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 pide 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.