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毕业论文网 > 毕业论文 > 文学教育类 > 英语 > 正文

武汉市城市语言景观构建及问题研究——以东湖风景区公示语英译为例 Wuhan Urban Linguistic Landscape Construction and Problems—A Case Study of the C-E Translation of Public Signs in the East Lake Scenic Area毕业论文

 2021-10-23 08:10  

摘 要

语言景观是展示一个地区或城市风貌的重要窗口,既体现该地的社会文化语境,也反映其文明发展程度。随着国际化进程的加快,国际交流空前频繁,城市语言景观早已服务于包括海外游客在内的更为广泛的群体。武汉作为长江经济带核心城市,正在加快建成以全国经济中心、高水平科技创新中心、商贸物流中心和国际交往中心四大功能为支撑的国家中心城市。规范统一的城市语言有利于塑造良好城市形象,推动城市文化输出,加快与国际接轨步伐等等。因此,本文基于对武汉东湖5A级风景区公示语英译的调查研究,总结分析城市语言景观的翻译策略,指出双语语言景观中英译不规范的问题,并提出建议,尝试构建规范、文明、健康、和谐、生态的语言环境,提高城市国际化水平,助力加快将武汉建成国家中心城市。

关键词语言景观;武汉东湖景区;公示语英译;翻译策略

Abstract

As an important window to display a region or a city, linguistic landscape, not only shows its social and cultural context, but also reflects the civilization development. Nowadays, with the acceleration of internationalization process, urban linguistic landscape has already served a wider range of groups, including foreign visitors. Wuhan, as the core city of the Yangtze river economic belt, has been speeding up its construction into a national central city which is supported by four aspects—being the national economic center, the high-level scientific and technological innovation center, the trade and logistics center and the international exchange center. The standardized and civilized bilingual linguistic landscape is conducive to building the positive urban image and facilitating cultural output, hence accelerating the pace of internationalization. Thus, based on the case study of the C-E translation of public signs in the East Lake Scenic Area, this paper mainly analyzes the translation strategies of the urban linguistic landscape, summarizes non-standard English translation in bilingual linguistic landscape, and provides suggestions, in order to build standard, civilized, healthy, harmonious, ecological language environment and improve the level of urban internationalization, hence, beneficial to Wuhan of becoming a national central city.

Key words: linguistic landscape; East Lake Scenic Area in Wuhan; C-E translation of public signs; translation strategies

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Related research about linguistic landscape at home and abroad 3

2.2 Research gap 4

3 An Analysis of Translation Strategies of Public Signs in the East Lake Scenic Area 6

3.1 Research data collection 6

3.2 Translation strategies of public signs in the East Lake Scenic Area 7

3.2.1 Domestication 7

3.2.2 Foreignization 8

3.3 Summary 10

4 A Discussion of Translation Strategies: Problems and Reflections 11

4.1 Problems 11

4.1.1 Spelling error and ungrammatical use 11

4.1.2 Inconsistency of translated words 11

4.1.3 Omission 12

4.1.4 Misconception 12

4.1.5 Other problems 13

4.2 Reflections 13

5 Conclusion 15

References 16

Appendix 18

Acknowledgements 28

Wuhan Urban Linguistic Landscape Construction and Problems—A Case Study of the C-E Translation of Public Signs in the East Lake Scenic Area

1 Introduction

Linguistic landscape defined by Landry and Bourhis(1997:24)refers to “the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region”, which is widely cited and accepted. Nowadays, in the context of rapid development of social economy and the trend of globalization, urban linguistic landscape, as an important medium of information dissemination, has already served a wider range of groups, including overseas visitors. Therefore, in the ever-increasing contacts and exchanges with other countries, the demand for bilingual linguistic landscape is constantly expanding along with the continuously improved requirements for the quality. As the core city of the Yangtze river economic belt, Wuhan has been accelerating its construction into a national central city for the purpose of closely integrating into the international community. Located in Wuhan, Hubei province, the East Lake Scenic Area is a national 5A tourist scenic spot, a national model site of civilized scenic spots and one of the first national key scenic spots. It receives millions of tourists from home and abroad every year and is the largest scenic spot in central China. Undoubtedly, East Lake Scenic Area is a "card" of Wuhan, and the bilingual signs in it play a pivotal role in shaping the image of the city.

Thus, based on the case study of the C-E translation of public signs in the East Lake Scenic Area, this paper mainly analyzes the translation strategies of the urban linguistic landscape, summarizes non-standard English translation in bilingual linguistic landscape construction, and provides suggestions in light of the problems found in the research.

Last but not least, the significance of this research is self-evident. On the one hand, further progress can still be made in the translation of urban public signs. The C-E translation of linguistic landscape is complicated and must be adapted to the specific circumstance, so more relevant studies are needed to translate various public signs accurately. On the other hand, it has practical value. It is well-known that linguistic landscape closely relates to language ecology which is a significant part of ecological civilization construction. Thus, there is no doubt that the accurate and unified bilingual linguistic landscape is conducive to building standard, civilized, healthy, harmonious, ecological language environment. And the standardized urban linguistic landscape figures prominently in displaying the urban culture, improving the image of city, and advancing its cultural soft power, hence, beneficial to Wuhan of becoming a national central city. Furthermore, Linguistic landscape sets the stage for the urban cultural export, thus, facilitating international exchanges and national development eventually.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Related research about linguistic landscape at home and abroad

