C/E Translation Of Public Signs From Pragmatic Perspective

With the accelerating development of China's economy and opening to the outside world, the economic cooperation and friendly exchanges between China and the outside world tend to increase greatly as the same as extroverted contacts and global communications. Therefore, more and more Chinese-English bilingual public signs appear in public, which is the distinguished feature of the updating development of modern cities in China.Since public signs attach great importance to social lives and international images of China, public signs translation appears to be of growing significance and emergency. However, regrettable mistakes in public signs translation can be frequently observed, due to the unique linguistic features and diversified functions of English public signs. Since pragmatics and translation study share the common target-language comprehension and interpretations, this thesis intends to tackle this problem in terms of pragmatic translation. We can especially apply its relevance theory into pragmatic translation of public signs for pragmatic analysis and as guiding strategies in daily practices.Pragmatic translation is to discuss the practical problems of translation in the aspect of pragmatics. It is essentially an equivalent translation theory, which aims at achieving equivalence both in sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics. Pragmatic translation is based upon relevance theory raised by Sperber & Wilson, which endeavors to achieve optimal relevance between original text and target context. If optimal relevance cannot be obtained, pragmatic failure, i.e. the inability to understand what is meant by what is said, will occur. This thesis illustrates sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic equivalence as well as the causes of pragmatic failure with a great number of examples.According to the ternary relation based on relevance theory, this thesis also attempts to define the respective roles of the author of original text, the translator and the reader of translation, and then points out that only through the coordination of the above three parties can optimal relevance be ultimately achieved and pragmatic failures be prevented from occurring in the process of public signs translation.