The Chinese-English Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the rapid development of economy, the quickening space of integration into theglobalization, the successful holding of2008Beijing Olympics,2010Shanghai Expo,2010Guangzhou Asian Games and2011China-Asian Expo, China’s internationalcommunication is more and more frequently and English has permeated every part in dailylife. Bilingual signs of public places in cities can be seen everywhere. They play animportant role in instructions, directions and warnings. Nowadays is a times of informationexplosion and knowledge explosion, thus, translation is indispensable. As a new field intranslation, the research of the translation of public signs starts late in China, and therelated studies mainly focus on the following aspects: the definition of public signs, thefeatures of public signs, the classification of public signs and some common errors,principles and strategies of public signs translation. However, the researches on C-Etranslation of public signs are still far enough. And the attention translators devote to thediscrepancy between Chinese and English and the concrete context in which the twolanguages apply is still far enough as well.Bilingual public signs are mainly collected by taking photos from public places inNanning, such as stations, airport, scenic spots, streets, shops and organizations. These arethe first-hand materials used to write this thesis, taking the form of pictures and words. Theauthor finds that there are abundant incorrect translations after the investigation on thesebilingual public signs, and these errors are more or less related to the context of Chineseand English, both at linguistic level and non-linguistic level. Therefore, the presentresearch adopts Adaptation Theory which proposed by Verschueren as guideline and setsits focus on three questions:(1)What errors are there in the bilingual public signstranslation and how to classify them;(2)What causes these errors and correspondingstrategies;(3)How to apply the Adaptation Theory to improve the translation of publicsigns? This thesis develops under the theoretical framework of Adaptation Theory. Itanalyzes the materials of bilingual public signs from two aspects: linguistic context,including three levels of word, phrase and sentence; non-linguistic context, including four levels of thinking patterns, value system, psychological desires and cultural discrepancy.As a result, two effective translation strategies are promoted to improve the quality of thetranslation of public signs: adaptation to linguistic context and adaptation to non-linguisticcontext.The errors in C-E translation of public signs not only exert influence on their function,damage the image of the city, but also influence international communication, preclude thedevelopment of the city, even the whole country. The present research is a tentative studyof the contextual problems in C-E translation of public signs from the perspective ofAdaptation Theory. This thesis is expected to provide a framework of reference for futurestudy and will derive some practical value in purifying the bilingual language environmentin China.