Domestication And Foreignization In English Translation Of Public Signs From The Perspective Of Memetics

Chinese public signs play an irreplaceable role in our daily life. Their English translation is of great significance to improve our international image and promote our interaction and economic cooperation with other countries. Domestication and foreignization are two basic translating strategies, whose appropriate adoption could not only transmit information better, but also be beneficial to the standardization of English public signs.Memetics is the scientific study on the cultural evolution based on Darwin's Evolution Theory. In memetics, a meme is transmitted and spread through people in the social environment. Language itself can be described as a set of memes. Therefore, public signs, as a type of language, can be considered as memes.A good public sign meme is characterized by its publicity, wide acceptability and high transmissibility. In the translation practice, when a public sign meme has already been a strong meme in the source language, and when there is no equivalent for this source meme in the target language, foreignization should be adopted. While the main merit of domestication is to convey the information clearly and accurately so as to avoid misunderstanding and confusion. In public sign translation, if the public sign meme in the source language has an equivalent in the target language, which is an idiomatic expression or a conventionalized routine enjoying high acceptability among people, such a strong meme should be employed in the domesticating translation.Public signs can be categorized into three types, marking signs, noticing signs and slogans. For marking signs, which are usually the names of some scenic spots that carry exotic favor, foreignization and domestication are both adopted. For noticing signs, domesticating method is a better choice, because there are always conventionalized memes in the target language, which are more familiar to the target readers and more widely accepted. For slogans, in order to reproduce the contents and tones more appropriately, the two strategies should be adopted more carefully. Cultural elements also play an important role in the translation of them in public signs. Foreignization enjoys a higher frequency than domestication with the purpose to spread Chinese cultural memes into other cultures. Whereas domestication is adopted in the translation of fixed structures or fixed expressions of public signs in order to give familiar, explicit and direct memes to foreigners.The thesis also tries to explore some ways to create strong public sign memes by the adoption of the two translating strategies. The application of genotype and phenotype, humor and rhetorical devices are effective ways to make the public sign memes easily noticed, remembered, accepted and transmitted by target readers.This paper aims to shed light on a better quality of English translation of public signs. Supported by the memetic theory, the two strategies are appropriately adopted to solve the practical translation problems.