A Study On Chinese-English Translation Of Public Signs

The current situation of the Chinese-English translation of public signs is far from being satisfactory. Mistaken translations of public signs, ranging from careless mistakes in spelling and grammar to more serious problems such as redundancy, inconsistency and unreadability can be found almost everywhere. However, with the great achievements in many fields since the opening up and reforming in China, there are more and more political, economic and cultural activities with foreign countries. Beijing will host Olympic Games 2008 and Shanghai will be the host city of World Expo 2020. In order to establish the good international image of our country, the standardization of the Chinese-English translation of public signs has become urgent. Under this background, this thesis intends to make some tentative studies in this area, aiming to put forward some principles for the Chinese-English translation of public signs.In this paper, the author expounds those basic concepts related to public signs and analyses the functional and language features of public signs. Through the comparison of semantic translation and communicative translation as well as their relationship with the text typology, the author tentatively proposes the―Three-C‖principle for the Chinese-English translation of public signs, namely, conciseness, consistency and comprehensibility. The conciseness principle holds that the translated version should be pithy and brief, without any unnecessary words and also easy, with simple words and sentence structures. The consistency principle requires that the translation be consistent with 1) the habitually practiced version in English-speaking countries if there is such an idiomatic expression to borrow, 2) the established version if the translated name or term has already been fixed and accepted, 3) the English version on official websites, in dictionaries or newspapers if there is neither idiomatic expression to borrow, or established one to follow. The comprehensibility principle states that translated signs should be readable and understandable, free from Chinglish or translationese.By applying them to typical examples of mistaken translations and comparing the original with the version under the direction of the principle, this thesis proves that these three principles are quite applicable and bear certain theoretical significance as well as guiding values for the Chinese-English translation of public signs.