Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Public signs, as part of our everyday life, are designed to call on people to obey certain public moral law and impart information to passersby. They play a fundamental and unequalled role in people's lives. With the speed-up of social development and the deepening of cultural and economic interaction, bilingual signs are frequently needed. The C-E translation of public signs has become an increasingly important medium for the outside world to know the country.It is since 21st century that the study on the translation of public signs has become a more attractive topic. Quite a number of researchers are specialized in this field. They analyze the translation of public signs from different perspectives based on diverse theoretical support, which have made great contributions to the study of public signs. However, few articles are written from the perspective of reception theory. This thesis is an attempt to apply it to Chinese-English translation of public signs.Reception Theory, also called Reception Aesthetics, rose as a new force in the 1960s. It was established on the basis of hermeneutics and phenomenology and its major representatives were Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser of the Constance School. Reception theory, mainly a literary criticism theory in a strict sense, lays emphasis on readers-centered idea. Establishing the reader's central position is one of the most important contributions reception theory makes. According to reception theory, the process of reader's reception of the text is the process of their re-creation as well as the realization of the literary work. A literary work is not solely created by its writer, but by the combined efforts of both the writer and its readers. Reception theory sheds new light on our cognition of translation. The points of view of Reception theory provide translation studies with entirely new theoretical angles and research method. It has great influence not only on translation of literary texts, but also of non-literary texts.In terms of Newmark's text typology, public signs should fall into vocative text, which also emphasizes the target language. The author proposes that reception theory be completely applicable to guiding signs translation. This thesis applies the TL reader centered theory of reception theory to the translation of public signs and argues that the translator should take into the TL readers' horizon of expectation, the language, cultural acceptability and aesthetic characteristics of the TL readers. At the same time, the author suggests three translation strategies on the basis of reception theory: international standards shall be followed, simple language shall be employed and hard words shall be avoided.This thesis tries to explore the translation of public signs from a new perspective. However, there remain limitations in the research. More efforts will be exerted in this respect to achieve better results.