Research On Translation Of Public Signs In Taiyuan

The public sign, as a kind of applied writing, can be seen everywhere and adopted to inform, warn, prompt and restrict the public. With wide application range, public signs are closely related to our daily life. In the new phase of reform and opening to the outside world, China is gradually integrated with the world and international exchange and cooperation are increasingly frequent. Thus, the number of foreign investors and travelers in China is increasing with years, which makes public signs translation an urgent task for many cities. Therefore, research on public signs translation is of great practical value. In spite of some accomplishments, the research on combination of translation practice and theory is inadequate due to the short history of public signs in China.The public sign, as a kind of pragmatic writing, emphasizes the function and intention of language and attaches much importance to the reproduction of source language’s function and target readers’response. Skopostheorie, a functionalist approach to translation, pays much attention to text function in target language and readers’ response, thus it is skopos that should be applied as the guiding theory of translating public signs.Taiyuan is the political, economic and cultural center of our province. The construction of bilingual signs system, to a certain extent, is a symbol of a city’s internationalization. A field survey shows that there appear a number of problems in public signs translation in Taiyuan, which severely damages the international image of our city. Through my practical survey, it is found that the problems embraced in public signs translation in Taiyuan mainly consist of three types:(1) the English translation of a number of public signs of much importance is not provided;(2) many public signs are only accompanied by their Chinese pinyin which means nothing to foreigners;(3) to some public signs with their English translation, there also exist a quantity of errors in those English expressions, such as grammatical and pragmatic errors, spelling mistakes, Chinglish, and so on. Through analysis of a large number of practical translation cases about pubic signs, this thesis summarizes the existing problems and brings forth some practical solutions. With the assistance of field investigation, contrastive analysis, text analysis and functionalist skopostheorie, this thesis concentrates on discussing the translation principles and criteria of public signs and subsequently providing reasonable translation, which can contributes to the construction of bilingual signs system in Taiyuan.