论文总字数：36476字

摘 要

随着经济和文化的快速发展,中国与其他国家间的往来变得密切。国际间的友好往来和经济合作变得日益增多。公示语在文化交流中扮演重要角色。近来，许多学者致力于提高公示语的翻译水平，但是仍然存在一些问题。应该把前人的研究结果有效应用到社会现实当中，提出公示语的翻译原则和方法。有必要创造一个正确的国际通用的标示语环境。

在功能对等理论的视角下，以淮安作为例子，探讨当前淮安市汉语公示语翻译存在的问题。学者应该尽努力做到翻译正确，并使用借用、仿照和创新英语三个方法解决问题。

关键词：公示语；淮安；功能对等理论

Contents

1. Introduction.....................................................................................................1

2. Literature Review...........................................................................................3

2.1 The definition and functions of public sign..................................................3

2.2 Functional equivalence theory......................................................................4

2.3 Academic research on translation of public sign..........................................5

1. The Errors and Reasons of the Translation of the Public Sign in Huai’ -an.........................................................................................................................6

3.1 The errors......................................................................................................6

3.2 The reasons...................................................................................................8

4. The Strategies to the Problems of the Translation....................................10

4.1 Borrowing...................................................................................................11

4.2 Imitating......................................................................................................11

4.3 Creating......................................................................................................12

5. Conclusion.....................................................................................................13

Works Cited......................................................................................................14

1. Introduction

With China’s entry into WTO, more and more foreigners stream into China in increasing number, and most of them are speak English. It is an effective solution to build up an appropriate and idiomatic communication’s environment, which includes the accurate translation of public sign. “Signing affects everybody—travelers, shopper, visors, drivers, and etc.,whether in the course of business or pleasure. Bad imitating and at worst can be life threatening and dangerous.” came from Barry Gray, the Chairman of International Graphical Symbols Committee.

The language is the communicative bridge between human beings. The C-E translation of local public sign has become an integral part of communication. If people see the familiar China at overseas, they will feel at home. So when we use the accurate English public sign, it can make a wonderful impression on the foreigners and those natives who can understand English. Accurate expression and appropriate usage of the English public sign will play a suggestive and warning role in promoting the social image of promulgator. However, many problems such as spelling mistakes, using the phonetic transcription to translate, non-uniformity of names and non-standard literal translation, which will cause trouble about the daily life of foreigners in China.

The social civilization and prosperity are reflected in science and technology, industry and business, and environmental protection hygiene. In fact, as one of the criteria of the social civilization, language still needs to keep pace with the time and constantly improve itself.

When foreigners come to Chinese for the first time, the English public sign, such as the introductions, hints, guidance and etc are accurate, it will make them feel at home and convenient. Therefore, they can improve their work efficiently and be more favorable for China. As China integrated into the world, more and more foreigners come to China to visit and work. In the process of cross-cultural communication, English has become the most convenient communicative tool among people’s communication and the standardization of public sign, which has been turned into the necessity of a big city’s internationalization. The proper utilization of public sign will have an active and positive effect. On the contrary, the inaccurate expression will bring about misunderstanding and even the immeasurable loss. In this way, does the inaccurate English public sign gives rise to what kinds of detriment?

First of all, the foreigners don’t understand what the public sign means, so it doesn’t play a role in advertising or hinting primarily. In the second place, if there are some sentences expressing inaccurately and irregularly, which will lead to some laughs by the foreigners and mar the image of our country. What’s more, the inaccurate public sign will make a poor impression on the foreigners, which may influence the next step of communication and cooperation.

We should pay enough attention to the public sign, because its translation and expression can not only influence foreigner’s daily lives，such as food, accommodation, walk, journey and trade, but also reflect our country’s international image. We have to achieve the veracious and normative translation of the public sign, and only in this way can we achieve the demands of the social civilization and progress. As citizens, we have the duty to do that. There are some misinterpreted translations existing in public sign, which will mar the civilized images and international image of our country, so we must draw much attention to this problems. Under this international background, a higher degree of responsibility is proposed for requirements in communication and transmission for the information. In summary, public sign performs an irreplaceable role in the process of integration with outside world.

2. Literature Review

2.1 The definition and functions of public sign

The public sign refers to the word language that is open to public. It is a useful utility tool at our life to achieve a communicative purpose. The public sign has wide application in our daily life, and they can be seen everywhere. It is a form of language that shows itself to numerous people. As an important tool of communication, they use the simplest method to transfer the message to people in order to arouse the public attention and assure them to regulate their behaviors on the basis of the suggestive, restrictive and compelling requirements.

