A Translation of Thai Tourist Attraction Names Into Chinese

Abstract

The translating tourist attraction names is an important task in tourism because these names are seen by tourists in Thailand and are used in travel guide books for promoting tourist attractions in the country. Therefore, place names should be translated uniformly because different translations may lead to misunderstanding and be difficult for tourists to recognize.

The objectives of this study are to study the translations of Thai tourist attraction names into Chinese and to provide principles for translating Thai tourist attraction names into Chinese. A total of tourist attraction manes in Thai and 1,072 tourist attraction names in Chinese were collected. Some Thai tourist attraction names were translated differently. The results reveal that 459 Chinese tourist attraction names were directly translated, and 613 names were transliterations. This article focuses on the names which were translated. Five types of translation were indentified : 1) complete translation - 275 names 2) omission - 72 names 3) expansion - 4 names 4) addition - 22 names and 5) new naming - 86 names.