On C-E Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the successful holding of the2008Olympic Games, the2010ShanghaiExpo and the2011Xi’an Expo, China’s communication with other countries hasgreatly increased. And many cities have adopted bilingual public signs. However,there are many non-standard and even inaccurate translated public signs that willdamage our country’s image. Therefore, the author of this thesis choosesChinese-English (C-E) translation of public signs as her research topic in order tohave a deeper understanding of the problem.In the framework of Relevance Theory (RT), put up by Sperber and Wilson, thisthesis on one hand summarizes the features and functions of public signs and sometypical errors in translation of public signs; on the other hand, the thesis makes atentative attempt in describing the dynamic procedure of C-E translation of publicsigns, setting up a translation criterion and defining the different roles of signs makers,translators and target readers.According to Thomas’ concept of pragmatic failure, the thesis classifies theerrors in public sign translation into two kinds: pragmalinguistic failures andsociopragmatic failures. And the author tries to give a detailed analysis of the possiblereasons based on a large number of examples and suggest some translation methods,including: borrowing, adaptation, substitution, creative translation and no translation.