to the informative type as they are written for a particular situation or event in which the content goes beyond the form. If a translator identifies the text as an informative type, he will adopt proper translation methods to transplant the source language information into the target language text. Therefore, in translating informative texts, translators should bear in mind that
(1) The translation of an informative text focuses on the conveyance of information, with an emphasis laid on the effectiveness and accuracy of the communication.
(2) The choice of language styles and form is thus subordinate to its main function, and they should be guided by the leading norms of linguistic culture from the target language. (Newmark 2001)
In conclusion, translating the informative texts requires adequacy in transferring of the content of the source language text. This requires that the linguistic forms of the translation be adapted without reservation to the form of the target language.
3.2 Expressive Text
Generally speaking, compared with the informative text, the expressive text is mainly concerned with not only “what” the author says but “how” he says it. Specifically, expressive texts include prose, serious imaginative literature, autobiography, essays and personal correspondence. Thus the translator of an expressive text will inevitably pay attention to the source language text. In rendering these texts, the translator will attach importance to the form of text. Thus, when translating the expressive text, the translator should find an effective form in translating so as to create an equivalent effect. The tempo of the style, as well as stylistic forms and rhyme schemes, comparative and figurative manners of speaking, proverbs and metaphors should all be noticed during translating an expressive text.
Sometimes, if it is too hard to imitate the original form and style, an alternative can be done by creating equivalents through new forms. That is to say, in translating a form-focused text, the translator can appreciate the form of the source language and be inspired by it to discover an analogous form in the target language, which can elicit a similar response in the reader.
3.3 Vocative Text
People often use language in order to arouse the sympathy of others or to inspire others to take any action by using the vocative features of language. According to Newmark, “The core of the vocative function of language is the readership, the addressee.” (2001). The core of this function lies in its concerns of readers or hearers’ feeling. Source text writer may have hoped that the target reader would follow the text’s intent to feel, think or act, that is, they can respond to the expression of text content. Newmark (2001) used the word “vocative” in the sense of “calling upon” the target language readership to act or think in order to “react” in the way intended by the text, so it is “reader-oriented”. The vocative texts cover a wide range of text types including publicity, advertising, preaching, propaganda, laws and regulations, tourist materials, notices as well as persuasive writing of all kinds.
Equivalent effect is essential in vocative texts translation. Therefore, in translating vocative texts, translators should bear in mind that the linguistic form of any given informational content is subordinate to achieving the non-linguistic purpose of its message.
4 Strategies for Translating University Profile
It is acknowledged that a university webpage plays an indispensable role in enhancing a university’s image to the outside world. Because it is a kind of publicity material, a university webpage must speak its aim in one way or another so that the target reader can understand it well. In this process, whether the translator can translate the source text smoothly and ensure the proper functioning of target text requires suitable translating strategies.
Looking into the university profile translation from the perspective of text type theory, we know that it is the text type that decides the corresponding translation strategies. And we can find out that what mainly concern the target reader about the university translation is its informative and vocative functions, with moderate expressive functions displayed. Meanwhile, after the analysis, the author finds that most texts in the university profiles belong to the informative and vocative text, therefore the author mainly focuses on the translating strategies of the informative and vocative texts on the basis of three university profiles in Gansu province.
Text type theory serves as an insightful guidance for practical text translation. And text type theory well provides many detailed translation methods for the text translation practice, such as addition, deletion, rewriting etc if a translator is able to appropriately figure out the text type of a source text, he can make proper choices of the strategies.
4.1 Translation of the Informative Text
In university profile, some facts and figures in the text belong to the informative text as discussed above. In this case, the content is more important than any other factors. Both the source text author and the translator are required to inform readers of certain facts. Therefore, the criterion for judging the success of the informative part of a text is whether or not facts have been made clear enough to readers.

Unlike literary works, the primary task of informative text translation is to convey the content. As for this type of information, the translator should properly deal with the information included redundancy. The target texts are required to provide enough information as the source texts do.
4.1.1 Free Translation
Free translation is a means to mainly convey the meaning and spirit of the original without trying to reproduce its sentence patterns. This means the author does not emphasize the original form, including syntax, structure, words and other rhetoric.
Due to the different models of education, Western culture is characterized by the intention of logical reasoning, so this explains the fact that English profiles make a lot uses of figures. In comparison, due to the difference in ideology and value, Chinese university profiles have the following feature—a lot of Chinese universities lay stress on political and ideological overtones. This means that Chinese universities often include honors and titles which are awarded at provincial or national level.
Example 1
Source Text：
Target Text：

Parallel Text 1：For students who are excited to investigate the biggest issues of the 21st century, Harvard offers an unparalleled student experience and a generous financial aid program, with over $160 million awarded to more than 60% of our undergraduate students. The University has twelve degree-granting Schools in addition to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,