A Social-Semiotic Analysis Of English Translation Of Course Titles

Since reform and opening up,China has become the world's largest source of international students,and the third biggest host country.Although many domestic universities provide English transcripts for their students,the qualities of translation are uneven:some English course titles are clear and coherent;some are obscure and ambiguous.English course titles are essential both for Chinese students "going out" and for attracting foreign students to "come in".A high-quality translation of course titles embodies the overall image and reputation of a university.The present thesis adopts a socio-semiotic approach in exploring the features and meanings of university course titles.The theory of socio-semiotics investigates the generation,transmission and interpretation of symbols,and regards translation as an inter-symbolic communication in a certain social and cultural context.This study evaluates the inconsistency between the translation and source texts from the perspectives of referential,intralingual,and pragmatic meaning,thereby summarizing the currents problems in course title translation.The study finds that one maj or problem is the tendency of literal translation,which often results in the loss of source texts' referential meaning.Besides,due to the paratactic feature of Chinese language,translators have difficulties in distinguishing the intralingual meaning between adjacent words.Finally,some course titles use flavorful vocabularies with pragmatic meaning,adding complexity to the translation.By improving the current translation,this thesis bears useful practical implications for future translation of course titles.