On The Translation Of Public Signs In Guiyang City From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Since the reform and opening-up in1978, public signs have existed as acommunicative way. Nowadays, there is an increasing amount of bilingual publicsigns appear in most cities in China. Proper English public signs have become anefficient and beneficial way to improve China’s image. However improper publicsigns in English version have made our foreign friends puzzled and discounted ourcity image. Problems in translating the public signs into English version should neverbe ignored.Many researches, which have been conducted in major cities, including Shanghai,Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Sanya, xi’an, and so on, show us the great importance of thepublic signs translation (PST). However, there is no research on PST in Guiyang, aprovincial city in southwest China, which enjoys beautiful scenery and pleasantclimate, and attracts more and more foreign friends, either for a tour or for aninvestment. So, research on the public signs translation in Guiyang is extremelyimportant.Most of the researches on public signs translation still only rest on: mistakes inspelling, vocabulary, and grammar; cases description rather than theoretical guidance.The originality of this paper lies in using the skopos theory to guide the public signstranslation. From the angle of the functionalist theory, this paper discusses thetranslator’s purpose in the translation process in choosing translation methods, thuspoints out the public sign translation is a complex process with purpose.This thesis includes five parts. The first part is the introduction, including reviewof the study, significance of the research, structure of the thesis and a summary. Thesecond part is the literature review, including definition of the public signs, functionsof the public signs, overview of public signs and public signs translation, existingfindings about public signs translation, limitations of the previous researches, and asummary. The third part is the theoretic framework, including formation of the skopos theory, development of the skopos theory, translation principles of the theory, and asummary. The forth part is the application of skopos theory to public signs translation,including existing problems in public signs translation in Guiyang city, skopos theoryin public signs translation, suggested approaches to public signs translation from theperspectives of reinforcing the authority’s responsibility and enhancing thetranslator’s professional contribution, and a summary. The last part is the conclusion,including major findings, limitations of the study, and suggestions for future study.In this paper, the author tries to make an analysis on the status of public signtranslation in Guiyang from the perspective of skopos theory. Firstly, the authordemonstrates the status of public sign translation research, and reviews formerrelevant researches conducted by many scholars in many cities. Secondly, the paperintroduces features and functions of public signs, and suggests that skopos theorycould be adopted in the process of public signs translation. At the end, based on casesstudy, the author introduces some translation strategies and improvement measurescan be used in public sign translation. The author hopes that the research is useful inacademic area and can be a reference in practice and accepted by relevant participants,including researchers, concerned government departments, translators, and signboardmanufacturers.