Principles for the Translation of Public Signs 第2页
According to Skopostheorie, the translation approaches and translation strategies should be determined by the intended purpose or function of a translation. If the purpose of the translation is to keep the function of the text invariant, function markers often have to be adapted to target culture standards.
It means the slight change translator makes based on the similar expressions in English. It can guide the translator to make flexible target language choices when rendering culture-specific expression. His choices must be predicated on the acceptability level of his target readers. The translator makes linguistic choices and employs translation strategies, especially when he is transplanting cultural images. In sign translation, some established signs in English can be adapted. There are three ways to achieve such an adaptation:
a. adapt the existing English signs
﹡ 超值享受 Best Value
﹡ 数量有限 售完为止 Subject to Availability
﹡ 山路多弯道 行车须安全 Twists Ahead. Drive with Care.
﹡ 碧水清清，却亦无情，河湍势险，请勿戏水 Danger: Deep Water! / Deep Water! Beware!
b. mime the English proverbs, poems and mottoes
﹡桂林山水甲天下
East or West, Guilin Landscape is best!
﹡与其道听途说，不如亲身体验
Using is believing.
The quality of the translation is evaluated by the response of the target readers, to which, an important criterion is whether readers can have a good understanding of what they are reading. The translation from the above mimes the well-known English proverbs “East or west, home is best” and “Seeing is believing”. In this way, it arouses the amiableness on the part of readers, achieves the persuasiveness of the public sign and justifies the translator’s choice of a particular purpose in a given translational situation.
·Borrow Approach
The borrow approach is highly practical and realistic in sign translation. Based on the approach, the conventional expressions of English signs could be borrowed so that they sound familiar and acceptable to the foreigners. According to Skopostheorie, different individuals from different cultures would differ to a greater or lesser extent, but they would be culturally equivalent when they perform the same ‘function’ in their respective culture specific setting.
a. Parking signs borrowed
﹡ 限时停车 Time Limit Parking
﹡ 多层停车场 Parkade (blend of park and arcade)
﹡ 收费停车场 Pay Parking
b. The established expressions borrowed
(mainly commerce facilities including shops, malls, marketplaces and etc.)
﹡综合商店 Variety Store
﹡邮购服务 Mail Order Retailing
﹡蔬菜水果店 Grocery Story
As every translation is directed at an intended audience, a familiar tone is what the translator tries to achieve to enhance the charm of language and touch the reader as well. The borrow approach facilitates building up such cultural comfort zone, namely, to achieve similar contextual efforts and to cater to the aesthetic expectations and acceptability level of the target audience. Just as Nida puts it , for truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function.
•Create Approach
When performing the translation of signs with Chinese characteristics, we tend to adopt create approach. That is, translators should do the creative work when there are no conventional expressions to borrow or similar expressions to adapt from English sign language.
Skopostheorie offers a theoretical basis for the creative translation. We know from the theory that in the course of translating, the translator develops his subjectivity when he interprets the original utterances as a reader and researcher, and produces them as a substitute for the author and recreator. The translator’s linguistic choices and pragmatic translation strategies must focus on conveying the author’s intentions without putting the audience to unnecessary processing effort in achieving the contextual efforts in the interpretation intended by the author. Otherwise, the appellative function of sign language will be absent. One thing needs to be noted here: in the following examples, F stands for False and T for True.
﹡ 宁停三分，不抢一秒
•It pays to stop to wait for three minutes rather than rush to gain one second.(F)
•It’s far better to arrive late in this world than early in the next.(T)
﹡司机一滴酒，亲人两行泪
•When a man mixes drink with drive, he is likely to bring tears to his wife.(F)
•Drink and drive costs your life.(T)
The two examples account for the necessity of considering the values and customs of target language, which is not an isolated phenomenon but an integral part of culture. One of the most important factors that determine a translation purpose is the addressee—the intended receiver or audience in the target language and culture with expectations and communicative needs. Hence, translators should adopt the “reader-centre” principle so as to enable the foreigners to fully understand the sign language in English.
CONCLUSION
The public sign is an applied text. As a particular type of pragmatic material, it manifests clear communicative purpose. This paper presents the sign definition, classification, characteristics and functions and then analyzes various problems in sign translation. To deal with the problems discussed, the paper tries to offer some solutions based on Skopostheorie for sign translation. As for the pragmatic and cultural problems, most of them can be built on an A-B-C Approach.
The A-B-C Approach conforms to Skopostheorie, the functional translation theory, which focuses on the two aspects: (a) on the relationship between the target text and its audience; (b) on the relationship between the target text and the corresponding source text. On the one hand, a translation is a text intended to function for the target receivers and, as such, may be intended for any communicative function. On the other hand, a translation is a kind of target-culture representation or substitute for a source-culture text. As such, it may carry out quite different functions with regard to the source text. So the translator’s responsibility for target language readers is the criterion in sign translation within the framework of Skopostheorie. Signs may just contain a few words; however, their translation is by no means easy. To present a favourable image of China and better communication with the outside world, we should lay much emphasis on the translation of the public signs.
Finally, what deserves mentioning is that more and more people have come to realize the importance of the sign translation. The Second Symposium on C-E Signs in a Global Context was held in Tongji University on July 14th-15th, 2007 is an indication. We are of confidence that the quality of C-E sign translation will get better in the near future.
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