Abstract A rapidly increasing number of bilingual public signs appear on roads and in streets within more and more Chinese cities. This may be the consequence of the authorities’ ambition to show the level of modernization and internationalization resulted from the acceleration of economic globalization and the promotion of China’s international influence. However, the pragmatic failures in the English translation on public signs seriously impair the information transferring to people. Thus, such failures have become an important research subject in pragmatics.

In this thesis, pragmatic failures that frequently occur on bilingual public signs within Chinese cities are investigated and analyzed based on pragmatic failure theory proposed by Thomas. They can be classified into pragma-linguistic failures and socio-pragmatic failures. Then the author analyses the causes of pragmatic failures in translating public signs from Chinese to English. Overall, the reasons could be explained by the subjective reasons and the linguistic differences and cultural differences between the two languages. At last, the author systematically put forward five feasible strategies to avoid such failures containing borrowing based on corpus, amplification and addition, omission and non-translation, negation and management strategy. Conclusively, the pragmatic failures on public signs should receive more attention and deserve effectively correction in order for better cross-cultural exchanges. 70449

Keywords: public signs; C-E translation; pragmatic failures; avoidance strategies   

摘要随着经济全球化的加速和我国影响力的提升,越来越多的城市采用双语公示语来展示其现代化和国际化接轨程度。而公示语英译中的语用失误严重影响着人们之间的交际和信息的传达,是语用学中的一个重要研究课题。

本文以托马斯的语用失误理论为分析框架，研究和分析了中国城市双语公示语翻译中经常会出现的语用失误现象。结果表明其语用失误可以分为语用语言失误和社交语用失误。其次，作者分析了公示语语用失误的原因包括英汉语言差异,文化差异和主观原因。最后，作者系统地提出了五点有效的避免失误的策略：基于语料库的借用，扩展和增译，省略和不译，否定策略，管理策略，从而使公示语翻译中的语用失误问题得到重视和校正,更好地促进跨文化交流。

毕业论文关键词：公示语；汉英翻译；语用失误；规避策略

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Public signs 1

2.2 Studies on translation of public signs 2

2.3 Studies on pragmatic failures 3

3. Pragmatic Failure in C-E Translation 4

3.1 Pragmalinguistic failures in translation of public signs 4

3.2 Sociopragmatic failures in translation of public signs 5

4. The Causes of Pragmatic Failure in C-E Translation of Public Sign 6

4.1 Linguistic difference 6

4.2 Cultural difference 7

4.3 Subjective reasons 8

5. Strategies for Avoiding Pragmatic Failures in C-E Translation of Public Sign 9

5.1 Borrowing based on corpus 9

5.2 Amplification and addition 10

5.3 Omission and Non -Translation 10