ABSTRACT

Public sign is the most common language in our daily life. It is also a significant component of the cultural environment of a city, a tourist destination and so on. With the acceleration of the reform and opening-up, China now has played a very important role all over the world. It gradually takes on a more powerful international image and attracts an increasing number of foreigners to China. The domestic tourist industry is booming under such circumstance. Tourism public signs then are paid more attention to. Any mistranslation, misunderstanding, or abuse of words will lead to adverse consequences for it will not only bring about inconvenience for foreign travelers but also cause damage to the civilized image of our country.  

  In this thesis, the author carries out a deep research from the unique cross-cultural perspective. It lays emphasis on the definition, types, importance of translation of public signs with an analysis of some typical examples. Then the author talks about the translation of specific tourism public signs by focusing on its current study, functions and errors. The functions include prompting, directing, restricting and compelling. The errors are categorized into linguistic and cultural errors. Finally we discuss about the development of the cultural awareness. Based on the discussion, we understand that translation is a way of cross-cultural communication and cultural differences have a lot to do with the translation and the key to avoiding problems is to cultivate and improve the cross-cultural awareness.

Key words: tourism public signs; translation; cross-cultural perspective

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

  2.1 Studies on translation of tourism public signs in China-3

  2.2 Studies on Cross Culture-4

Chapter Three OVERVIEW OF TRANSLATION OF PUBLIC SIGNS-6

  3.1 Definition of public signs-6

  3.2 Types of public signs-6

  3.3 Importance of translation of public signs-7

Chapter Four SPECIFIC STUDY ON TOURISM PUBLIC SIGNS-9 

  4.1 Study on Translation of Tourism Public Signs-9

  4.2 Functions of Translation of Tourism Public Signs-9

  4.2.1 Prompting-10

  4.2.2 Directing-10

  4.2.3 Restricting-10

  4.2.4 Compelling-10

  4.3 Errors in Translating Tourism Public Signs-11

  4.3.1 Linguistic Errors-11

  4.3.2 Cultural Errors-13

Chapter Five METHODS TO DEVELOP CROSS-CULTURAL AWARENESS 

    IN TRANSLATION OF TOURISM PUBLIC SIGNS-16

  5.1 Definition of Culture and Cross-cultural Communication-16

  5.2 Relationship between Culture and Language Translation-16

  5.3 Cultural Differences between Chinese and English Tourism Public Signs-17

  5.4 Improvement of the Cross-Cultural Awareness-19

     5.4.1 Importance of Possessing Cross-Cultural Awareness in Translation of Tourism Public Signs-19

     5.4.2 Methods to Improve Cross-Cultural Awareness in Translation of Tourism Public Signs-19

Chapter Six CONCLUSION-22

REFERENCES-23