Effective Chinese-to-English Geotourism Translation : An Interdisciplinary Corpus-based Approach to Benchmarking and Translation Taxonomy for Chinese UNESCO Global Geoparks

Li, Qiang and Brookes, Gavin and McEnery, Tony (2025) Effective Chinese-to-English Geotourism Translation : An Interdisciplinary Corpus-based Approach to Benchmarking and Translation Taxonomy for Chinese UNESCO Global Geoparks. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

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.