Public Sign Essay

877 Words2 Pages

This chapter discusses the research background concerning the translation strategy in public signs. This chapter also presents the research question, the research objectives, and the significance of the research. Background A public sign has content that gives the information to the public in form of signs, pointers, road signs, slogans, public notices and warnings (Ding, 2009) cited in Ko (2010). Luo and Li (2006) in Ko (2010) argue that a public sign is a kind of language which serves a special communicative function and provides information and instruction including road sign, advertisements, product brochures, tourism guides, propaganda materials and public notices that are displayed in a public place. In short, the public sign is a direction …show more content…

Minghe and Jing (2015) state that since the English public signs essential for the foreigners to get the information, they need a translator to translate bilingual public signs and to complete the function of them. It can improve the number of foreigners to come and visit especially in China. Similar with China to face the global development, Indonesia not only needs monolingual but also bilingual public sign to enhance foreigners’ interest to have some trips in Indonesia. Currently, both monolingual and bilingual signs can be found in Indonesia. For example, ‘Dilarang merokok di areal SPBU’ is a kind of monolingual public sign that easily found in many public places in Indonesia furthermore bilingual public sign such as ‘No Smoking area: kawasan bebas asap rokok’ also can be found in several places. Both public signs’ examples exhibit differences in language style because every sign has its own language style depending on its form and …show more content…

The aim of the public sign can be comprehended by the visitors. However, in the process of translating public signs, the translators often forget this point and directly translate without considering the impact of the result. Niu (2007) cited in Ko (2010) claims that problems in public sign translation lie in serious failure to convey the function of the public sign. The failure occurs because of some problems in terms of the linguistics error. The image bellow demonstrates this

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