On the Linguistic Features of Public Signs and Their Translation Strategies开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

With the rapid development of Chinese economy, more and more foreigners have been attracted by Chinese culture. They came here to travel or invest. As is known , public signs, usually in the form of a few words, pictures, or words accompanied with a picture, function are not only a #8220;face#8221; of a city and a nation, but also a first calling card given to the foreigners. However, at present, many translators or translation researches mainly focus on how to translate the public signs in a faithful way, hence failing to take the functions of the signs into consideration. The translation of public signs should be attached great importance to. When we translate these signs, we should take strategies.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

this paper focuses on the features of public signs and the influences of cultural differences on the translation of public signs and states the existing problems in translation and the translation strategies.

outline

1. introduction

3. 国内外研究现状

A public sign is a special kind of writing style. It can be always seen in public places, catching people''s attention by using only several words or just by a simple picture. It is defined in Webster#8217;s New Collegiate Dictionary (1977) as #8220;a posted command, warning, or directed#8221;. According to Macquarie Dictionary (Butler, 1987), a sign is #8220;an inscribed board, space, serving for information, advertisement, warning, on a building, along a street, or the like#8221;. According to these definitions, signs can contain words, pictures, or drawings used for giving information, warning. The application of public signs are very common in our daily life, including food, clothing, shelter, and means of travel, to education as well as other fields, which almost covers every here and there. Public sign are of great importance in standardizing people''s activities, encouraging production, building a harmonious society and so on. #8220;Public signs in English are essential to international tourists. The static and dynamic indications, the directing, prompting, restricting, compelling effects are the functional features of the language applied on them. Translators could work more effectively if they take note of the functional features, the language style, the cultural and legal environment of the expression in English on public signs.#8221; (吕和发) On the one hand, the non-standard and inappropriate signposts can be seen almost everywhere in our country; on the other hand, the importance of accurate Chinese-English translation of public signs has not been realized by the society. As Newmark put it, #8220;Literal translation attempts to readers, as closely as the semantic syntactic structure of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.#8221;(Newmark, 2001:39)So we should apply strategies to translating public signs.

4. 计划与进度安排

In the first part, I introduce my thesis. Our country becomes stronger, and she has more communications with foreign countries. More and more foreigners come to China, and public signs guide people#8217;s daily life. There are still many problems needing to be fixed and translators should learn more translation strategies. In the second and third part, I try to find out the definitions and features of public signs and compare the current translation of public signs with those in the past and in foreign countries. In the forth and fifth part, I state some translation strategies, such as amplification, omission, analogy and reorganization by giving some examples. In the sixth part, I conclude all these parts and state my opinion.

5. 参考文献

[1].newmark,peter.a textbook of translation,2001

[2].merrian webster.webster#8217;s third new international dictionary,2008

[3].nord,christane.text analysis in translation.amsterdan,1991