Translating Public Signs In Yantai

The so-called "public signs" are signs that are shown publicly and widely used in publictransportation services, scenic spots, streets and counties, public institutes, the serviceorganizations, traveling facilities, the entertainment, the medical service, the science andresearch organizations, and so on. With the rapid development of the international exchangesand the intensification of China’s reform and opening-up policy, public signs, functioning as acommunication bridge between Chinese and foreign people, play a more important role inbuilding China’s international image and facilitating intercultural communication. Yantai, abeautiful seaside city, has always been a great attraction to many foreigners. Its public signsalso have the indispensable role in improving Yantai’s international image and spreading itsculture. But there are prevalent errors in public sign translation in Yantai. Therefore, theauthor of this thesis chooses the translation of public signs in Yantai as the research topic fromthe perspective of text typology theories with the objective of finding out the communicativeeffects that public sign translation is intended to achieve and of exploring the translationstrategies and methods that are to be adopted in order to fulfill the informative, vocative,expressive functions of public signs in Yantai. Text typology theories constitute the theoreticalframework of the present research, which includes Reiss’s text typology theory and that ofNewmark with the focus on the classification of text types and communicative translationstrategies. The two text typology theories are complementary in nature as Reiss’s texttypology stresses the functions and skopos of the target text while Newmark’s emphasizes thesource text. Therefore, the author combines them to study public sign translation in Yantai.The problems in public sign translation are analyzed from two aspects: problems on thelinguistic level and on the cultural level. Then their causes are explored in order to wellanalyze and translate public signs in Yantai based on text typology theories. In view of somany translation errors, especially cultural errors prevalent in the translation of public signs,the author attempts to find an approach that is suitable for the translation of public signs fromthe perspective of text typology theories. According to the text types and functions of public signs, the author classifies public signs in Yantai into four categories: informative public signs,vocative public signs, expressive public signs, and compound public signs. In order to achievethe "equivalent effect" of the translation, it is highly advisable that the translator should adoptthe communicative translation approach to translating public signs. Several methodspertaining to the communicative translation approach are discussed with regard to differenttext types of public signs. For informative type of public signs, literal translation andborrowing methods are suggested because the ultimate purpose of informative signs is totransmit the information to the readership; for vocative type of public signs, borrowingmethods and re-creative translation methods are suggested; for expressive type of public signs,semantic translation method is suggested; and for the compound public signs, the methods ofcombining semantic translation with communicative translation, amplification, andprominence are suggested. These strategies can help to avoid the problems and improve thetranslation of public signs in Yantai.