Equivalence In Translation Summary

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The equivalence can divide into three levels from the perspective of practical translation: the level of cognitive expression is translatability; the level of culture is partly translatable; the level of aesthetic is not translatability. The stratification is based on the theoretical principle that equivalence in translation should achieve the same aesthetic effects as the target language readers and the original readers. The common features of the languages of various nations in the world form the translatability in translation. However, because of geographical conditions and civilization levels’ different, various nations formed the isolation, incoherence and incomprehension, and this caused the untranslatability in translation. Katharina Reis is a German linguist, translation scholar and She is widely seen as a co-founder of the Skopos theory. She wrote the book “Possibilities and Limits of Translation Criticism”. This book was considered to be the “starting point for the scholarly analysis of translation in German” (Nord, 2001). In her opinion, the ideal translation would be one “in which the aim in the TL (target language) is equivalence as regards the conceptual content, linguistic form and communicative function of a SL (source language). But, she finds in some situation

Among them, the hotel name as the most representative part of the hotel is even more important. To some extent, the hotel name is like hotel's most intuitive signs. Besides that, the hotel's name is in line with the hotel's positioning and local culture. Meanwhile, it also plays an important role in its development and the construction of the entire hotel. Therefore, we should be very cautious in the translation of hotel names, in order to “transmit the messages and express the emotion”, we have to select Chinese translations that express the meaning of the hotel as far as possible, and allowing visitors to memory and accurately find the hotel. However, in the English to Chinese translation of hotel name is bound to meet the situation of translatability and untranslatability. I will describe it in detail in following paragraph.
1) Translatability
The translatable hotel name can be roughly divided into two types, the first one is the international chain hotel. Usually they are five-star hotel or even more luxurious hotel. They have their own translated Chinese names. In this case, we should use the hotel official Chinese name.