TY - JOUR

T1 - Benchmarking the Quality of Chinese to English Geotourism Interpretation

T2 - The SSC Model Based on Eco-translatology

AU - Li, Jason

AU - Zhu, Fangzhou

AU - Ng, Young

PY - 2022/8/16

Y1 - 2022/8/16

N2 - 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 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.

AB - 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 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.

KW - SSC model

KW - Geotourism interpretation

KW - Corpus-based contrastive analysis

KW - Benchmarking quality

KW - Eco-translatology

U2 - 10.1007/s12371-022-00725-5

DO - 10.1007/s12371-022-00725-5

M3 - Journal article

VL - 14

JO - Geoheritage

JF - Geoheritage

SN - 1867-2485

IS - 3

M1 - 93

ER -