Research On C-E Translation Of Public Signs In The Scenic Spots Of Jiuhua Mountain

Public signs, as the first-hand information available to foreigners, serve as a window both to the Chinese and the foreigners. Jiuhua Mountain is a scenic spot under the priority protection of the nation, featured by long-standing Buddhist culture and unique natural landscape. It attracts millions of tourists every year. However, many translation problems and errors exist in the scenic spots of Jiuhua Mountain, such as lexical mistakes, grammatical mistakes and pragmatic failure.In the process of the literature survey, it was found that in the past study most efforts were made to study the translation problems in Jiuhua Mountain and public sign translation. But previous studies on the translation problems in Jiuhua Mountain mainly focused on the study of the cultural problems in terms of Buddhist culture. Previous studies on public sign translation mainly focused on the purely empirical studies without relevant theory as the guideline before 2005. Since 2006, many scholars have begun to combine theories with practice. However, most of the researches have been done from the perspective of functional translation theory. Studies on public sign translation from the aspect of pragmatics are new tendencies. The originalities of the paper are:(1) In this thesis, Speech Act Theory is applied to the studies on public sign translation, which has provided a new perspective for the study on public sign translation. (2) A more complete analysis of public sign translation problems in Jiuhua Mountain is made.The collected data in the scenic spots of Jiuhua Mountain have provided the first materials for the study. In Searle's terminology, public signs can be described as an illocutionary speech act with perlocutionary function. Every utterance is usually reified under the label of'illocutionary force', which is the most salient pragmatic purpose of an utterance, the performative intention that the utterance serves. Therefore, the successful transfer of illocutionary force is an important criterion for successful translation.The following aspects are embodied in the results of the study:First, the translation problems and errors in the scenic spots of Jiuhua Mountain mainly fall into three categories:linguistic, cultural and pragmatic aspects. Under the influence of the source language structure, cultural background and thinking patterns, the translators often fail to transfer the elements in the source language into those in the target language. Therefore, many translation problems and errors occur.Second, speech act theory combines translation studies with the text functions and attaches primary importance to the communicative functions, which is an effective theoretical basis to analyze the translation problems and errors in the scenic spots of Jiuhua Mountain.This paper is divided into six chapters. Chapter One is an introduction. It briefly explains the origin, the significance, the objective and the organization of the paper. Chapter Two is literature review. It introduces public sign and previous studies on public sign translation and Speech Act Theory. Chapter Three is theoretical framework which introduces Speech Act Theory and Illocutionary Force. Chapter Four makes a detailed analysis of the existent public sign translation problems in Jiuhua Mountain. Chapter Five is application of speech act theory in C-E public sign translation in Jiuhua Mountain. Analysis is made of the collected materials and then the translation strategies are discussed. In Chapter Six, the author draws a conclusion, explores the theoretical and practical implications of the study, points out the limitations of this study and offers suggestions for further research.