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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Online: 2576-0548 ISSN Print: 2576-0556 CODEN: JHASAY
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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.02.018

A Study on English Translation of Museum Commentaries in Northern China from the Perspective of Communicative Translation Theory

Ying Hou

College of Foreign Languages, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266400, Shandong, China.

*Corresponding author: Ying Hou

Published: February 28, 2026

Abstract

Museums show the rich heritage of a region. Museum commentary is a symbol of national soft power, which plays an important role in cultural communication and exchange. Based on the theory of communicative translation, this paper makes a specific analysis of the typical cases in the translation of museum commentary in northern China, such as the National Museum of China, the Shandong Provincial Museum, and the Capital Museum. It discusses how trans-lators choose the appropriate methods and skills according to the communicative theory of translation, so as to form the appropriate translation suitable for the museums. It is found that under the guidance of communicative translation theory, appropriate translation methods, such as literal translation and free translation, and translation skills such as amplification and omission, can be chosen to translate museum commentaries into English. In this way, the translated commentary can be closer to the language habits and cultural background of foreign tourists, so that they can understand and accept it more easily, and have similar feelings as the original readers when reading the translated commentary. It is hoped that this study can provide a new perspective for translators to carry out translation research and translation practice, and at the same time help people with different cultural backgrounds to better understand Chinese museums and Chinese culture.

Keyword

Museum commentary; communicative translation theory; translation method; translation skill

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Copyright

© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
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How to cite this paper

A Study on English Translation of Museum Commentaries in Northern China from the Perspective of Communicative Translation Theory

How to cite this paper: Ying Hou. (2026) A Study on English Translation of Museum Commentaries in Northern China from the Perspective of Communicative Translation TheoryJournal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science10(2), 218-227.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.02.018