Guidelines For Assessing The Translation Outcome Of Public Signs

This thesis seeks to propose a set of guidelines for assessing the translation outcomeof public signs from multiple perspectives–communicative, functional and contextual.Based on the collected data, it first gives an overview of public signs in terms ofdefinitions, classifications and functions. Public signs are seen to perform directive,instructive, precautionary, restrictive and prohibitive functions. Then, the translationquality of public signs is studied within a broad framework of translation theories. Thetranslation outcome of public signs should be assessed at the linguistic, cultural andemotional levels by following the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule inthe contexts of situation and culture. Finally, a range of specific guidelines (clarity,conciseness, coherence, conventionality and comprehensibility) are proposed andillustrated with examples. This thesis is expected to offer useful insights into theassessment and improvement of the translation quality of bilingual public signs andinspire further studies in this area.