Translation Of Chinese Public Signs: An Adaptation Analysis

With the rapid development of economy and science and technology, China has become an important nation in the world, and attracted more and more attention from the entire world. In this context, public signs have emerged as a means to help foreigners understand China and to build an international image of China in the world. However, there are many mistakes and problems in the translation of Chinese public signs, which not only do harm to the honor of China, but also to the international image of China. This thesis aims to handle this problem in the translation of Chinese public signs into English correctly in order to help the cross-cultural research in China.The thesis studies the topic from the perspective of Adaptation Theory. The author thinks that adaptation theory is a comprehensive method in dealing with the translation issues and should be applied into the cross-cultural activities in order to help foreigners have a better understanding of Chinese culture and history. In addition to the theoretical explanation, this thesis applies a large number of examples to illustrate the benefit and advantage of Adaptation Theory.The thesis divides Public signs into vocative, informative, and phatic signs. After the explanation and discussion of Chinese public signs, some results and five translation methods according to different types of public signs are presented. Those methods are borrowing, over-translation, under-translation, Pinyin plus literal translation, and literal translation.At the end of the thesis, the author puts forward findings in three aspects and some limitations and implications. First, Adaptation Theory is a useful theoretical framework in translating Chinese public signs. Second, translation methods of vocative text of public signs are much more complex than other two text types of public signs. Last but not least, some translation errors are the results of misunderstandings of different cultural knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to put cultural factors into consideration in translation.