Effective Chinese-to-English biotic interpretation in ecotourism destinations: a corpus-based interdisciplinary study

Abstract

Ecotourism interpretation pertains to vital public education regarding environmental conservation. At present, there is no professional standard or system for interpretation in this domain, which potentially hinders the goals of geoheritage, and species preservation. To address this shortcoming, two categories of ecotourism (flora and fauna), are selected and broken down into the three main interpretation issues: common biotic names, local Chinese biotic terms, and ecological processes. Effective Chinese-to-English interpretation is identified through analysis of interpreted texts and their originals, on the basis of which a taxonomy of reliable interpretation strategies is proposed. The main difficulties confronted were scientific terminology, sentence structure, and culture. This analysis presented adopts a corpus-based approach that systematically investigates the interpretation language used in geoparks, providing representative and comprehensive views into ecotourism interpretation. We found that, generally, literal interpretation can be used. However, other strategies are essential for achieving effective interpretations, particularly regarding textual representations of flora and fauna processes. Informed by Hu’s Eco-Translatology, a taxonomy of effective strategies is developed and recommended for use by ecotourism translators and interpreters.