A Pragmatic Approach To Translating Public Signs

This thesis studies the translation of public signs from a pragmatic approach. Along with economic globalization, peoples from different nations, cultures, language backgrounds communicate with each other more frequently. Consequentially, translation activities are seen everywhere. One evidence is the popular use of Chinese-English public signs in hotels, streets and roads, shops, streets, and other public places. Along with the development of translation activities, translation theory needs to make progress to direct translation practice.This study first introduces three theoretical achievements of pragmatics: relevance; speech act; and conversational implicature. Their enlightenments are proposed respectively:increasing shared knowledge and considering about receptor's cognitive environment and cognitive ability; identifying illocutionary force and producing translation with the same illocutionary force; making the translation faithful to the original implicature. With data from the public signs in Hainan Island, mistranslation is divided into pragma-linguistic mistranslation at lexical level, pragma-linguistic mistranslation at syntactic level, and socia-pragmatic mistranslation. In light of functions and characteristics of public signs, existing and typical translation mistakes, and pragmatics approach to translation, the writer proposes three strategies for public sign translation. They are transliteration; literal translation; and free translation. Free translation may apply deletion, adaptation, and rewriting techniques. The procedures of translation may include three steps:analyzing, constructing, and checking.