Investigation and analysis on the current situation of English translation of the three Kingdoms Cultural attractions in Jingchu Area, China

With the increasing promotion of reform and opening-up as well as the globalization, there are an ever-increasing number of tourists coming to China for sightseeing. And the rapid development of tourism industry makes a further study for scenic spots translation become a must.In all Chinese places and regions, the Jingchuarea, mainly covering Hubei, Hunan and Sichuan province in China, is an important cradle of Three Kingdoms Culture. However, the quality of translation in related spots is uneven and many translation problems are not rare. This research, guided by the Skopostheorie and communicative translation, probes deeply into the current translation situation and translation problems of the Three Kingdoms Cultural Attractions in Jingchu area in China. Then, based on the investigation, the influential factors in translation are analyzed and some strategies to improve translation are given in order to modify the translated versions and promote the cultural communication. Keywords— translation of scenic spots; Three Kingdoms Culture; skopostheorie; communicative translation.


INTRODUCTION
The brilliant and unique Chinese civilization has attracted numerous overseas tourists every year who plan to experience its cultural characteristics. In China, "Three Kingdoms Culture" is a unique cultural phenomenon, which has a broad and profound effect upon Chinese Communicative translation focuses mainly on the understanding and response of the target language readers and attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. In other words, as Shuttleworth and Cowie (1997:21) claimed, communicative is generally oriented towards the needs of the target language reader or recipient. A translator who is translating communicatively will treat source text as a message rather than a mere string of linguistic units, and will be concerned to preserve source text's original function and to reproduce its effect on the new audience.
Semantic translation just explains the meaning of the original on the basis of the source language culture to help target-language recipients understand the discourse.
Compared with literal translation, it pays more attention to the source language, context and the aesthetic value of the original, and it strives to keep the grammatical and syntactic features. In the translation practice, semantic translation and communicative translation both play its important role and will collaborate with each other.

Hans Vermeer's Skopostheorie
The skopostheorie gets its name from the Greek word "skopos" which means "purpose". It tries to liberate translation from the confinement of the source text.
Skopostheorie was developed by Hans Vermeer in the late of 1970s. Later, he points out that one of the most important factors that decides the purpose of translation is the audience, the target language receptors. Thus, translation is the discourse produced by a certain purpose and its target audience in the target language conditions. Vermeer (1984) puts forward three rules of translation: the skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. The priority is the skopos rule. In his opinion, the skopos rule is that human action (and its subcategory translation) is determined by its purposes (skopos), and therefore it is a function of its purpose. Coherence rule, the second rule, also named consistence in discourse, means that the version must be understood by the readers and meaningful in the target language and its communicative environment.

Classification of Problems
By the collection and analysis of the data, it is found that those English versions are not satisfactory and there are various kinds of existingproblems. From the perspective of research, these translation problems can be categorized into two parts: the part of linguistic level and the part of cultural level. Besides, many other distinctive problems are also discussed.

Linguistic Level
Nord (2001) once stated that the differences in structure between two languages, especially in lexis and sentence structure, can cause some translation problems occurring in every translation that involves this pair of languages, no matter which of the two serves as source language and which serves as target language. According to this, followed are the problems seen from the linguistic  In this example, "武灵王学业堂" is translated as "Wu Ling Wang academic hall" and "广德寺" is translated as "GuangDesi". Actually, when translating the name of places, it is the common practice that to combine the transliteration with literal translation. For example, "Mt.
Thus, "武灵王学业堂" is supposed to be translated as "Hall of King Wuling" and the version of "广德寺" should be "Guangde Temple".
b) In some conditions, many English words alike, but they actually are very different. Even with the same Chinese meaning, there are still lots of detailed distinctions.

At the end of Yuan dynast
This version mixes "dynast" with "dynasty". The two words look similar, but the meaning differs from each other. "Dynast" means a hereditary ruler, while "dynasty" refers to a series of rulers of a country who all belong to the same family or to a period of years during which members of a particular family rule a country.

(2) Grammar
English grammar is a series of systematic language principles after the targeted research on this language. And there are lots of grammar rules in English which can cause some mistakes when translating.

桂花清可绝尘，浓能远溢，堪称一绝。
The fragrance of osmanthus flowers is so refreshing that it make people forget about the material world and so thick that it spreads miles away.
English grammar requires that if the subject is singular, the predicate verb should be in singular form; if the subject is plural, the predicate verb should be plural.
Thus, "it make people forget" should be corrected as "it makes people forget".

