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4.7 Food sector .11
5. AN ANALYSIS OF THE ERRORS IN THE TRANSLATION OF PUBLIC SIGNS 11
5.1 Cultural differences .11
5.2 Translator’s competence12
5.3 Ignorance of the characteristics of public signs.12
5.4 Ignorance of translation guidelines12
6. STRAGETIES AND SUGGESTIONS 12
7. CONCLUSIONS 13
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 14
BIBLIOGRAPHY 15
⒈Introduction
With the rapid development in economy and the reform and opening-up, more and more foreigners come to Nanjing to travel, work and live. Under this circumstance, standardization of Chinese-English public signs is of vital importance to the city. It alsoexerts a great effect on the construction of internationalized language environment in Nanjing and is also of great significance to the improvement of the international image of the city as well as the development of the export-oriented economy.
1.1 The definition of public signs
What is the definition of ‘sign’? In Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (1997), sign refers to a board, notice, etc that directs somebody towards something, gives a warning, advertises a business, etc (e.g. a pub-sign, shop sign, traffic sign, etc.) . While The New Oxford Dictionary of English (2001) defines sign as a notice that is publicly displayed giving information or instruction in a written or symbolic form.
The following is the definition of public signs.
"Public Signs" refers to the writings and figure information related with living, production, life, ecology, livelihood to publicly notice the public to inform, direct, guide, warn and label (戴宗显, 吕和发, 2004).
The definition seems intricate and complicated but it is as complete as possible.
2.The literature review
2.1 Eugene A.Nida and his functional equivalence theory
Eugene A. Nida is an eminent American linguist and translation theorist of the contemporary era who can be regarded as the best representative figures in the field of translation research. His research achievements ranked highly in the modern translation research field, and have a deep influence not only in the western translation circle but also in all over the world. Two types of translation equivalence put forward by Nida will be discussed, namely, formal equivalence and functional equivalence which is developed from the dynamic equivalence theory formed during the practical process of his translating the Bible (谭载喜, 2004).
Formal correspondence mainly concentrates on the message itself, considering both its format and content. It is similar to word-for-word translation. However, Nida and Taber (2004) found out that not all different pairs can always be equivalent formally. Based on the fact, they propose that formal equivalences should be used wherever the translation aims at achieving formal rather than functional equivalence. The use of formal equivalence might usually lead to misunderstandings in the target readers.
Nida and Taber advocate that "typically, formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor language, and hence distorts the massage, so as to cause the receptor to misunderstand or to labor unduly hard" (Nida&Taber, 2004:201).
According to Eugene Nida, the critical principle of dynamic equivalence is to "reproduce in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style." (Nida&Taber, 2004:12). He indicates that it is important that the target text can achieve the functions in the same manner as the source text, which means the target readers are able to respond to translated text in exactly the same manner as the readers of source text would respond to the original text. In the following study, the functional