The Concept of Smart Tourism under the Context of Tourism Information Service

The modern academic research in China relies heavily on the introduction and translation of western terms or quasi-terms,which started to be localized since their first step into China.After the Open Door Policy,there has been a boom of academic achievements in China,not only the production of knowledge,but more importantly,also in the need of development in different fields.The emergence and development of tourism research in China is embedded in this context.At the beginning of the 1980 s,the terms and quasi- terms used in Chinese tourism studies were mainly based on the concepts extracted from the tourism practice in China,and had limited connections with foreign tourism research.More foreign literature on tourism started to be introduced into China after the 1990 s,and since then,more communication appears,especially between tourism research written in Chinese and that in English.There appears a mixture of imported concepts and local concepts in the current Chinese tourism research,and the Chinese terminological system(terms and concepts) is not in one-to-one correspondence with the English counterpart,which is a challenge for the increasing cross-linguistic communication in tourism research.This article takes the English quasi-term"tourism"and its corresponding Chinese quasi-term"luyou"as a case to show the intersection and deviation of concepts expressed by the two,and to explore the possible ways to alleviate the blurring and confusion in cross-linguistic terminology.Concepts extracted from the real world,have to be expressed by words,including ordinary words,quasi-terms and terms.The word expressing concepts may transform from one situation to another(e.g.from an ordinary word into a quasi-term or a term),just like"tourism"."Tourism"was not listed in commonly-used English dictionaries until the 1950 s,and subsequently it was used to express not only one concept."Tourism"was introduced into English academic research around the mid twentieth century,being transformed from an ordinary word to a quasi-term(being almost,but not yet a term).The word of"tourism"is used to express four different but related concepts:a) as a human activity with travelling and staying outside one's ordinary life for recreation;b)as a study of the tourist,touring and related phenomena;c) as a business or service for tourists;d)as a dynamic system with elements,circulations and connections related to touring.The translation history of"tourism"in Chinese tourism studies is analyzed in this paper.The study finds that the corresponding translation of"tourism"in Chinese has changed,from"youlan shiye"before mid 20 thcentury to"luyou"after the 1970 s.Nowadays,the different concepts expressed by"tourism"are mainly corresponding to the Chinese word of"luyou",while the concepts conveyed by these two words in English and Chinese "(tourism"and"luyou") are not equivalent.Only one of the four concepts ‘(the study of man away from his usual habitat,of the industry which responds to his needs,and of the impacts that both he and the industry have on the host's socio-cultural,economic and physical environments') expressed by"tourism"is not usually translated into"luyou"in Chinese,but translated into"luyouxue"(tourism studies) or"luyou yanjiu"(tourism research) instead.The deviation of the corresponding concepts between the two quasi-terms "(tourism"and"luyou")provides a cross-linguistic way to solve the present vagueness of the two terms by naming the different concepts by an alternative word that can only express one specific concept,transforming the ambiguous quasi-terms(luyou,tourism) into several precise terms."Tourism industry","tourism study/research","touring","tourism system"are recommended to be applied in English tourism research as an alternative to"tourism",corresponding to"luyouye","luyouxue","luyou","luyou tixi"in Chinese,which are recommended to be applied more in Chinese tourism research as an alternative to"luyou".