An Error Analysis Of The Chinese-English Translation Of Public Signs At Tourist Attractions Based On Sociosemiotics

After the success in hosting Beijing2008Olympic Games and Expo2010Shanghai, people all over the world have seen China’s increasing national power and enjoyed its particular charm. More and more foreigner tourists are attracted to China. In this condition, it is quite essential for the nation to create a comfortable environment for the foreign tourists. Public signs at tourist attractions, as words or graphs providing the public with indicating, restricting or compelling information, contain of many cultural messages and special communicative functions. When translating them, because the target readers are foreign tourists visiting China, translators shall, first and foremost, make the translation understandable to them. Then they shall try their best to keep the inner cultural messages in the original Chinese version. There are great challenges for them. At present, qualities of the translation of public signs at different tourist attractions in China are quite different. Various errors appear, which may be harmful to the nation’s reputation in the world.Based on sociosemiotics, the study analyzed qualitatively the Chinese-English translation of the300public signs collected from different tourist attractions from two aspects:the types of errors and strategies to improve the translation. The research questions are:firstly, what are the errors in transferring the sociosemiotic meanings in C-E translation of public signs at tourist attractions; secondly, how to improve the quality of translation and to eliminate these errors.The study shows that errors in transferring different sociosemiotic meanings in Chinese-English translation of public signs at tourist attractions are different. based on sociosemiotics, the thesis puts forward some strategies to improve the Chinese-English translation of public signs at tourist attractions, aiming at being helpful to the normalization and standardization of the translation of public signs at tourist attractions in China.