C-E Translation Of Public Signs From The Memetic Perspective

With the development of world economy and culture, China has a closely connection with other countries through the frequent cooperations and communications, especially after successful entering into WTO and holding of2008Olympic Games,2010Shanghai Expo and2011Xi’an Expo. At the same time, public signs, as a carrier of culture, play an important role in cultural exchanges. It serves as a voiceless ambassador, shows the image of our country and offers convenience and information, such as directing, reminding, restricting and compelling information, etc. to local and foreign people in the daily life. In order to provide a better environment for more and more foreign people, C-E translation of public signs is a big issue for our Chinese. However, there are quite a lot of problematic translations in practice. Facing with this situation, this thesis will analyse the C-E translation of public signs from the memetic perspective.Memetics is a hot theory in recent years. It is the scientific study on cultural evolution based on Darwin’s Evolution. Simply speaking, it is the study of "meme" and takes "meme" as the core concept, which was coined by the famous Oxford zoologist, Richard Dawkins in his famous book The Selfish Gene. It suggests a strong analogy with genes. Meme is replicated and transmitted via imitation from one person to another and then to achieve the cultural evolution. In Dawkins’view, anything can be called memes as long as it is replicated by imitation, such as tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, and ways of making pots or of building arches. It is the unit of cultural transmission and is subject to the "survival of the fittest" which is replicated by imitation in the whole process.From the memetic view, language is considered as a kind of memes. Public signs as a special form of language also can be treated as the public sign memes. According to translation of memes, it tries to explore strategies of translating sign memes by the "A-B-C" approach, namely "Adapting approach","Borrowing approach" and "Creating approach". In the translation practice, when there is a similar sign meme, adapting approach should be adopted by making some changes of the original one; when there are some equivalences in English culture, we directly borrow them from the source culture; and when there are unique sign memes in the target culture and meanwhile cannot find in the source culture, we apply "creating approach" to create the new translating sign memes.This thesis will help more and more people concern on the emerging theory and will provide some strategies for the standardizations on C-E translation of public signs from the memetic angle.