International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies (Mar 2021)
On C-E Mistranslation in Shanghai World Expo Official Website and Translation Strategies for Publicity Text
Abstract
As a well-known international gathering, the Shanghai World Expo not only tries to exhibit the economic and technological innovation, but also to convey its profound culture. Publicity text, as a special text type, the purpose is to publicize China to the outside world and let the world know better about China, as well as to draw the target text readers’ attention so as to attain a desired effect and attract more foreigners to visit. Therefore, the publication of Expo becomes extremely important. However, there still remain some translation errors in the English version of Shanghai Expo’s official website. This paper attempts to probe into the current C-E translation problems in publicity texts and to seek a way out in the enlightenment of Skopostheorie. In view of the translation errors appearing in the website, five related translation strategies are put forward, namely, selective translation, amplification, paraphrase, culturally equivalent words and transliteration with hyperlink. Based on the analysis of translation errors, this paper tries to explain that the main cause of mistranslation is such a translator who has not taken the translation purpose of publicity texts and target text readers into consideration in the course of C-E translation. Meanwhile, it also tries to prove that publicity text translation deals with not only language, but also the culture. There are great differences between Chinese and English publicity texts. Therefore, the language and cultural features have to be observed carefully in order to cater to the English readership’s habit and expectation so as to fulfill the translation task.
