A Sociosemitiotic Approach To Translation Of Chinese Public Signs

It is well known that China has achieved great progress in many fields since reforming and opening up. In China many political, economic and cultural activities have been performed and more will be. It goes without saying that large numbers of foreigners have lived in China and more will crowd into China with the development of China. So translation of public signs becomes a must. But many problematic public signs exist in various forms such as the names of roads, shops, tourist literature, menus and some other publicity materials. Standardization of translation of public signs has become urgent; otherwise the situation will become disproportionate to the development.Public signs, once called placard, is generally and widely used now. Most public signs can be seen in the public places, with some words, or pictures, or both on boards. Public signs have close relation with our lives, and of course translated public signs are closely related to foreigners' lives in China. What's more, it has some great effect on the image of country. So we should explore the meanings and functions of public signs and make a thorough study on the translation of public signs so that they can provide the proper information to foreigners and serve as communicators.The thesis deals with the translation of public signs from the perspective of sociosemiotics. Translation is translating meaning which includes designative meaning, linguistic meaning and pragmatic meaning. Translation is the translation of these three meanings. Translation is exchanging culture, and the understanding of the meaning cannot ignore the factors of society environment. Language is a unique system of signs. It has six functions: expressive function, information function, vocative function, aesthetic function, phatic function and metalingual function. When analyzing the functions of source text, translators should take the whole text into consideration. The translation criteria from the perspective of a sociosemiotic approach is "correspondence in meaning and similarity in function". The criteria lay emphasis on the meanings and functions of language as a communication tool. Meaning and function are two inseparable sides for translation criteria. The author discusses how to translate different types of public signs from the perspective of sociosemiotics. The author also classifies the problematic public signs appearing in Hohhot City into several groups and analyzes them with sociosemiotic approach.