毕业论文课题相关文献综述

Literature review

With the improvement of globalization and internationalization, the public signs translation has drawn a lot of attention from the academic circles. In this thesis, public signs translation will be analyzed from the perspective of Newmarks communicative translation theory. And in this chapter, literature will be reviewed in three parts, first on the empirical studies about public signs translation, second on theoretical foundations and third on the problems in the previous studies.

According to the previous studies, we could find that the history of public signs translation in China is not very long. It was not until the last decade in 20th century, some scholars began to notice the significance of public signs translation and the existing problems in this area. In 1990, a professor of Beijing International Studies University named Dai Zongxian went over the public signs shown in such institutions involving foreign affairs and public places in Beijing. It was the first time when public signs translation had its own standard. In 1993, a book named How to help Foreigners Know China (Duan, L. C, 1993) arose many peoples attention to the translation. Mr. Duan said that the public signs that help foreigners understand China better are closed connected with Chinas international image. Therefore, much more importance should be attached to the translation of public signs.Afterwards, many scholars tried to define public signs and find the translation strategy for public signs. It is said that thereareathousandHamletsinathousandpeople'seyes. According to the definition in New Oxford Dictionary of English (2001), public sign is a notice that is publicly displayed giving information or instruction in a written or symbolic form.

According to the definition (Lv, H. F., 2006) written in Chinese English Dictionary on Public Signs Translation, public signs are the notices, tips, display, warning and marking that are closely related to life, production, statement, ecology and industry showing with the form of text or graphics.

Whats more, Professor Dai Zongxian and Professor Lv Hefa (2006) defined public signs as following, public signs are characters, words and graphic information that are closely related to peoples life, environment and business, and intend to have the functions of notifying, directing, displaying, warning and labeling to the public. Professor Yang Quanhong (2005) put forward that public sign is a special language style frequently used in public places. Based on former studies on public signs, Zhang Li (2009) defined public signs as the information provided by government, community, or individuals, etc. Used in the public places to notify, direct or alert the public and is usually in the form of board in her thesis. She thought there were a lot of problems existing in public signs translation because public signs have not been divided clearly according to their different functions. And cultural difference ignored was also an important factor which was connected to public signs translation closely.

Indeed, there a lot of problems exist in the translation through a lot of work has been done to this area. Fortunately, many people started to take immediately action to search for solutions. Wang Yinquan (2004) focused on mistranslation of the public signs in Nanjing in his series of papers. After collecting a lot of public signs, he analyzed the translation and concluded the solutions by consulting the dictionaries and many reliable resources. Finally, he draw the conclusion that aspects of pragmatics, grammar, manner and cultural difference arose many issues in public signs translation.

Zhao Xiang (2004) explored the public signs translation from the perspective of cultural difference combined with pragmatics theory. She found that cultural difference is most important reason to cause confusion in public signs translation.

Just as Wang Yinquan, an another scholar Wang Xiaojuan(2008) who discussed the public signs translation by analyzed the signs of Nanjing. She concluded the translation problems under the guidance of functional theory. The conclusion is that spelling mistake, improper word-use, part of speech and grammatical voice are serious problems in public signs translation.

Pang Bo (2013) analyzed the situation of public signs translation combined with functional equivalence theory. He found that lexical mistake, grammatical mistakes, cultural misunderstanding and Chinglish are the common errors in public signs translation. Wang Xiaojuan (2008) inquire into the public signs translation from the perspective of functional theory and she concluded that spelling mistake, incorrect tense, misused words etc. caused most of the errors in public signs translation.

From the previous studies, we could easily learn that a lot of work has been done to this area, but there are still no unified and standardized rules to solve the existing problem in public signs translation due to the imperfect system of translation application. ( Yang, X. H., Zeng, H., 2009) Most of them are just listing the typical wrong examples without giving convincing argument or adequate analysis. Sometimes, they analyzed the translation of public signs from the aspect of culture or grammar and drawn some conclusion but no standard on how to translate and how to embark on the bilingual signs of translation has been set up. Therefore, this thesis would analyze the public signs translation form the perspective of Newmarks communicative translation. Newmark put forward that translation task should focus more on translators purpose, the nature of readership and text typology. He said that communicative translation, where translator attempts to produce the same effect on TL readers was produced by original on the SL readers and which is appropriate to any text. By combining with this theory, many errors in public signs translation could be avoided such as cultural difference, misunderstanding, Chinglish and so on.