(3) Syntactic Level
After discussing C-E translation problems occurring in vocabulary and grammar, the author would turn to the syntax and analyze these various problems.

Cultural Level
The tourist spots, especially those with long history, are generally connected with its culture and these introductions must contain some cultural factors more or less. Those cultural factors may be a tough barrier for cross-language translators.

相传为诸葛亮设坛借东风之处。
It is said that Zhugeliang had prayed for wind here.

Influential Factors in Translation
In this part, the author will analyze the major factors that influence the translation quality would be found out, such as cultural differences, translators and the type of the source text and purpose of translation.

Culture Differences
Culture is so important that it should be taken into account during the translation practice. It includes various aspects influencing the way a translator renders. And language is an indispensible part of culture. It is like a mirror reflecting the national historic tradition, values, mind of thinking and social mentality, a window to reveal all contents of the culture and a bridge to spread and pass down culture to the next generation. As a cross-cultural communicative activity, its content is not only the phonetic symbols but also the culture behind them.
Firstly, lexical ambiguity caused by cultural differences will affect the version in a sort of way.
Vocabulary is the basic structure of language and the backbone supporting the whole language system. Thus, the effect of cultural differences is the most deeply shown in vocabulary, whose sphere of influence is the widest.

Type of the Source Text
In terms of foreign scholars, Reiss (1987)

Translation Purpose
According to Vermeer's skopostheorie, translation is

Translator's Interpretation
Some people say that translators are servants for two masters: the reader and the author. As is known to all, comprehension and expression are two essential ingredients of translating. First, the correct understanding of the original work plays an essential role in the whole process. That's why, at the very beginning, translators should not hurry to do our translation, instead, they are supposed to read the whole passage patiently to make sure that the general idea is correctly comprehended. Moreover, a translator's expression is supposed to be accurate, flexible and impressive and his language is hoped to be vivid, with its form beautiful.
Translation is an arduous work that requires lots of efforts of a translator due to the special linguistic features and cultural differences between Chinese and English.
Most translators are familiar with many translation strategies and methods, but they could still make some mistakes if facing a certain cultural words and expressions.
As a result, professional translators are supposed to equip the following qualities. Firstly, they should acquire skills and experiences in analyzing both of the languages and get to be aware of the cultural differences between the languages. Secondly, being able to write smoothly in both source and target languages is also important. Writing is in fact the main job of a translator. Thirdly, professional translators should be highly specialized, that means, translators should have specialized competence in a particular area. And translators have to work very hard for many years with relentless efforts and a rigorous attitude.
Take "关羽败走麦城" as an example. The translator with poor ability may translate it as "Guan Yu lost the war and escaped to Mai Cheng". However, there is a phrase "to meet one's Waterloo" which means that who has been

Strategies under Communicative Translation
Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. As a result, domestication and foreignization can be chosen.

Strategies under Skopos Theory
There are three principles in the Vermeer's skopos theory: skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. Under these rules, some techniques can be advocated in translation of scenic spots. indispensable element in one language may be regarded as superfluous or even "a stumbling block" in the other. For example, the version of "水深危险， 注意安全" is "Beware of deep water". Besides, some signs designed for domestic tourists need not translation such as "学生证半价" and "老年人凭证免票"， because these sentences will not influence the travel of foreign visitors.

Under the Coherence Rule
With the guide of coherence rule, imitation is a better choice for the translation in Three Kingdoms cultural spots.
It means translating according to the syntactic structure of known information which is fixed and standardized.
With the boom of tourist industry, our government increasingly attaches more importance to tourism to the standardized sentence pattern and format. For example, forbidden signs should be translated as "Don't…" , "No…" or "… Forbidden" such as "No Smking". Warning signs is usually rendered with imperative sentence like "Caution! Wet floor". What's more, some English locutions can be borrowed. For example, the sentence "talk of the evil and he appears" can be used to render "说曹操，曹操到"and "meet one's Waterloo" for "败走". But in reality, translators usually combine literal translation with free translation, especially in tourism translation, or the version may be a mass. Free translation means that the translator should focus on the profound meaning of the original without too much attention to details. But free translation also requires fluent and expressive version. Also take "雷锋服务岗"as an example, it should be translated as "Information &Service" instead of "Lei Feng service post". And "赤兔马" is the horse of Cao Cao. It can be translated as "Red-hare Horse" that can give receptors the same feeling as that produced on the original readers.

Enlightenment for Cultural Communication
Language is not just a communicative tool for mutual understanding, but a real world, the spiritual home

V.
CONCLUSION