The public sign has particular social functions, which also has the functions of providing information and accomplishing instructions. It is applied to a very wide scope, involving almost all aspects of our daily life. The translation of the public sign is a country’s concrete expression about the outside humanism and environment.

According to all kinds of characteristics of the public sign, we can divide the public sign into four categories, including the suggestive public sign, the indicative public sign, the restrictive public sign and the compulsive public sign.

As the most fundamental function of the public sign, the suggestive public sign provides the concrete service information for general public, but it doesn’t imply any restrictive or compulsive information. In most occasions, it brings out great convenience to the general public and reduces a lot of unnecessary trouble. For example, the elevator is being “out of use”. When we don’t know where to go, we can look at the signposts which can give us some instructions.

The indicative public sign reflects the dynamic significance of the informational sign, which works as a hint in our daily life. For example, we often see the “warm prompt” and “friendly reminder”, whose purpose is to make the public pay attention to public sign and take action. It has some particular significance, because it emphasizes the behaviors and announcements which refer to the public immediate interests. For example, we can see the sign of “Look out for the pickpocket” on the bus. On the wall of the supermarket’s elevator, it has the public sign of “Mind your hand”.

The restriction is one of the functions of public sign, whose main role is to restrict and restrain the public behaviors. It emphasizes the action what the public take, and guides people directly but not impolitely. Under normal conditions, it requires the public to obey the regulations and requirements. For example, when we are near the pond, we usually see the sign of “Depth of Pool, Keep Out”. In the roadway, we often see the pubic sign of “Slow Out”, and in some specific channels, there are some sign of “Disabled Only”.

The compulsive public sign, which has the most strongest tone and doesn’t have any room for discussion. In most instances, it means that the public should do nothing but obey. In other words, they should or shouldn’t do something. As a general rule, the compulsive public sign is a criterion to express term under the national laws and regulations. For example, in the public, we often see the sign such as “No Smoking”, “No Minors Allowed” or “Don’t Walk”. The public sign doesn’t have any discussing room, so we can only accept and obey the rule.

2.2 Functional equivalence theory

The translation theory of “functional equivalence” is brought up by the American scholar, Eugene Nida. From the point of linguistics, Nida putted forward the famous equivalence theory “functional equivalence theory”. Two types of translation equivalence were putted forward by Nida, which will be discussed in the following parts. Formal equivalence and functional equivalence theory were formed during the practical process of his translation of the Bible (Tan.32). The functional equivalence theory is similar to the word-for-word translation, so it often cause the misunderstanding when we use the informal translation, but Nida and Taber found out that there were not always equivalent among different parts. They asserted that “the typical and formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor’s language, so influences the effect, so will make the receptor to misunderstand the meaning” (Nida,Taber,2004:201).

In his opinion, translation is to reproduce “the closet natural equivalence to the source-language message” in the receptor language rather than to get something absolute identically (1969:12). In 1993, he stressed again, “Equivalence doesn’t mean the mathematical meaning of identity, but proximity”. Judging from all above, we can see that the term “equivalence” is just a relative word which means “closeness” or “approximation”. Some of the criticism seems to misunderstand what “equivalence” exactly means in Nida’s eyes.

The theory enjoyed great popularity from 1960s to 1980s, but after the 1980s, the “equivalence” has become unpopular, because they thought it cannot achieve absolute “equivalence”. There existed similar situation in our countries, from 1980 to the late 1980s, the Nida’s functional translation was popular in China. But in the late 1980s afterwards, because of the word “equivalence”, more and more translation scholars began to doubt Nida’s theory, and many scholars believed it couldn’t attain “equivalence” in translation. In fact, “equivalence” in Nidas theory never has the meaning of absolute sameness, the intention of which can be made out by his education of “equivalence”. As follows: the translators must endeavor to equivalence rather than identity relation. In a sense, this is just another way of emphasizing the reproduction of message rather than the conservation of the utterance’s form.

In this theory, he pointed out that “Translation consists in reproduction of the receptor language which is the closet natural equivalence to the source language message, firstly in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style”. (Guo 65) . The dynamic equivalence includes four different kinds of equivalence, which include the word equivalence, the syntactical equivalence, the chapter equivalence and the stylistic equivalence. In the Nida’s eyes, “the meaning is the most important thing, while the form is the second”. (Guo 67). Hence, in the literary translation, according to Nida’s translation theory, the translator should obey the rule of dynamic equivalence of the four aspects to do the translation in order to reproduce the culture connotation of the source language.

