title: Effective Chinese-to-English Geotourism Translation
title: An Interdisciplinary Corpus-based Approach to Benchmarking and Translation Taxonomy for Chinese UNESCO Global Geoparks
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Li, Qiang
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2025

description: Geotourism is a holistic form of tourism which links geology (Abiotic),
 with a range of flora and fauna (Biotic) which closely link to how people
 have lived in a place (Culture) in the past as well as today (Geological
 Society of Australia, 2015). These three components are referred to as the
 ABC elements of geotourism. The main objective of geotourism is to promote
 sustainable tourism through the exchange of geomorphological, ecological,
 and cultural knowledge. The global development of geotourism has
 heightened the demand for high-quality translation of this area.
 Nonetheless, due to the lack of systematic theoretical guidance,
 translators frequently resort to ineffective translation strategies,
 leading to confusion and inaccuracy in geotourism expressions (e.g.,
 geological jargon, geological and ecological processes).
 
 
 Therefore, the aims of this research project are to address this problem
 by developing a translation quality evolution model and a taxonomy of
 effective geotourism strategies (hereafter, Taxonomy) and thus standardise
 (in terms of accuracy and consistency) the Chinese-to-English geotourism
 translation system. The theoretical framework used for this project is the
 three-dimensional transformations (i.e., language, culture, and
 communication) of Hu’s Eco-Translatology (2003). Based on this framework,
 the proposed SSC (Semantic, Style, and Cultural) equivalence Model is
 designed to serve as a benchmark for assessing the quality of
 Chinese-to-English geotourism translation, while the development of the
 Taxonomy is intended to optimise the Chinese-to-English translation. 
 
 
 To develop the SSC Model and the Taxonomy, six research questions were
 sequentially designed and investigated with data collected from nine
 Chinese UNESCO Global Geoparks (UGGps). Specifically, the four empirical
 chapters included in this thesis each uses a corpus built from a different
 set of the UGGps, sequentially focusing on the development of the SSC
 Model, the identification of translation strategies and problems of the
 ABC elements (i.e., the Taxonomy), and a validation of the SSC Model and
 the Taxonomy. The datasets were used to build Chinese-to-English parallel
 corpora, which helps to visualise direct comparison of the interpreted
 expressions in the two languages. For each chapter, I performed
 corpus-based qualitative and quantitative analysis of these corpora. For
 data processing and data analysis, I used the digital tool Tmxmall
 (https://www.tmxmall.com) and the Corpus Query Language (CQL) function in
 Sketch Engine (https://www.sketchengine.eu/). 
 
 
 The findings indicate that the SSC Model is an optimal model for
 evaluating how effective the geotourism translations map onto Hu’s
 Eco-Translatology. The Model effectively miminises ineffective
 Chinese-to-English translations in geotourism data and ensures the precise
 delivery of information for geotourism in Chinese UGGps. The SSC Model
 also functions as a cornerstone in developing the taxonomy of translation
 strategies of ABC elements for geotourism. For example, I found that the
 strategy literal translation can generally be applied to the translation
 of all of the ABC elements. Nevertheless, other translation strategies
 (e.g., Shift as well as Division and Shift) are common among all the
 elements, but especially important for textual description of geological
 (A element) and biotic processes (B element), because of the stylistic
 contrast between Chinese and English languages. Finally, the empirical
 study validated the effectiveness of both the SSC Model and Taxonomy,
 recommending their use to future translators. 
 
 
 There are many implications of this study in the fields of geotourism
 translation in terms of theoretical pursuits and practical applications.
 The proposed SSC Model and the Taxonomy provide valuable theoretical
 guidance for geotourism translation. Moreover, the results from this study
 provide practical implications for the field of translation practice and
 training. I intend to share the qualitative results where I optimise
 problematic translations in the Abiotic, Biotic and Cultural data of
 geotourism with popular science education centers in Chinese UGGps. My
 focus on corpus-based methodology in this project provides translators
 access to data-driven pedagogical materials which uses empirically tested
 authentic language samples to enhance their translation skills and output.
 Because effective geotourism translation promotes better geomorphological,
 ecological, and cultural communication, this project may help to
 facilitate the development of the geotourism sector by enhancing
 translation quality provided to Chinese UGGps, and therefore more
 commitment to geotourism sustainability.