A Tentative Study Of The Chinese-English Translation Of Publicity Materials In Nanjing

The translation of publicity materials, a window through which foreign people may have a look into China, is of great importance. The author has had a detailed survey of the publicity translation in the busiest sections of Nanjing city, and found that there are various mistakes in it. These mistakes can be roughly divided into two kinds: "linguistic mistakes" and "cultural mistakes". "linguistic mistakes" includes mistakes that are easy to spot, such as those in spelling, punctuations, and capitalization. "Cultural mistakes", resulted from inappropriate words, Chinglish, insufficient translation, etc., are not so obvious but more serious.The paper is mainly divided into six chapters. The first discusses the importance of the publicity translation and thinks Nanjing hasn't done a satisfactory job in this aspect. The second chapter deals with a big mistake in sign-posts. The next two chapters respectively have an analysis on "hard wounds" and "soft wounds". The fifth chapter discusses the causes of the mistakes and puts forward some suggestions. The last chapter is a brief conclusion.