公示语英译的语用失误研究

论文总字数：37562字

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。

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

5.4 Negation 11

5.5 Management strategy 12

6. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

Public signs have recently been popular and unique phenomena all over China, which appears in every corner of one’s life such as road signs, billboards, shop signs, slogans in public places, tourist introduction, and so on. Public signs are open, communal and accessible to everyone, designed to achieve a certain communicative purpose. Undoubtedly, they are essential in the human environment and linguistic environment of global cities and international tourist destinations. Because English is a global lingua franca in the world village, many public signs achieve their bilingualism to comply with international standards by showing both English and one of other languages. It is the guide of an area, a city even a country; to a large extent, it also reflects the humanistic quality and civilization of the city. Any ambiguity, misunderstanding and abuse of public signs can lead to negative consequences because of the significance of public signs to the public. Not only the international exchange and the image of a city or a region are affected, but also many inconveniences are brought to foreign tourists. As is the result of the deepening of Globalization and the rapid development of China, it is the responsibility of translators, as well as all other natives who work in the field of foreign languages, to purify the urban language environment and establish an open space for the effective promotion of cultural exchanges.

However, China has long been one of the most complicated places in the world for westerners to find their way around because of the poor quality of English on public signs that have been translated according to Telegraph. After a decade of research, Chinese-English translation of public signs still has lots of problems to deal with, which is a long and arduous task.

This paper will attempt to present and elaborate pragmatic failures and their causes in the English part of bilingual public signs in China, and to suggest some feasible avoidance strategies for pragmatic failures in translation of Chinese public signs.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Public signs

As an essential constituent part of social life, public signs have existed around us for a long time. The words related to signs include but are not limited to “label language”, “poster”, “logo”, “bulletin language”, “slogan”, etc. Some scholars even regard trademark, advertisement and names of shops as public signs. Public signs share the same features or characteristics with the above-mentioned words but have wider usages and applications. We can say that they cover the connotation and denotation of all these vocabularies.

As Dai Zоngxian and Lyu Hefa (2005) mentioned in one of their works, Studies of C-E Translation of Public Signs, “public signs are signs which are shown publicly, offering a kind of warning, notification, direction, notices, instructions and other closely related literal or graphical information” (Dai and Lyu 38). On the basis of the existing definitions, we further conclude that public signs refer to the signs which are often comprised of words and pictures to provide information and behavioral norms for the public.

According to Lyu Hefa’s article Chinese-English Translation of Public Signs (2004), English public signs have the following features: abundance of nouns, frequent use of verbs and gerunds, abbreviation, local culture embedded, and capitalization.

Chinese public signs have its language characteristics. Firstly, they are comfortable to read and can give people aesthetic feeling, for they usually apply four-character expressions or parallel sentences with balanced structures and beautiful rhymes. Secondly, Chinese public signs generally employ negative expressions to convey restraint and prohibition, which are very direct, firm, and fierce and short of human interest because of the influence of hierarchy system in history. Lastly, in the course of history, China has developed her special and distinct culture, political system, moral norms, etiquette customs and some social phenomena, all of which can be found in public signs.

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).

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.

2.3 Studies on pragmatic failures

The term of “pragmatic failure” was first proposed by Jenny Thomas in 1983 in her Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure. She defines it as “the inability to understand what is meant by what is said”, and categorizes it into the pragmalinguistic failure and the sociolinguistic failure depending on the causes of pragmatic failures (Thomas 92). That is to say, pragmatic failures are a linguistic phenomenon: the inability to achieve the intended contextual effect. Generally they are caused by inappropriate expressions or unconventional usages.

Leech (1983) observed the relative universality of pragmatic principles: due to the element of cultures, the emphasis will be different. He studied the reasons of pragmatic failures in views of different social cultures. In 1996, Kasper discussed the relationship between misunderstanding, communication failure, communication breakdown and negative transfer.

Meanwhile, a lot of Chinese linguists have begun to investigate pragmatic failures, especially cross-cultural pragmatic ones, as well as namely inter-cultural pragmatic ones. They examined the causes of both pragma-linguistic failures and socio-pragmatic failures. These investigations into this issue are made from many variant perspectives, for instance, the рersрectives of cross-cultural communication, рragmatic transfer, second language acquisition, foreign language teaching, and cognition and so on.

