AN ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSLATION OFTOURIST ATTRACTIONS FROM CHINESE TO THAI AND FROM THAI TO CHINESE

Abstract

The name of the tourist attractions (district) belongs to the place name which is a kind of public sign, has the functions of prompting, indicating, etc.  And the functions are not exactly the same with general place names (or administrative division names). It is not only indicates the existence of corresponding place names. More importantly, it contains abundant historical and cultural human information. The suitable and good translation of the name of attractions will stimulate foreign tourists to interest in tourist attractions and their unique culture, will upgrade the cultural humanity of tourist attractions, as well as improve the developments tourism and cultural exchanges; 

In this qualitative research, the researcher investigates the translation of tourist attractions from Chinese to Thai and from Thai to Chinese through three popular online network systems: Baidu translation, Google translation, and Wikipedia.  It outlines the current status and problems of mutual translation of attractions between Chinese and Thai via those networks translation system’s based on TOP50 tourist attractions’ translation facts. Findings showed that the translation of the three systems exhibited efficiency at a rather low level. Baidu translation exhibited an efficiency in the translation at the highest level. The translation was at an appropriate level of 50 percent. Wikipedia exhibited efficiency in the translation at the lowest level. Both of Google translation and Wikipedia were at an appropriate level of less than 40 percent. In many tourist attractions which used a lot of Pinyin or English phonetic notation instead of Thai translation that is not completed translation finally. As a result after analysis, the three major network translation systems still have big problems from Chinese to Thai and Thai to Chinese translation, so those online translation systems are currently not completely credible or vigorously implemented. Still need to be upgrade and correct the translation from Chinese to Thai for many attractions names. If network translation system will be applied as the guideline information of translation then the best one is Baidu translation, second is Google translation and last one is Wikipedia. 

 The analysis finally tries to conceive normative countermeasures and translation standard since the research or study about the Chinese-Thai translation are quite few, special for networks translation systems. Furthermore, the researcher has a recommendation that Thai government agencies should create a translation standard for tourist attractions in Thai and Chinese in a systematic manner with clear regulations.