At abroad, linguistic landscape clearly defined by Landry and Bourhis in 1997 was widely cited and accepted, and it ran into a taking-off period ten years later. Since 2008, linguistic landscape has been applied to second language teaching, tourism, commercial service industry, environment and urban planning, as well as other fields. It can be best exemplified by Sayer (2010) and Leeman (2009). In detail, Antonio Bruyèl-Olmedo and Maria Juan-Garau (2020) establish a corpus based on the English texts in the tourist resorts of S’Arenal and Magalluf in the Bay of Palma. The data analysis applies the framework of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) to focus on the lexical features that delineate the presence of two varieties of English, namely, English as a native language (ENL) and English as an international language (EIL) and the implications of the choice. And in Shkumbin Munishi Prishtina’s paper (2018), by studying on the employment of Albanian, English and Serbian in the Pristina linguistic landscape, he analyzes the use of the languages in advertising space in the city of Pristina and in other tables that perform semiotic functions of indexes in this city. Recent years, the range of language signs is expanding, from signs on guideboard, billboards, and posters to signs on labels, brochures, postcards, stamps, tickets, bills, graffiti on the walls, and even manhole covers. Besides, supported by the high technology, the physical scope for research is gradually expanding from a street, a park, or a mall to the whole city or a large area for a minority. And cyberspace is also involved, such as online shops’ name. Moreover, foreign scholars try to construct the theoretical framework of linguistic landscape from the perspectives of different disciplines including sociolinguistics, ecology of language, sociology, semiotics, and geography and their adopted methods covers data-collected method, interview, questionnaire, observation and diachronic study. For example, Adekunle Temitope O, Mheta Gift, and Rapeane-Mathonsi Maleshoane (2019) explore the positioning of gender, sexual orientation and people with disabilities in the linguistic landscapes of two selected South African universities, which are located in the Western Cape province, finding that sexuality and subtle inequality, unfortunately, remain in South Africa’s higher institutions of learning. Toiler signage, billboards, posters, ramps and lifts are all their research targets. What’s more, Svetlana Pitina (2019) tries to outline and analyze peculiarities of English influence on the modern urban space of Russian cities. Besides, Nhan Phan and Donna Starks (2020) focus on the interaction between linguistic landscapes and language policies of the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam to investigate how legislated and de facto language policies come together to create lived monolingualism, multilingualism and hybridity in language displays in public spaces.

At home, scholars share commons with them but also have many differences. They mainly focus on the perspectives of cross-culture study, sociolinguistics and translation of linguistic landscape. Striving for the standardized and unified bilingual linguistic landscape, some scholars analyze the features of linguistic landscape in various field, such as studies on schools, scenic spots, temples, road names, traffic signs and so on, and others attach great importance to the problems, causes and corresponding strategies of linguistic landscape translation. For instance, based on the case study on Dacien Temple’s Introduction translation, Chen (2019) found that the linguistic landscape translation is often reconstructed by means of "reduction, edition, addition, adaptation" to provide the high-quality language service. On the ground of Functional Translation Theory, Luo and Yang (2019) analyzed the linguistic landscape of Jiangsu national AAAAA level scenic spots from the perspective of cross-cultural translation, and tried to put forward feasible suggestions for standardized linguistic landscape. Taking the Boston Chinatown as a case study, Zhu (2017) explored the translation phenomena of linguistic landscape from the perspective of Eco-Translatology, and focused on translators “adaptation and selection” in a translational eco-environment. It can be seen that the frequently used translation theories include Functional Equivalence Theory, Skopos Theory, Pragmatic Translation Theory, Eco-Translatology, Communicative Translation Theory, Cross-Cultural Communication Theory, etc. Translation methods include literal translation, transliteration, transliteration plus annotation, and free translation. Translation strategies include foreignization and domestication. Additionally, looking at the bigger picture, some scholars reviewed the linguistic landscape research at home and abroad in terms of theoretical perspective, research object, and method, involving Li and Yang (2020), Xu (2017), Zhang (2015), and Li (2015).

2.2 Research gap

By the end of March 2020, there are less than 300 papers in CNKI by searching the key words, “linguistic landscape” and about 100 papers by searching “linguistic landscape translation”. And it can be found that near 3000 papers talk about the translation of public signs on the basis of certain translation theories or strategies, yet only a few papers touch on the construction of linguistic landscape through the case study of the translation of public signs. Additionally, as the above description, the official standard and systematic reference are still urgently wanted. Given all this, this paper, taking the latest bilingual public signs in the East Lake Scenic Area as the corpus, summarizes and analyzes the translation strategies and problems of urban linguistic landscape and explores corresponding suggestion in order to promote the construction of urban linguistic landscape in Wuhan.

3 An Analysis of Translation Strategies of Public Signs in the East Lake Scenic Area

3.1 Research data collection

Many scholars have discussed the definition of public signs, and thus public signs have different classifications from different aspects. In this paper, based on the Dai Zongxian and Lu Hefa’s study (2005:39), public signs have four functions, that is, directing, promoting, restricting and compelling. Accordingly, there are four types of public signs: indicative signs, prompting signs, limitative signs and mandatory signs. In December 2019, the author selected one of the most representative scenic areas in Wuhan, the East Lake Scenic Area and collected the latest bilingual public signs by taking pictures according to the above-mentioned four types.

For instance:

Indicative Signs

Prompting Signs

Limitative Signs

Mandatory Signs

Luo Xia Gui Yan 落霞归雁

Mind the Step 小心台阶

PLEASE SAVE PAPER 请节约用纸

No swimming 禁止游泳

Xie Tai Lan Sheng 谢台揽胜

Caution wet floor 小心地滑

PLEASE TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS! 请妥善保管好您的贵重物品

No fishing 禁止垂钓

Bicycle Rental 自行车租赁处

Garbage clearance 垃圾清运中

Please do not bring pets and dogs inside

请勿携带宠物及家犬入内

No Crossing

请勿翻越

Sightseeing Car Station 观光车站

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