On Public Sign Translation Under The Guidance Of Eco-translatology

On the10th of February2010, the122ndIOC session at Vancouver announcedNanjing as the host city of the second summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG). Oneyear later, in January,2011, China’s publicity advertisement “The Image of China”operated by state news agency Xinhua unveiled in Time Square. It was running a60-second video with high frequency and during which it released a slogan“Experience China体验中国” so as to invite friends from different culturalbackgrounds throughout the world to come to, to see and to experience China. Undersuch favorable circumstances, China with her host city of2014YOG—Nanjing willattract a large amount of visitors and international organizations from home andabroad.Public signs are the faces of a city. Whether public signs are widely used is anindirect reflection of the development degree of the city; whether they conform to thenorm of application is a checkout of the internationalization degree of the city;whether the translation of public signs is appropriate unfolds the overall quality of thecity. As an integral part of language and cultural environment of an internationalmetropolis, public signs characterized with accuracy, proper frequency and densityeffectively serve tourists, investors, diplomatic officers, and athletes from overseas inaspects of food, accommodation, transportation and recreation.Accordingly, with an eye on the future, this thesis conducts a field research onpublic signs in Nanjing area with special reference to Nanjing YOG. Based on thetheory eco-translatology, this thesis aims to make an analysis on inter-language andcross-cultural activities in public sign translation. The author elaborates the translationof public signs from aspects of translational selective adaptation and adaptiveselection through which it attempts to provide relatively highly effective theoreticaland practical guidance for public sign translation. From this research, readers areexpected to obtain a deeper and more extensive understanding of the nature, theprocess, principles and strategies of public sign translation. Meanwhile, the author hopes that this research could ameliorate the translational eco-environment of publicsigns in Nanjing and other cities, thus rendering a better service for friends from homeand abroad during and beyond the period of2014Nanjing YOG.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one is introduction. In this part, theauthor exhibits the rationale of choosing this topic, covering the research background,significance, objectives, methodology, data collection an organization of this thesis.Chapter two gives readers an overview of public signs and that of the previousresearches. In literature review of public signs, the author discusses definitions andfunctions of public signs and then makes a contrastive analysis on properties ofChinese and English public signs, and noticeably, gives a classification of signs withspecial reference to Nanjing YOG. Chapter three comes out with theoreticalframework. It provides the background of eco-translatology and gives a detailedexplanation for translation as adaptation and selection and the rationality of publicsign translation in light of this theory. Chapter four and chapter five are the main bodyof this thesis. Chapter four concentrates on the analysis of public sign translation asadaptation. In this chapter, the author chooses three aspects of multi-dimensionalselective adaptations to elucidate, namely, adaptation to target readers’ needs,adaptation to the environment and adaptation to the purpose of the source text.Chapter five conducts a research on adaptive selection in terms of multi-dimensionsof linguistics, culture and communication. Chapter six comes to the conclusion inwhich the author summarizes the major findings and limitations of this thesis, andalso gives suggestions for the further study.