However, the studies of public signs from the perspective of pragmatic theories, especially the perspective of pragmatic failures are still relatively rare. Early studies just focused on the basis information, the common errors of the public signs and their English versions. These researches are superficial and cannot help to improve the condition of bilingual public signs effectively, namely spellings and grammars. Then, some studies of bilingual public signs are conducted mixing the concepts of error and failure. Some are done covering too large a range. All of these thereafter result in that the problems and the reasons for them cannot be clarified. And the translation theory and strategy for them are so heavy and complex that they do not come to an agreement all the time. There are few practical and targeted strategies for public sign translation which are effective in the improvement of the current condition of bilingual public signs in some studies.

In this thesis, the main pragmatic failures and causes of them will be discussed and some targeted strategies in perspectives of translation and management for improving the translation of public signs will be explored.

3. Pragmatic Failure in C-E Translation

According to pragmatic failure theory proposed by Thomas, this paper will mainly discuss pragmatic failures in C-E translation from two angles: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.

3.1 Pragmalinguistic failures in translation of public signs

Thomas ascribes pragmalinguistic failures to the incorrect realization of pragmatic forces. And He Ziran and Chen Xinren (2004) assisted that pragmalinguistic failures can be analyzed from both aspects of a communication: when the hearer misunderstands the speaker’s illocutionary force by conducting pragmatic inference wrongly, or when the speaker expresses inappropriately, which thereupon causes the hearer misunderstands the utterance meaning, pragmalinguistic failures may occur. As a consequence of these, pragmalinguistic failures of translation of the collected public signs will be discussed in this thesis, mainly from perspectives of both semantic connotations and pragmatic principles.

Pragmalinguistic failures may exist just because of the ignorance of the context or the non-equivalence of the words in translating. For example, the English translation “当心火灾Warning fire” in the library and the translation version “当心火灾Caution Fire” in the construction site of hospital has pragmalinguistic failures. It costs no efforts for Chinese people to understand the meaning of these signs. However, both signs mentioned above may make foreigners think there is a fire at the first sight of which he/she should be careful. In fact, the real purpose of the signs is to notice people that the place should be away of fire. Therefore, they can be changed into “Watch for Fires”. Some other collected inappropriate translations like “正门Positive Door”, “公共卫生间Between Public Health”, “单层Odd Floors” are advised to the translation of “Front Door”, “Toilet”, “Odd-numbered Floors” respectively.

Public signs, in a sense, are a kind of communication between the writers and the readers. They conduct perlocutionary acts as well. For example, “出租车上客点 On the Taxi the Guest Stands Forward”. The statement doesn’t clarify its meaning and would made people confused at the moment. Moreover, the translation cannot help the sign perform the function of directing effectively. So the correct translation of the sign can be “Taxi Pick-up Point”. The sign “注意安全 减速慢行 Be Careful for Safety, Speed Down And Go Slow” violets the rule of “be brief” and “Safety First, Slow Down” can be more proper. “闲人免进Staff Only” is another typical example. Next to the sign “失物认领 Lost Property ”, it will meet the rule of felicity if translated into “Lost and Found”.

All in all, Chinese-English translation of public signs can adopt some idiomatic expressions in English so as to make the translational text appropriate and tact in the target language environment by avoiding the interference of the linguistic principles of native language.

3.2 Sociopragmatic failures in translation of public signs

Sociopragmatic failure is no knowing what to say to whom because of differences in the communicators’ cultural backgrounds, social criterion, or values, which affect the appropriateness of the utterances. In this thesis, sociopragmatic failures in public sign translations will be shown from the following aspects: cultural and value system, politeness and signs of Chinese characteristics.

Once different associative meanings or particular criterion originate from the cultural and value systems are ignored, sociopragmatic failure may occur. For example, “老年人优先候车” is not translated to be “Old People Waiting and Getting on First” but “Senior Citizens First” when the cultural and value elements of both China and other countries have been taken into consideration. Because there is such a community who refuse to be old and they may feel impolite at a glance of it. Another typical examples are “四小龙 Four Asian Dragons”, “民族园 Racist Park” and “严禁随地吐痰 Don’t spit”. The first should be “Four Asian Tigers”. The second is an expression with an emotional coloring of discrimination and the translation could be “The Ethnic Minorities Park”. The last would make people feel it is a kind of disrespect and it doesn’t need to be translated for it is a sign with Chinese values.

