As a new field of translation with its own special genre, geotourism has not yet been firmly established because geotourism translations are currently not of a sufficient professional standard. This situation does not provide geotourists with the genre’s full target of enjoyment, learning and engagement through science popularisation tourism activities. In order to better meet these three definitive purposes in geotourism, this study analyses the three basic categories of geotourism—geological features (GFs), geological processes (GPs) and cultural elements (CEs)—to determine effective strategies of geotourism translation from Chinese into English. Challenges in translation include scientific jargon, language style and cultural gaps. In this article, the advantages of Hu’s Eco-translatology theory are explained and used for minimising translation problems; and the corpus linguistics method, superior for quantitative and qualitative analysis, is utilised. As well, digital auxiliary tools Tmxmall (2014) and Sketch Engine (2003) were employed to facilitate corpus research. Through analysis, effective strategies in each of the key geotourism categories, GFs, GPs and CEs, were identified, shaped and recommended for future translators’ attention. In the results, literal translation, transliteration and free translation, addition and use of official UNESCO names were recommended to render GFs. Division and shift translation, literal translation and shift and division were recommended for GPs. Literal translation, transliteration and free translation and addition were recommended for CEs. Since this is an initial investigation in the genre of geotourism, this study has attempted to build a model platform for future study and wider research in geotourism translation and translation pedagogy for the improvement of geotourism translation quality.
The global growth of geotourism has increased the demand and quality for geotourism interpretation. However, in its pioneer stage, geotourism interpretation has much ineffective interpretation, which hinders the informative purpose of geotourism. Moreover, geotourism interpretation lacks a systematic quality evaluation model. Such a model is essential to the future of reliable interpretation and the minimising of ineffective interpretation. This paper exams whether the currently proposed SSC model (Semantic, Style and Cultural Equivalence) for translation benchmarking purposes can effectively ensure the quality of geotourism interpretation. The SSC model is built on the three geotourism categories (ABC-Abiotic, Biotic and Culture), the unique principles of geotourism interpretation (which are determined by its objectives) and the theory of Eco-translatology. To enhance corpus research, the digital auxiliary tools, Tmxmall (2014) and Sketch Engine (2003), were used. The detailed SSC model was shaped through corpus-based contrastive analysis. The model contains a total of eight criteria that the interpreter should follow, including four for semantic equivalence: linguistic accuracy, scientific accuracy of terminology, reader acceptability of terminology, and semantic completeness of geo-information; and three for style equivalence: logical syntax, concise syntax and appropriate voice syntax. The final criterion is an accurate connotation in cultural elements. The main research findings were that the SSC model can minimise ineffective interpretation of Chinese to English geodata and guarantee accurate transmission of data for geotourism in Chinese UNESCO Global Geoparks.
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