Research On C-E Pragmatic Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the rapid development of China' economy and the successful holding of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo, more and more foreigners come to China for travel and investment. In order to facilitate the life of foreign travelers and investors in China, many cities adopt C & E public signs. However, there are many pragmatic failures in the English versions of public signs, which will not only cause inconvenience for foreigners in daily life in China, but also will damage the image of China and its people in the eyes of foreigners.Two pragmatists, Sperber and Wilson, proposed relevance theory, which not only aroused great interest in the pragmatics circle but also shed great light on translation studies. Later, Gutt, Wilson's student, applied relevance theory to translation studies, and further illustrated its significance for translation.Relevance theory holds that translation is a two-level communication act involving three kinds of participants:the original writer, the translator and the target readers. These two levels of communication are conducted in two languages with different cultures. In this way, the cognitive environments of SL readers and TL readers would differ. Therefore, the translator should put emphasis on context; take the cognitive environment of the target readers into full consideration and look for the optimal relevance between original text and target context. Then he employs appropriate strategies in an effort to achieve the pragmatic equivalent effect.By analyzing the pragmalinguistic equivalence and failure and the sociopragmatic equivalence and failure in the C-E translation of public signs, the author of this thesis find that word redundancy, misinterpreting the context of situation, lexical errors, ignoring the associative meaning of words, and word-for-word translation are all reasons for causing the pragmalinguistic failure in pragmatic translation. Failing to convey communicative intention, using expressions in a harsh manner, ignoring target readers'cognitive context, and cultural default can lead to sociopragmatic failure in pragmatic translation. The author suggests that, besides the basic translation methods of literal translation and liberal translation, addition, omission, rewriting and under-translation, pinyin plus liberal translation, parody can be employed in the pragmatic translation.