Benchmarking the Quality of Chinese to English Geotourism Interpretation: the SSC Model Based on Eco-translatology

Abstract

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.