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Abstract:

This article systematically examines the current state of research on public signs over the past 30 years in the English-speaking and Russian-speaking scientific communities in China, as well as the attention of public institutions to their foreign translation. The results show that most of the work on this topic is carried out in the English- speaking community, and less research is devoted to other languages, such as Russian. There are fruitful results, including scientific articles, monographs, textbooks, reference books, etc. However, there are numerous studies, with similarities in the definition of “public signs”, their pragmatic functions, linguistic and cultural features, types of error, examples, and their translation strategies. Most of the research is carried out from a linguistic point of view, mainly analyzing the errors and causes of the translation of public signs in a certain area, as well as the principles, methods and strategies for correcting errors, etc., but not enough attention has been paid to theoretical research. There is also quite a bit of research from a sociolinguistic point of view, mainly using foreign theories such as geosemiotics and SPEAKING theory to study the problems of multilingualism in a certain area of China, the viability of minority languages and language policy. This work aims to point the way for future studies of social signs to better serve the country, society and teaching.

Keywords: public signs; language landscape; linguistics; translation studies; sociolinguistics.