A Study On English Translation Of Chinese Public Signs From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

After China hosted the Olympic Games successfully, more and more foreignerscome to China every year for the purpose of visiting, studying or living in China.Public signs can be seen everywhere in our daily life. Bilingual public signs providegreat help and convenience for the foreigners in eating, travelling and living. Theidiomatic and standard bilingual public signs not only provide convenience forforeigners but also make them to know more about China. However, manyproblematic English public signs are still exit in China, which make the foreignersfeel confused. Thus, English translation of public signs is significant and worth ofstudying.Public signs play a significant role in giving direction, prompting, restricting andcompelling function. This thesis is an attempt to study translation of public signs fromthe perspective of Skopostheorie, aiming at establishing new translation methods andmaking some contributions to translation.This thesis systematically studies the English translation of public signs underthe guidance of the Skopostheorie and the features of public signs and makes anempirical study on the translation of public signs in Harbin. Through fieldwork, theauthor collects62samples of public signs in Harbin and classifies them into sixcategories according to their use in different places(road, metro, railway station,supermarket, restaurant, mall, hospital and campus). In order to see directly the C-Etranslation of public sings, the author gathers some public signs with differenttranslation versions. According to the translation standards of public signs in Beijingand the guidance of the Skopostheorie, the author finds out that the translation ofsome universal public signs is much better than some public signs with Chinesecharacters, especially in the translation of road signs. Therefore, proposing sometranslation strategies under the guidance of Skopostheorie. one is the iniversal publicsigns, the other is the Chinese-specific public signs. For example, in translting theuniversal public signs, the best choice is the borrowing strategy; in translating theChinese-specific public signs, strategies like Chinese Pinyin plus free translation,omission and creative method are much better.