Research On The Communicative Translation Of Signs Based On Text Typology

With the deepening of the policy of reform, opening-up and the internationalization of China, signs are used more and more widely in China and so is the English version of these signs. The language environment of the cities throughout China has been improved. Nevertheless, even in some big internationalized and tourist cities, some necessary information is not presented in the form of signs, and the Chinese-English translation of some signs is incorrect or improper. Though constant attention has been paid to the correction of the errors that occur in the translation for almost 20 years, it still leaves a lot to be desired as there are so many errors prevalent. Therefore, the author of this thesis chooses the translation of signs as her research topic with the objective of finding out the effect the translation is intended and the strategies and methods that are to be adopted in order to fulfill the informative, vocative or phatic function of signs. This research is based on the qualitative analysis of abundant examples. The author of this research collects many signs together with their translations as samples, and classifies the errors in the translation into three types—linguistic errors, cultural errors and pragmatic errors from two aspects—linguistics and culture. An in-depth analysis is given to the causes of these errors.In view of so many errors, especially cultural errors prevalent in the translation of signs, the author attempts to find an approach that is suitable for the translation of signs on the basis of the text typology. According to the text typology and the functions of signs, the author classifies signs into three types: informative signs, vocative signs, and phatic signs. In order to achieve the"equivalent effect"of the translation, the translator should adopt the communicative translation approach to translate signs.The communicative translation approach only provides the translator with a framework while no specific translation methods are discussed. Therefore, the author of this thesis discusses several methods pertaining to the communicative translation with regard to different types of signs. For informative type of signs, literal translation is suggested because the ultimate purpose of informative signs is to transmit the information to the readership; for vocative type of signs, borrowing and re-creative translation are suggested and because of the expressive function of some vocative signs, semantic translation is suggested to combine with communicative translation; for phatic type of signs, both literal translation and adaptation are suggested.Despite of its limitation, this research is significant in both theoretical and practical aspects. Theoretically, it proves that it is feasible to analyze the types of signs on the basis of the text typology and apply communicative translation approach to translate signs; practically, it suggests several methods for the translation of signs which help to avoid the cultural errors and pragmatic errors.