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The indicative public sign reflects the dynamic significance of the informational sign, which works as a hint in our daily life. For example, we often see the “warm prompt” and “friendly reminder”, whose purpose is to make the public pay attention to public sign and take action. It has some particular significance, because it emphasizes the behaviors and announcements which refer to the public immediate interests. For example, we can see the sign of “Look out for the pickpocket” on the bus. On the wall of the supermarket’s elevator, it has the public sign of “Mind your hand”.
The restriction is one of the functions of public sign, whose main role is to restrict and restrain the public behaviors. It emphasizes the action what the public take, and guides people directly but not impolitely. Under normal conditions, it requires the public to obey the regulations and requirements. For example, when we are near the pond, we usually see the sign of “Depth of Pool, Keep Out”. In the roadway, we often see the pubic sign of “Slow Out”, and in some specific channels, there are some sign of “Disabled Only”.文献综述
The compulsive public sign, which has the most strongest tone and doesn’t have any room for discussion. In most instances, it means that the public should do nothing but obey. In other words, they should or shouldn’t do something. As a general rule, the compulsive public sign is a criterion to express term under the national laws and regulations. For example, in the public, we often see the sign such as “No Smoking”, “No Minors Allowed” or “Don’t Walk”. The public sign doesn’t have any discussing room, so we can only accept and obey the rule.
2.2 Functional equivalence theory
The translation theory of “functional equivalence” is brought up by the American scholar, Eugene Nida. From the point of linguistics, Nida putted forward the famous equivalence theory “functional equivalence theory”. Two types of translation equivalence were putted forward by Nida, which will be discussed in the following parts. Formal equivalence and functional equivalence theory were formed during the practical process of his translation of the Bible (Tan.32). The functional equivalence theory is similar to the word-for-word translation, so it often cause the misunderstanding when we use the informal translation, but Nida and Taber found out that there were not always equivalent among different parts. They asserted that “the typical and formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylistic patterns of the receptor’s language, so influences the effect, so will make the receptor to misunderstand the meaning” (Nida,Taber,2004:201).
In his opinion, translation is to reproduce “the closet natural equivalence to the source-language message” in the receptor language rather than to get something absolute identically (1969:12). In 1993, he stressed again, “Equivalence doesn’t mean the mathematical meaning of identity, but proximity”. Judging from all above, we can see that the term “equivalence” is just a relative word which means “closeness” or “approximation”. Some of the criticism seems to misunderstand what “equivalence” exactly means in Nida’s eyes.
The theory enjoyed great popularity from 1960s to 1980s, but after the 1980s, the “equivalence” has become unpopular, because they thought it cannot achieve absolute “equivalence”. There existed similar situation in our countries, from 1980 to the late 1980s, the Nida’s functional translation was popular in China. But in the late 1980s afterwards, because of the word “equivalence”, more and more translation scholars began to doubt Nida’s theory, and many scholars believed it couldn’t attain “equivalence” in translation. In fact, “equivalence” in Nidas theory never has the meaning of absolute sameness, the intention of which can be made out by his education of “equivalence”. As follows: the translators must endeavor to equivalence rather than identity relation. In a sense, this is just another way of emphasizing the reproduction of message rather than the conservation of the utterance’s form. 来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn