Abstract

A rapidly increasing number of bilingual public signs appear on roads and in streets within more and more Chinese cities. This may be the consequence of the authorities’ ambition to show the level of modernization and internationalization resulted from the acceleration of economic globalization and the promotion of China’s international influence. However, the pragmatic failures in the English translation on public signs seriously impair the information transferring to people. Thus, such failures have become an important research subject in pragmatics.

In this thesis, pragmatic failures that frequently occur on bilingual public signs within Chinese cities are investigated and analyzed based on pragmatic failure theory proposed by Thomas. They can be classified into pragma-linguistic failures and socio-pragmatic failures. Then the author analyses the causes of pragmatic failures in translating public signs from Chinese to English. Overall, the reasons could be explained by the subjective reasons and the linguistic differences and cultural differences between the two languages. At last, the author systematically put forward five feasible strategies to avoid such failures containing borrowing based on corpus, amplification and addition, omission and non-translation, negation and management strategy. Conclusively, the pragmatic failures on public signs should receive more attention and deserve effectively correction in order for better cross-cultural exchanges. 

Keywords: public signs; C-E translation; pragmatic failures; avoidance strategies

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

2.1 Public signs-1

2.2 Studies on translation of public signs-2

2.3 Studies on pragmatic failures-3

3. Pragmatic Failure in C-E Translation-4

3.1 Pragmalinguistic failures in translation of public signs-4

3.2 Sociopragmatic failures in translation of public signs-5

4. The Causes of Pragmatic Failure in C-E Translation of Public Sign-6

4.1 Linguistic difference-6

4.2 Cultural difference-7

4.3 Subjective reasons-8

5. Strategies for Avoiding Pragmatic Failures in C-E Translation of Public Sign-9

5.1 Borrowing based on corpus-9

5.2 Amplification and addition-10

5.3 Omission and Non -Translation-10

5.4 Negation-11

5.5 Management strategy-12

6. Conclusion-13

Works Cited-14