A Study On Translation Of Public Signs In Aspects Of Functional Equivalence And Cross-cultural Pragmatics

As a kind of public and communicating materials, public signs offer information in the forms of short language, pictures or graphics. It has the social functions of directing, prompting, restricting and compelling. Public signs can also reflect the cultural environment of a country. But improper public signs and their English translations can be seen in many places, which has aroused concern among all walks of life. In addition, under the context of globalization and pluralism, the good translation of public signs is more important and it plays a vital role during the process of cross-cultural communication.Study on public signs has been attached much attention in various fields in recent years, and many scholars have work on public signs for decades. Most study discusses the Chinese-English translation of public signs in register by pragmatics, translation, second language acquisition, cross-cultural communication, etc. The thesis has been focused on the employment of related theories in public signs translation through a qualitative approach with 120 samples collected. In light of cross-cultural translation and pragmatic translation, the discussion is based on the principle of functional equivalence.The results indicate that different language environment and cultural background are the main reasons for translation errors of public signs. So when translating public signs from Chinese to English, priority must be given to functional equivalence and translators should follow the language cultures or customs in English-speaking countries. This is the effective way to improve the current situation of public signs translation. It is hoped that the research can provide help to Chinese-English translation of public signs in China.