On Pragmatic Failures And Their Avoidance Strategies In C-E Translation Of Forbidden Public Signs

With the development of China’s economy and its increasing opening up to the outside world, C-E translation of public signs has gradually become one of the focuses of the social concern. The research object of this thesis is "forbidden public signs (FPSs)"which refer to the signs negating or prohibiting a certain kind of behavior of the public, and usually a certain behavioral tendency of people is to be restricted or prohibited. The characteristics of such signs are as follows:simple in structure, economy in expression and frequent application of negative words. The British linguist Jenny Thomas initiated "pragmatic failure" and defined it as "the inability to understand what is meant by what is said". The pragmatic failures in C-E translation of public signs seriously influence the communication and information transferring among people, which has become an important research subject in pragmatics.This thesis applies the method of combining qualitative research with typical examples, collects a large number of data of FPSs, and explores the pragmatic failures in C-E translation of FPSs. The result shows that pragmatic failures in C-E translation of FPSs consist of pragma-linguistic failures and socio-pragmatic failures. The causes for such failures include the linguistic differences, cultural differences between Chinese and English and various subjective causes. Guided by pragmatic equivalence theory, the author proposes the avoidance strategies for pragmatic failures in C-E translation of such kind of signs. It also suggests the things that should be done by the sign author, translator, target reader and government functional department. Accordingly, the pragmatic failures and even non-standard issues in C-E translation of FPSs should receive attention and correction in a bid to better promote cross-cultural exchanges.