A Study On Public Sign Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance And Adaptation Theories

With the accelerated steps of China’s economic, scientific, and technicaldevelopment as well as the strengthening of comprehensive national power, China’sinternationalization is in constant progress. China has become one of the focuses ofthe whole world for the reason of the2008Beijing Olympic Games, the2010Shanghai World EXPO, the2010Guangzhou Asian Games, and the2011ShenzhenUniversiade. The standards and accurateness of public sign language can fullyembody our world image. Public sign is a special style of language which opens tothe public to achieve some special purposes. Urban public signs mainly use Chineseand English to provide convenient environment for foreign friends who are living ortravelling in China. However, many urban public signs have been mistranslated, orhave some translation errors due to the lack of public sign translation researches.Public signs not only relate to the construction of international language environmentin China, but also a window of foreign publicity. Consequently, public signtranslation has great significance in reality.Based on relevance and adaptation theories, this paper gives a further research aboutpublic signs translation. From the perspective of relevance theory, translation is adouble ostensive-inference communication process. During this process, thetranslator plays two characters: the reader and the communicator. The process of public sign translation is on the basis of the original the writer’s ostention, and thetranslator uses inferential communication from the view of readers throughnon-demonstrative inference to understand writer’s original communicative intentionin the text, and achieve the original author’s mutual manifestness. Then, thetranslator takes the reader’s cognitive environment into account, and expressesinference to target audience. What’s more, the optimal relevance analysis oftranslation of public signs helps public signs achieve optimal relevance conversion oftranslation.According to the adaptation theory, the process of language use is the process ofmaking a choice whether the choice is conscious or not, and whether the reasons arelanguage-relevant or not. Language users are able to make various appropriatechoices in the process of language translation, because the three key notions ofunderstanding the process of “making choices” are variability, negotiability, andadaptability. It reveals that the public sign translation is a constant process ofselection and adaptation. On the basis of optimal relevance conversion, theadaptation theory is a process of translation through the analysis of real data andexamples. In the fifth part, the author suggests some translation strategies aiming toprovide some references for public sign translation in order to draw experts andscholars’attention to and consideration of the translation of public signs.