In China, some signs are designed with direct orders or rigid tones, which are not acceptable to international visitors for the possible impoliteness. For the sign “非本饭店食品和饮料请勿带入Consumption of Food or Drink Only Provided by This Restaurant (Don’t Take Food or Drink into This Restaurant)”, the subjects said the tongue of this sign does not make them feel comfortable though it was explicit that you shouldn’t enter a restaurant with food from somewhere else. “Please Do Not Bring outside Food into This Restaurant” was suggested. Other examples like “请勿大声喧哗 Don’t make noises ” and “禁止吸烟No smoking”, they are direct and severe, “Silence/Keep Quiet, Please” and “Thank You for Not Smoking” are much more suitable.

Due to the existence of culture default, barriers appear on public signs just like other communicative activities, especially signs in scenic spots. The foreigners may be puzzled by the sign “只生一个好It’s fine to have only a child.” as a result of the deficiency of cultural cognitive environment. Besides, the illocutionary force and the perlocutionary acts implicated in the sign cannot be achieved well by being translated in that way. A version for the sign is proposed, “One couple, One child”, which is more concise and delivers the cultural implicatures in a better way. Likewise, “安居工程Housing Projects for low-income families”, “文庙（孔庙）The Cultural Temple” and “阳元石Yangyuanshi” are the signs of Chinese characteristics, their translations should be “Safe-living Project”, “The Temple to Confucius” and “a Male Stone” respectively.

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

Generally, the causes of pragmatic failures may fall into three types: linguistic differences, cultural differences, and various subjective causes, which will be explored in general as follows.

4.1 Linguistic differences

As is all known, the Chinese people tend to put special stress on concrete and imaginative thought while English-speakers on abstract and realistic thinking. Accordingly, the former give top priority to dynamic expressions but the latter attach special importance to static ones. Additionally, the differences in word choice lead to manifest preference to the use of verbs in the Chinese language, contrary to that of abstract nouns and prepositions in English (Tian and Zhou, 2005). For example, the sign “谢绝入内You Are Not Allowed to Come in” is a verbal phrase, and the tone of this version is too harsh and will make it difficult for its target readers to mentally accept. The tenable English version “No Admittance” is a nominal phrase that can be more acceptable to international visitors.

The Chinese people, who are liable to be indirect and euphemistic, favor placing the main information in the end of a sentence, whereas English-speakers often go directly by putting the main information at the beginning of a sentence. If “高压危险” is literally translated into “High Voltage Danger”, it may violate the English sentence order, for this English rendition is word-for-word translation. In addition, the proper English version should be “Dangerous High Voltage”.

In expression, the English-speakers and the Chinese people may have very different means to express the same concept or thing. For instance, “请勿触摸展品Don’t Touch the Exhibits”, the English expressing way in this English version is not common. It is not concise and clear enough. Accordingly, the better version could be “Hands Off”.

In summary, the linguistic difference shown in differences of word choice, sentence order differences and expressing differences is taken as the basic causes for pragmatic failures.

4.2 Cultural difference

The factors of thinking patterns, value orientation and psychological aesthetic orientation, lead mainly to the cultural differences between Chinese and English.

Chinese thinking pattern is spiral in general. As talked before, they prefer an inductive style that putting forward particular facts and exemplification firstly before producing a conclusion at last. As to syntax and texture, most Chinese are accustomed to the way of thinking or speaking that frequently goes specific to general, goes from the part to the whole and goes from exemplification to summarization. However, the pattern of thinking in English is linear, and completely opposite, English-speakers have a deductive style, which is also reflected in the aspect of syntax and texture. For example, the sign “远离危险Keep Away Danger” is hard to accept because it is word-for-word translation and against the English thinking patterns. Instead, “Danger Keep Away” should be a proper version. Here, the main information “危险” was put at the end in the Chinese version, whereas “Danger” is placed at the beginning in the corresponding English version.

In general, the Chinese culture pays attention to collectivism or group orientation, but the western culture turns out contrary to the Chinese one again, it emphasizes individualism or individual orientation. Considering a large proportion of public signs are restricting and compelling, they will inevitably influence individualistic sense of English native hearer. Thus, many mild expressions are applied and the harsh negative phrases and imperatives are replaced to get rid of making them uncomfortable. For example, expressions like “禁止吸烟Smoking prohibited”, “无烟站Smoke free station”, and “仅限废油Waste oil only” are frequently employed.

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