2.3 Academic research on translation of public sign

The C-E translation of the public sign has aroused the attention of the academic research, and the international communication is affected by the translation of public sign. As we all know, the C-E dictionary on Sings was published and edited by Beijing International Studies University in 2004. With more and more researchers pay more attention to the translation of the public sign. Ren Jingsheng(2001) discusses five kinds of errors about the Chinese-English translation of placards. The errors include the Chinglish, incorrect diction, misuse of words’ meaning, harsh word-for-word translation, spelling and grammatical mistakes.

In his thesis Chinese-English Translation of Public sign in Wuhan from Functionalist Approaches, Yang Fan talked about the problems under the perspective of the functional equivalence theory, which exist in the Chinese-English translation of the public sign.

From above of all, it can be proved that the bilingual public sign has become the tendency. Cities regard tourism as their pillar industry, which is more sensitive to the improvement of the translation of public sign. With the deepening opening-up of China, increasing numbers of foreigners would like to “take adventure” in China. However, the inner cities with no edge in tourism yet. Anyway, it has been proved that functional equivalence theory can be adopted as the theoretical framework on the public sign translation.

3. The Errors and Reasons of the Translation of the Public Sign in Huai’ -an

3.1 The errors

Through on-the -spot investigation and analysis, the errors of Huai’an translation of public sign include spelling mistakes, using the phonetic transcription to translate, non-uniformity of names and the word-for-word translation.

3.1.1 Spelling mistakes

First of all, the road signs and doorplates are subordinated to the bilingual construction of Huai’an. If we take a careful observation, we will find out that many road signs are translated directly into phonetic transcription at our city, such as “桥” and “寺”，which are simply and directly translated into ‘qiao’ and ‘si’. For example, the “月季园”is translated into “yuejiyuan”, for us citizens, we can turn a blind to it, but it is an invisible barrier for the foreigners who don’t understand Chinese.

3.1.2 Use the phonetic transcription to translate

Our city has many scenic spots attracting the foreigners, but most of them are translated into phonetic transcription. In the vital traffic artery, we can see that translators use the same method to translate. Such as the “天参路”, which is translated into “Tianshenlu” directly, there are few foreigners can understand the type of English translation. It doesn’t work effectively for our Chinese people, because we can understand them without the translation. But for these people who don’t know Chinese, they don’t understand the translation of “lu”, so what significance does the public sign have? If we translate the “…lu” into “…road”, it may be more accessible for foreigners. This phenomenon not only occurs in the city of Huai’an, but also on the same pattern at many resorts of our country. If you pay attention to the public sign, you will find out many similar mistakes in other places.

3.1.3 Non-uniformity of names

Using the unified translation in the road signs and doorplates, it works positive and practical effect in our daily life. Toponomy, as one of the most frequent and versatile tool in social interactions, plays an important role. The translation of the bus sign is different from others in the Huai’an’s street. Besides, it is common for people to see all kinds of translation of the traffic sings in the main roads.

There are different sign of the same name, which has the different translation of the English appellation. What confuses us most is that the same road sign has two or even more translations. In this case, the directive function of the English translation does not work effectively in reality, because it not only wastes the time to understand what the road sign means, but also reduces the productivity.

3.1.4 The word -for-word translation

Sometimes, when one language is translated into another language, the pragmatic meaning is more important that the meaning of the words. In terms of the sentence structure and grammar, the word-for-word translation is incorrect, so it can’t express the real meaning of the original text. For example, “为了您的安全，请走人行道，勿在站场随意穿梭” was translated into”For Your Safetly, Please Walk On The Sidewalk”. If we translate it into “For Your Safety, Sideway, Please”, it will be easily received by foreigners. The sign was photographed at the station in Huai’an. Word-for-word translation is a common problem in the translation of public sign. It seems to be right to translate the sign word for word, since we have not found out any grammatical problems in the translation; however, it can’t be called concise.

For example, “National Excellent Tourist City You Are Welcomed by Huai’an” is translated from “全国优秀城市淮安欢迎您”. Every word has been translated but it sounds strange. Actually the true version should be “Welcome to Tourist City Huai’an”. The word-for-word translation is translating one language to another by translating the original text word by word, which is not grammatically right and doesn’t express the real meaning.

3.2 The reasons

There are many reasons contributing to the errors of translation in public sign. The diversity of the history, region and culture, the popularity of China, the polysemy of the translator’s carelessness are the major reasons.

3.2.1 The factors of the history, region and culture

Language is the carrier of thought, which in turn influences the language. As a kind of social phenomenon, the different thoughts are reflected in the language. The different ways of thought between Chinese and English lead to the differences in many aspects. Different countries have the different histories, and their religious beliefs and culture are different from each other. In the translations in the examples, the translators have not taken into account of whether it is received by foreigners or not. Because they don’t take into account their actual language usage, it is so easy to encounter a lot of errors in the translation of the public sign.

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