A Study Of English Translation Of Chinese Public Signs From The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

Public signs are written and graphic messages that are open to the public, seeking to provide information, instruction, prompt, notifications or warnings concerning people’s livelihood, work, life, entertainment and the like. Their scope is so extensive that almost every aspect of people’s social life is covered. It’s undoubted that public signs have been an indispensable part of our society. Nowadays, with the dramatic progress of China’s internationalization, more and more foreigners have been coming to visit China. In order to facilitate their stay at our country, a more internationalized language environment is highly needed. Accordingly, the translation of Chinese public signs into proper English is of vital urgency and importance.With the growing awareness of C-E public sign translation, many a scholars have conducted abundant researches based on diverse theories, concerning adaptation theory, relevance theory, functional translation theory, text typology, etc. All these studies are of significant contribution to this research subject; however, these studies are insufficient. Till now, few people have touched on the perspective of speech act theory in the field of public sign translation. The characteristics of speech act in public signs have been imperceptibly neglected. As a key theory in pragmatics, the speech act theory was initiated by the celebrated British philosopher John L. Austin in1950s, detailedly expounded in the book How to Do Things with Words in1962and then constantly polished by its followers, among whom John R. Searle is the most influential one. The central viewpoint of speech act theory is to do something by saying something. A speaker performs three levels of a speech act simultaneously—the locutionary act, the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act, which respectively refer to the literal meaning of the utterance, the speaker’s real intention and the pragmatic effect on the receiver. Public signs, as a special type of social communication, are also intended to do something by means of verbal or non-verbal symbols. They express certain messages with written languages or pictures to achieve specific communication purposes, like directing, prompting, restricting and compelling. Public signs with certain illocutionary forces not only embody the real purpose of the designer but also directly or indirectly affect the public’s performance. In this sense, public signs also possess the nature of speech acts. In the process of translating Chinese public signs into English, the translator should firstly gain an overall understanding of the original text and then try to reproduce the illocutionary force in the translated one. The ideal public sign translation should be the one that foreigners will respond to the English translation just like we Chinese to the Chinese version. With the merits of speech act theory, translators can well catch the real intention of the public signs beyond their literal level and bring their pragmatic equivalence to the utmost degree. In view of this, it’s of great feasibility to study the English translation of Chinese public signs under speech act theory.Regarding speech act theory as the theoretical framework, the present study carries out a three-level working pattern in an attempt to provide some guidelines for the English translation of Chinese public signs. At the level of locutionary act, the surface meaning of Chinese public signs should be exactly expressed in the target versions, allowing no spelling, diction or grammatical mistakes. At the level of illocutionary act, whether the given public sign is direct or indirect, the illocutionary force in them is expected to be accurately perceived and equivalently represented in the English versions. At the level of perlocutionary act, various factors concerning socio-cultural contexts and target readers’ psychological needs deserve great attention. Among the three levels, the optimal equivalence of locutionary act should give way to that of illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. With those guidelines in mind, the author tentatively puts forward some strategies for the English translation of Chinese public signs under the framework of speech act theory. Take the distinctive features and aim-oriented functions of public signs into account, five translation strategies are proposed. They are borrowing, imitation, adaptation, combination of verbal and non-verbal symbols and zero translation.By employing a qualitative research methodology, this thesis probes into the English translation of Chinese public signs with five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction to the background, objectives, significance and methodology of the study and the structure of this thesis. Chapter Two pursues a literature review of public signs, in which its definition, features, classification and previous translation studies abroad and at home are presented. Chapter Three focuses on the theoretical framework of speech act theory. It not only concerns the historical background and progressive evolution of this theory, but also elaborates on the nature of translation and the explanatory power of speech act theory to translation. Chapter Four makes a detailed explanation of applying speech act theory to the English translation of Chinese public signs.It starts from the analysis of errors existing in Chinese public sign translation, and then concentrates on the feasibility and constructive guidelines for the English translation of Chinese public signs. In the end, five suggestive strategies for English translation of Chinese public signs under the speech act theory are proposed. Chapter Five brings a conclusion to the major findings and implications of this study as well as some limitations and suggestions for the future researches in this field.