Abstract

With the rapid development of Chinese economy, China plays a vital role in the world, and more and more foreigners come to China for travel, study and business. Under this situation, public signs play a very important role to offer information in the cities and their English translations have garnered so much attention. The quality of C-E translation of public signs not only decides whether the foreigners can understand what are expressed in the public signs, but also reflects the educational level of Chinese people or the image of the city. However, at present, a lot of mistakes exist in public signs translation. So the purpose of this study is about using the Skopos Theory to analyze the mistakes of public signs translation and then giving some principles and strategies for effective public signs translation.  
This thesis will be divided into four parts. The introductory section will introduce the concepts of the Skopos Theory and public signs. The second part will show the various mistakes in public signs translation. Under the guidance of the Skopos Theory, some principles, strategies and requirements for effective public signs translation will be included in the third part, which is the main body of the thesis. In the end, the thesis will draw a conclusion naturally.

Key Words:  public signs translation  Skopos Theory  strategies  principles 

摘 要

随着经济的发展，中国在世界上扮演着至关重要的角色，越来越来的外国人来中国旅游，学习或者经商。在这种情况下，城市中的公共标识在提供信息方面起着重要的作用，它们的英文翻译也引起了广泛的关注。因为公共标识的英文翻译的质量不仅决定了外来人士能否看懂要传达的内容，而且还反映了中国人的教育水平和该城市的面貌。然而，目前，公共标识的翻译存在着许许多多的错误。所以，本文的目的是想用功能目的论来分析公共标识翻译的失误，并为有效的翻译提出相关的原则和策略。
本文将分为四大部分。第一部分介绍功能目的论和公共标识的基本知识。第二部分分析一些日常生活中公共标识的不同种类的错误例子。第三部分是全文的重点部分，在功能目的论的指引下，提出公共标识翻译的相关原则和策略，并提出相应的要求。最后本文对公共标识做了总结。

关键词：公共标识翻译 功能目的论 策略 原则

1 Introduction
In the past 30 years, China has attracted more and more attention from other countries due to the growing economy, and with that, there is an increasing number of foreigners coming to China for business, study and travel purposes. Therefore in the city, public signs are very important to show some information or directions, to foreigners as well as Chinese. Although the bilingual public signs are very common in our daily life, there are many mistakes in the English versions. Many experts or scholars have realized the importance of public signs translation, so they begin to study it for the purpose of improving the quality of public signs translation. Many of them analyze the translation from the Perspective of Skopos Theory.