C-E Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

With the functions of directing, prompting, restricting and compelling, public signs area special practical literary genre commonly seen in public places and they consist of writtenwords and pictographs. Widely applied in many aspects and on many occasions, includingpublic life, production, ecology and means of livelihood, public signs are becoming more andmore important in our social life. With the proceeding of economic globalization, thecommunication between China and other countries around the world is getting more andmore frequent, and people from all walks of life in the whole world come in droves to Chinafor business or sightseeing. In order to promote intercultural communication and internationalcooperation, and to facilitate foreigners’ eating, living, travelling, sightseeing, shopping andentertaining in China, public signs have taken on a bilingual form in many cities, scenic spotsand even small towns. And the quality of English public signs could affect foreigners’ dailylife and China’s international image directly. So, C-E translation of public signs is graduallyarousing the close attention on the part of many experts and scholars, who study and probeinto public signs and their translation from different theoretical perspectives. For example,Shu Huijuan, Fan Guifang, Zhao Zhiying, et al. studied public signs translation from theperspective of Eco-translatology, Intertextuality, Relevance Translation Theory, etcrespectively. But up till now there are few people who have done research on public signstranslation from the perspective of Speech Act Theory. So, this thesis studies pubic signstranslation from the perspective of Speech Act Theory. It is hoped that the result of thepresent study will, to some extent, push forward the research of C-E translation of publicsigns theoretically and practically.Public signs are special kinds of speech acts. They not only convey some kinds ofinformation through written words, pictograms, or arrows but also, at the same time, performsome kinds of speech acts with some specific communication purposes or intentions likedirecting, prompting, restricting, compelling, etc. Thus public signs carry with them a certainkind of illocutionary force which not only reflects the real intentions or purposes of the makeror producer of the public signs but also affects the public unconsciously. From the datacollected, different levels of C-E translation problems of public signs are found in language, culture, pragmatics, etc. At the level of locutionary act, it would be OK to guarantee a correctliteral translation of public signs. At the level of illocutionary act, the intentions of publicsigns are confined to cultural convention and stylistic convention. In the process oftranslating public signs from Chinese to English, the translator should firstly compare andcontrast the differences in convention between Chinese and English public signs at thecultural level and stylistic level, and then follow the convention of Chinese public signs at thecultural level and make efforts to conform to the convention of English public signs at thecultural level and stylistic level. At the level of perlocutionary act, the translator shouldmeasure C-E translation of public signs from the aspect of pragmatics. In a word, a successfulC-E translation of public signs should guarantee the transformation of the three levels ofspeech acts.Studying public signs translation from the perspective of Speech Act Theory will bringnew inspirations to the practice of C-E translation of public signs and help translators tobetter understand and grasp translation principles in practice. In addition, the present researchcan provide guidance for analyzing and evaluating the quality of C-E translation of publicsigns to a certain extent.