A Study On English Translation Of Chinese Public Signs-A Pragmatic Equivalence Approach

As public signs are commonly used in our daily life, the translation of public signs is also commonly seen in our daily life. Especially at present, with China's fast development, and China's host of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and a large number of other international events held in China, more and international tourists from all over the world are coming to China. Public signs in China play an indispensable role in politics, economy, culture, tourism and daily contacts with foreign friends. Therefore, the translation of public signs into English is becoming increasingly important. The quality of these translations proves even more significant and study on strategies to improve the quality gets more pressing.In this thesis, the author first reviews the classical expositions on translation. In the second chapter, the author introduces the generation and function of public signs. Following that some problems existing in public sign translation are discussed from linguistic and cultural aspects. This thesis gives a thorough analysis to the problems and causes in the public sign translation. In the main body, the author first propose that the translation of public signs into English chiefly requires the macro-strategy called domestication, and secondly the author puts forward five techniques such as reversion of wording or ways of expression, familiarization with the target idiomaticity of sign expressions, abbreviation of the lengthy translation in the target language, determination of the context in which the signs occur, and attention paid to cultural factors and employment of generalization in the target language. It is believed that these strategies will give some tentative solutions to problems that frequently crop up in public sign translation process.As is often the case, there might be other techniques that might be applicable to the achievement of pragmatic equivalence. The one we propose certainly leaves much to be desired, and we firmly believe that there must be some limitation to the application of these strategies in the real translation practice of public sign translation process.