Translation Of Public Signs From The Point Of View Of The German Functional Theory Analysis

Since the reform and opening-up, China keeps on opening to the outside world. Each year, there are millions of foreign tourists come to visit and experience the culture and life of this great oriental country. As an internationally-used language, English now can be seen almost everywhere in China. It can not only bring convenience for foreign tourists but also reflect the development degree of China. Public sign is usually called as the "business card of a city", which reflects its importance to a city. Thus, quality of public signs directly affects a city's or area's image to the outside world.Governments have taken many so many measures in order to bring convenience for foreign tourists. For example, they have established a large number of bilingual public signs throughout the city or area. As lacking of effective management measures and standardized translation criteria, there are many problem exist in present public sign translation, which can be assumed as the results of misspelling, misuse of words, grammatical errors, etc.Taking the increasing importance of public signs into consideration, more and more experts and scholars have attached great significance to the research on public sign translation. China has made a certain progress in public sign translation in recent years. But, compared with foreign countries, China's research is still on its infant stage. Present researches are mainly centered on correcting translation errors and without using systematic translation theories. At the same time, the analysis is usually conducted from the perspective of linguistics, lacking of data support.The author of this thesis tries to make qualitative and quantitative analysis for the public sign translation based on Germany functional theories. At the beginning of the thesis, the author introduces the development status of pubic sign translation in China and reviews former relevant researches. Then, the author put forward that Germany functional theories can be used to guide the whole process of public sign translation based on the introduction to pragmatic features and functions of public signs. At the end of the thesis, some translation methods are put forward and construction of public sign translation standards in China is also introduced. To make the analysis more convincing, the author collects200public signs containing translation errors. Based on the collected samples, the author analyzes the frequency of each type of translation errors and their proportion.Based on the analysis, the author believes that public sign translation can be divided into three categories:lexical errors, syntactic errors and pragmatic errors. Lexical errors consist of misspelling and inappropriate use of words; syntactic errors consist of grammatical errors and inappropriate word order; and pragmatic errors consist of four types: euphemistic expression, abundant information, use of untypical expression and cultural interference. Based on the data analysis, the author finds out lexical errors appear most frequently, while pragmatic errors the least. To deal with the issue of how to improve public sign translation in China, the author believes that it should be analyzed from two aspects:the translators and the society. To the translators, they should apply varied translation methods while increasing their translation ability. The suggested translation methods include:borrowing, formula, annotation and zero translation. Local governments should constitute the criteria on public sign translation as soon as possible to standardize public sign translation. Meanwhile, the whole society should make efforts on the supervision and management of the public signs.The author hopes that there are more and more related researched in the near future. At the same time, the research could shed some lights on relevant personnel, including researches, translators, governments as well as producers of the public signs.