【正文】 is is the analysis of the problems of translation of public signs in Guiyang and it also explores the strategies of their translation. The last part gives a conclusion to this thesis. 2 Public Signs The Definition and Features of Public Signs Public signs, whose main aim is to inform, remind and warn the public in public signs, is a kind of letters and images which are closely related to people’s daily lives As to the features of public signs, it has three main features which are the flexibility of using words, the brevity of description and the accuracy of express. The Classifications of Public Signs There are many types of public signs. It mainly includes the shopping signs, travelling signs, traffic signs and institution names, names of places and public slogans and so on. For instance, “Shopping Plaza”, Duty Free Shop” and “Discount Store” (Lv Hefa＆Shang Liping, 2009:159) are the shopping signs. “Train Attendant”, Mail and Luggage Van” and “International Arrivals” ((Lv Hefa＆Shang Liping,2009:3949) are the travelling signs. As to the other public signs, we can see them at many places such as highways, airports, shops, streets and so on. The Functions of Public Signs As an important part of social lives and a munication tool to provide imperative and useful information to the public, public signs have four main functions which are the directing, prompting, restricting and pelling functions. For instance, the public sign “Construction Ahead—Detour” is used to inform people that the road is closed because of construction. As to the restricting functions, we often see the sign “No Smoking”, “No Parking” and “No Talking” and so on in many public places. 3 Current Situations of the Translation of Public Signs in Guiyang and the Principles and Strategies of Their Translation The Examples of Problems Existing in Public Signs in Guiyang In order to provide better service for the foreigners living in Guiyang, the government is trying their best to improve the quality of the translation of public signs. And it has improved indeed due to the government’s efforts. But after collecting the English version of public signs in Guiyang, we find that there are still some mistranslations which need to be corrected immediately so that it won’t misguide the foreigners. After analyzing the materials we collected, we think there exists mainly three problems in the English version of public signs. The first one is that there is no unified standard of the terms. For example, there are at least four versions of the translation of “可回收和不可回收”. The first version is “Recyclable amp。 Organism”, the others are “Recyclable amp。 Notrecyclable”, “Recyclable amp。 Other Waste” and “Recyclable amp。 Nonrecyclable”. To make it worse, three different versions appear within 500 meters. This chaos will certainly deteriorate the quality of the translation of public signs in Guiyang and affect the city’s image. Besides in Guiyang, “火車站” has two versions of translation. One is translated as “Railway Station”, the other is translated as “Train Station”. Although both the two versions can express the meaning of “火車站” and foreigners understand that, it is better to use only one version. Actually this is not the problem that only exists in Guiyang public signs。 other cities’ public signs also have the same problem. For instance, in Changzhou the sign of “國際動漫藝術(shù)節(jié)” held in 2007 also have two different translations—2007 China Changzhou International Animation Arts Week Expo and 2007 Changzhou China International Animation and Digital Arts Week Expo. This kind of translation will misguide the foreigners instead of providing them with accurate information. The second one is that there are some wrong spellings of some words. For example, “toilet” is wrongly spelled as “toilot” and “construction” as “constriction”. Another example is that the sign “吸煙室” is translated as “Smorking Room” (He Xueyun, 2006: 3). Besides, the sign “工作重地”in CSC is translated as “Stuff Only” instead of “Staff Only”. The wrong spelling will undoubtedly make the foreigners confused, which will cause great inconvenience to their lives. The last one is the mixed use of Pinyin and English words. For example, “往西南環(huán)線”is translated as “To Xinan Ring Rd” and “為了你的安全、乘坐1220762夜間K29路的旅客請往地下通道走”is translated as “For your safety , ride 1, 2, 17, 20, 24, 203, 74, 65, 29 night K29 road Passengers Wang Dexia (Dixia) aisle”. Frankly speaking, if we Chinese just read the English version we cannot understand what the public sign is trying to tell not to mention the foreigners. The Analysis of the Reasons Causing Those Problems from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence In 1969, Nida gave an explicit definition of Dynamic equivalence: Dynamic equivalence is therefore to be defined in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language (Nida, 2004。 24). But the expression, dynamic, is often misinterpreted only as the influential things, which causes many people to believe that if a translation is influential, it must be the example of the Dynamic equivalence. In order to avoid this kind of misinterpretation, Nida used “Functional Equivalence” to replace “Dynamic Equivalence” in 1993. The functional equivalence consists of four aspects which are equivalence at word, equivalence at syntax, equivalence at text and equivalence at style. According to the functional equivalence, we will analyze the reasons that cause the mistranslation of public signs in Guiyang. There are three main requirements of Functional Equivalence. The first one is the equivalence of cultural message of