In this paper, the text consists of four parts. The first chapter is a brief introduction of Nida's functional equivalence’s theory. The second chapter gives the definition of the public signs and analyzes the remarkable functional and language features of it. In this part, we should pay attention to that public sign contains various kinds of forms. The third chapter focuses on existing problems shown in the Chinese-English translation of public signs, covering the negative transfer of the mother tongue and the misuse of the words. The most important is that we have to pay more attention to the culture and history in different countries. The fourth chapter discusses the application of Function Equivalence into the translation of Public Signs. It contains two principles, one is simple and the other is acceptable. In this thesis, I take a great amount examples to help readers understand easily.

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There are two basic reasons that I choose this theme as my paper. First of all, with the development of China, the translation of public signs has a great significance both in our culture and economy. More and more people have a trip to our country. And the public signs have made a great influence in our daily communication. Since the reform and opening, China has an important position in the world. So we need to pay more attention to some details such as public signs.

Let’s take a picture, there is a door being painted with a public sign “油漆未干，请勿触碰”. If a foreigner come across it, he doesn’t know the meaning of the sign. And he maybe misunderstand and touch it. So the translation of public signs is important as to improve our international image. Since the reform in 1978, China aimed at prompting the relationship with other nations. It is common to see people travel to China, in some way, the public signs have a great effect on their daily life in trip. Hence, the good translation of public signs can provide foreigner more convenient. If foreigners can see the signs like in their own country, they will speak highly of China.

Secondly, to correct the translation problems of public signs is the crucial issues. These problems, to some degree, have damaged our international imagine. At the same time, it has negative effect on the communication with other countries. So it is important to study the translation of public signs.

In 1998, Duan Liancheng, who is a senior journalist and published an article named How to Help Foreigners Know China, he has pointed out that it is necessary to improve the imagination of China. Nowadays, many translator has devoted themselves to researching the translation strategy. Among these, the most famous is Nida’s functional equivalence theory. And Katharina Resis, who is the first person that introduced the functional equivalence theory into the public signs’ translation.

As an important window to the outside word, the translation of public signs must be accurate and exact. And that requires us to treat English version carefully. 

     The “functional equivalence” is emphasized in the translation not limited to correspondence of each character, but pay attention to functional equivalence between the two languages. Nida’s translation definition indicates that translation contains not only the equivalence of meaning, but also the equivalence of semantic and style. The information which the translation need to convey contained both the surface meaning and the deep culture information.