To my disappointment, there still lacks researches on English translation of tourism text built on Aesthetics of Reception. Given such situation, the dissertation focuses on explaining how Aesthetics of Reception acts as a guide to English translation of tourism text, and on that basis, further working out some practical and effective approaches and strategies for translation of tourism text.文献综述
2.Literature Review
Aesthetics of Reception is originally a literature theory, but then applied in the translation studies since 1970s, which was a huge breakthrough in translation history. Since then, scholars at home and abroad have done some researches on translation from the perspective of Aesthetics of Reception, but there still leaves some rooms for improvement.
Some scholars have attempted to apply Aesthetics of Reception to translation study. But most of the study is targeted at literary translation, Recently, scholars such as professor Chen Gang have shifted their attention to pragmatic translation, whose Tourist Translation and Tour Guide for Foreigners emphasizes on practice of tourist translation.
In the previous studies of English translation practice of tourism text, some Chinese scholars claim most of the unsuccessful translation result from the ingrained habit of “translating in English form but Chinese thinking mode”. Ignorance to the linguistic and cultural disparity concerning source text and target text is the root cause of all the mistakes described as above, which occur on the surface structure of language.(Jia Wenbo, 2003: 52)
Translation of tourism text belongs to the pragmatic translation range. Many western theories of translation are based on literary translation but not well applied in pragmatic translation. Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory can also provide applicable guidance for pragmatic translation.
Generally speaking, in China, though there has been a relatively long history for the application of Aesthetics of Reception in translation study, however, few of this application is conducted in pragmatic translation, particularly in the study of tourism text translation.