Abstract:With the fast development of the opening up to the outside world and the globalization, China has been undergoing rapid changes over the past decades .Many Chinese cities experienced rapid development and definitely open up further. The communication between our country and other countries become increasingly frequent. Most cities in China use bilingual signs in public places such as bus stations, airports, supermarkets and tour sites and so on. These bilingual signs are used to instruct, remind, request, warn people. These signs provide a convenient living and communication environment for foreign people. The bilingual signs become more and more standard and play an important role in foreign propaganda. However, there are still a lot of problems in the translation of public signs. If the translation of public signs is incorrect, it will mislead foreigners. What’s worse, because of the misunderstanding of the English culture in the translation of public signs, foreign people may feel unhappy, which will take a bad effect on the image of China. So we should make more efforts to do researches on the translation of public signs. To make sure the translation standard and correct is of profound meaning. In the essay，the common errors of the translation of public signs will be presented, such as Chinese English, grammatical mistakes and culture misunderstanding.

Keywords: public signs, translation，error，method 

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

Chapter 2 The Characteristics of the Translation of Public Signs-3

2.1 The Functions of Public Signs-3

2.2 The Language Characteristic of Public Signs-4

Chapter3 Common Errors in the Chinese-English Translation of Public Signs-5

3.1 Chinese English-5

3.2 Grammatical Mistakes-6

3.3 Misnomer and Culture Misunderstanding-7

Chapter 4 The Translation of Public Signs from a Cross-cultural Perspective-9

4.1 The Culture Translatability and Untranslatability of the Translation of Public Signs-9

4.2 The Cultural Aspects of the Translation of Public Signs-9

4.3 The Methods of the Translation of Public sSgns-10

Chapter 5 Conclusion-13

References-14

Acknowledgements-15