On Chinese-English Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of The Contextual Theory And The Theory Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Public signs are the written and graphic information open to the masses, which aim to inform, direct, prompt, indicate, warn, or mark some information to people. They are closely related to people's life, manufacture, ecology, occupation and recreation. Public signs target at the public, overseas tourists and foreigners in China, Chinese citizens who tour or do businesses overseas etc, and involve the basic public information of food, clothing, shelter, means of travel, tourism, entertainment and purchase behavior and demand and so on.With the constant acceleration of the process of China's internationalization, translation of public sign has attracted great concern of innumerable people. The coverage of public sign is so extremely broad that it goes without saying that the use and the significance of it are very important. In order to offer convenience to foreign friends, more and more public places are provided with corresponding English translation, which had become an important component of China's opening up.Moreover, the previous studies about translation of public signs mainly focused on the relevance theory, Skopostheory, intertextuality theory and the perspective of function and aesthetics, but the contextual theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection are seldom concerned.For compensation, this thesis takes the contextual theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection as the theoretical framework, seeking to open up a new perspective for C-E translation of public signs. The so-called context is an environment in which the specific language form appears; it can be divided into context in a broad sense and context in a narrow sense. Context in a broad sense refers to the social culture linguistic environment, that is, social culture forms on which language forms relied. It involves every aspect of human life, from basic necessities of life, manners and customs to values and so on. Context in a narrow sense refers to concrete linguistic environment in which language form appears, it also calls the situation.The so-called theory of translation as adaptation and selection is the process of translating interpreted from the perspective of adaptation and selection, translation could be viewed as the process of translator's selective adaptation and adaptive selection. Translation is, therefore, defined as a selection activity of the translator's adaptation to the "translational eco-environment". In the process of translating, the translator needs to both adapt and select. What the translator should adapt is to adapt himself/herself to the translational eco-environment; whereas what the translator should select is to select both the degree of his/her adaptation to the translational eco-environment and the final form of the target text to be translated. Specific to the public sign translation is that a translator must consider linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions in the translation process.Under the guidance of the two theories, five principles are proposed. They are the principle of succinctness and readability, the principle of being translated, elegantly translated and not being translated, the principle of parody, the principle of negative statement with positive use and the principle of creative translation.What is novel of the paper is the following two points.Firstly, applying the context theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection to C-E translation of public signs is a new perspective to the study of public sign translation.Secondly, five translation principles are proposed, which are helpful to the maturity of C-E translation of public signs.This paper consists of six chapters:Chapter One is a brief introduction to the objective, significance of current research, the main idea and structure of the thesis.Chapter Two is a literature review which introduces the definitions and classification of public signs, language features, as well as the current situation of public signs translation and its study in China.Chapter Three offers a theoretical framework of the contextual theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection, and introduces the significance of the contextual theory in C-E translation of public signs, the understanding of "adaptation " and "selection" in translation circles and the relationship between public signs translation and the two theories.Chapter Four is an attempt to apply the contextual theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection to C-E translation of public signs. In this chapter, firstly the author analyzes the problems existing in public signs translation, causes of improper translations and the roles of a translator in C-E translation of public signs. This chapter focuses on the application the two theories to C-E translation of public signs, that is, the translator needs to both adapt and select in the public signs translation. What the translator should adapt is to adapt him/herself to the translational eco-environment; whereas what the translator should select is to select both the degree of his/her adaptation to the translational eco-environment and the final form of the target text to be translated. Specific to the translation of public sign is a translator must consider linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions in the translation process.Chapter Five is translation principles the author proposed. They are the principle of succinctness and readability, the principle of being translated, elegantly translated and not being translated, the principle of parody, the principle of negative statement with positive meaning and the principle of creative translation.Chapter Six draws a conclusion that under the guidance of the contextual theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection can effectively prevent all kinds of errors and has an instructive significance to C-E translation of public signs. Last, the author puts forward suggestions for further research on C-E translation of public signs.