2.2 Studies on translation of public signs

Theoretical studies abroad on public signs are relatively few and overseas public signs are normative due to their practical studies, especially traffic signs, such as the regulations, rules and manuals made by the government. Almost every country has its own public traffic sign manual, official or non-official. However, there are still some prominent works. In 2008, the article Public Road Signs as Intermediate Interaction focuses mainly on the way that public road signs support variant stereotypes of communities, the reality-relative feasibly of enhancing readability for passing drivers, and the acceptation to road inspectors’ actions of eliminating public road signs (Juhlin and Daniel). 来`自^优尔论*文-网www.youerw.com

As China’s reform and opening-up policy deepens and economy improves, more and more international events have been or will be held in China which causes people to pay closer attention to the images of our cities of which public signs cannot be neglected. Since late 1990s and early 2000s, many scholars have begun to focus on the studies of bilingual public signs. An article published by Bei Zhu and Shan Aimin in Journal Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute in 2002 initiates, in a sense, the studies of translation of public signs in China. They discussed the language features of English public signs and translations of them. Study on public sign translation has become a research hotspot since then. Generally speaking, these studies mainly fall into three categories: of a translation perspective, of a pragmatic perspective and of a cross-cultural perspective.

Guidelines for English Translations in Public Places and A Companion to the English Translation of Public Signs put out by Shanghai and Jiangsu Language Work Committee in 2010 respectively made certain practical value and guiding significance in standardizing C-E translation of public signs, providing standardize translated texts for public signs in the appendix.