Achieving Optimal Relevance In The Chinese-English Translation Of Public Signs

Public signs are directly related to China's image in the eyes of foreigners, so the quality of public signs translation from Chinese into English is of vital importance, bearing on whether China can project a good image to the outside world. However, due to the differences in culture, ideology and social systems, what sounds appropriate in Chinese language or context may be inappropriate or even outrageous if the message is not properly translated.By examining translation errors in the light of relevance theory, the author believes that the nature of various errors committed in public signs translation can be accounted for by the failure to achieve optimal relevance with the minimum effort. In public signs translation, the translator serves as a two way communicator. On the one hand, the translator must understand the source text thoroughly with the regard to the language, context and culture and understand the communicative intention of the source text. On the other hand, the translator has to decide how to convey the communicative intention of the source text to the target audience within the framework of the source text and the target culture.The author finds that the translator must be bicultural as well as bilingual in order to achieve optimal relevance. Only when the translator is well versed in both target and source cultures will he or she is able to infer correctly from the source text and offer the communicative intention to the target reader. This requires the translator to be competent in both languages and adopt some effective strategies in the translation process such as direct translation, reconstructions, image transfer across cultures, explicitation and borrowing.