A Report On C-E Translation Of Public Signs In Lixia District Of Jinan Under The Guidance Of Functional Equivalence Theory

As the language landscape of the city,public signs provide convenience for people’s daily activities.Since the 21 st century,with the vigorous development of the global economy and the increasingly close communication among countries,many bilingual public signs with distinctive and eye-catching titles have appeared in China.With the deepening of Jinan’s opening up,more and more foreigners have come to invest,work or live in the city.Especially after the accelerated construction of Jinan Comprehensive Free Trade Zone and the increasing construction of international schools and blocks,the demand for bilingual public sign has become very urgent.Under this circumstance,the Municipal Foreign Affairs Office of the People’s Government of Jinan and the People’s Government of Lixia District of Jinan entrusted Shandong Quanjing Shengyue Information Technology Co.,Ltd.to carry out the translation project of international community construction.The source text of this report is selected from the project’s public signs section.Functional Equivalence Theory emphasizes that target text and source text are equivalent in language function and similar in reader’s response.Translators can find equivalence in different languages and cultures and integrate information and semantics for communication purposes.Considering that language used in public signs is of functional features,integrating semantics and information in the translation process to achieve equivalence between the source text and the target text is the key to this translation task.The source text involves many orientation introductions.In order to accurately convey the functional information contained in the source text,the choice of prepositions needs to be analyzed in detail with the context.The source text also contains many words with Chinese characteristics,so transliteration or annotation is adopted during translation to achieve the equivalence between language and culture.In addition,public signs are more often written in concise form and with vivid expression,which can be translated by using the translation method such as deletion,application of conjunctions,conversion of voice,and sentence restructuring to convey accurate meaning and keep consistent text structure.In view of this,the writer makes a summary under the guidance of Functional Equivalence Theory in the translation process,aiming to explore more effective translation methods and provide some reference for the translation of public signs in the future.This report is divided into five parts.The first part introduces the background and significance of the translation task,and the structure of this report.The second part presents the process of translation,including how to prepare before translation,challenges met during translation,and how to carry out proof-reading and quality control after translation.The third part summarizes Functional Equivalence Theory and its applicability to the translation task.The fourth part analyzes the difficulties in the translation process from lexical,syntactical,textual and stylistic aspects and puts forward some solutions.The last part makes a summary of the translation practice and sums up the major findings and limitations.