Chinese-English Translation Of Public Signs In Light Of Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory

With the rapid development of China's economy and the increasing deepening of China's reform and opening-up policy, especially after the entrance into the WTO and the success in winning the bid of the 29th Olympic Games, China has received an ever-increasing attention from the rest of the world and more and more overseas friends travel to China every year. Under this circumstance, bilingual public signs become a window from which the overseas friends can have a good understanding of China. Public signs are frequently used in our daily life and impact every aspect of our life. Therefore, the translation of public signs is of great importance to the foreign exchanges and the development of our country.In China, since researches on the C-E translation of public signs start fairly late, public signs of low-quality and inaccuracy such as spelling errors, grammatical errors, etc. have existed for a long time and some mistranslations are even very "famous" among the foreigners, which have greatly damaged China's international image. The poor condition of the C-E translation in China goes against the positive condition of a rapid development as well as the deepening foreign exchanges in current China.However, the Olympics held in China recently pushed the researches on public signs translation to a high point—an increasing number of scholars, websites, newspapers and even volunteers are participating in the campaign for a standardized sign language environment. This thesis intends to do a practical research on the C-E translation of public signs based on Nida's functional equivalence theory.In terms of theory, the functions of public signs are mostly emphasized compared with other types of translation such as literature and therefore the author suggests that to judge whether an English public sign successfully fulfills its task, translators should make a comparison between the original public sign and its translation by applying Nida's functional equivalence theory into the comparison. As far as the functions of public signs are concerned, there are four recognized functions among scholars, namely, directing, prompting, restricting, compelling. In the thesis, the author makes a more specific classification of the functions by referring to some western scholars' classifications on text function as well as those recognized classifications, namely, informative function, prompting function, restricting function, compelling function and vocative function. Moreover, the author cites Zhu Lin's three practical classification of public signs and makes an analysis of each of the three categories.In terms of practice, in the thesis the author makes an analysis by citing many examples concerning public signs, slogans for many big events such as the 29th Olympics and the Shanghai Expo in particular. Based on the method of comparing the function of the original public sign and its translation, the author reveals the common problems both on linguistic level and cultural level and proposes some solutions. The author believes that citing those public signs prevailing and familiar to the public will achieve a much better effect in arousing people's attention to the issue.The author intends to make some contributions to the current research on the C-E translation of public signs.