A Study On The Translation Of Chinese Public Signs From Cross-cultural Communication Perspectives

With the Reform and Opening Up policy, China is becoming an international country gradually, attracting more and more foreign travelers for sightseeing, study and business investment.Under such a circumstance, international communication is becoming more and more frequent and important. As an important media for promoting the city's image and providing guidance for strangers, public signs thus play a rather prominent role. Bilingual public signs not only express our humanistic care to foreign friends, but also help our country integrate with the world by enhancing our international image. Therefore, the translation of Chinese public signs into English is significant and we must attach sufficient attention. The translation quality of the public signs not only influences the readers obtaining accurate information, but also reflects the civilization level of a city, or even the whole country. The translation of public signs in China is not paid enough attention for a rather long time, and there is good room for improvement.Nevertheless, with more and more international activities being held in China, such as the Beijing 29th Olympic Games in 2008, the Shanghai 41st Expo in 2010 and the Guangzhou 16th Asia Games, the translation quality of public signs has achieved a qualitative leap due to the most attention paid than ever before. In the past few years, many foreign language researchers have already begun to systematically study the translation of public signs. Based on the past studies, integrating German functionalism theory and cross-cultural communication theories, from the perspectives of linguistic pragmatics and cultural communication and with examples of public signs translated during the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo, this thesis analyzes and compares the linguistic characteristics and differences between Chinese and English public signs, and further discusses the problems and solutions in the translation of Chinese public signs, in the hope of providing references to the translation of Chinese public signs in other fields in the future, thus conquering the language barriers, fertilizing our international communication with other countries, and finally realizing the common prosperity both economically and culturally.This thesis employs the Functionalism theory and Cross-cultural Communication theories to analyze and discuss the problems and solutions in translating Chinese public signs into English. According to the Functionalism, public signs translators should definitely know what the Skopos is and who the target readers are. In the sight of cross-cultural communication, public signs translators should be aware of the differences between Chinese and English cultures as well as differences between the characteristics of Chinese and English languages. Based on the relating theories of functionalism and cross-cultural communication, this thesis argues that the ultimate goals of public signs translation are accurate transmission of information with wide spread and communication of culture.