公示语翻译如何“巧借东风翦”——“老弱病残席”22种英语文本的启示

Implication of 22 Priority Seating Signs on Translating Public Signs

"老弱病残席"这条公示语,在翻译成英语时采用的是借译。基于从英语国家搜集到的22种"老弱病残席"表达方式,对比分析中文文本,探究此例中使用的借译在词汇、句法和功能层面存在的不足,同时引入情感语言学、关联理论和语言景观来论证多样化译本存在的可能性。这个个案研究说明,如果想在公示语翻译中更有效地使用借译,必须解决几个主要问题:翻译原则的"老",翻译手法的"弱",翻译管理的"病"以及翻译哲学的"残"。

The public sign ＂老弱病残席＂ is translated into English by borrowing a ready expression in English, namely, ＂Priority Seats＂. Based on 22 Priority Seating signs collected from English speaking countries, the essay makes a contrastive study with the Chinese copycat. After probing into semantic, syntactic and functional defects of the translation, the essay verifies possibilities of varied versions in the light of emotional linguistics, relevance theory and linguistic landscape. The purpose of the study is to reveal that four major problems in translation of Chinese public signs must be solved before borrowing is optimized in translation.