【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 of Chinese people, as they have something to do with death and funeral. However, white represents chastity and purity in western countries.Distinguish the words’ conventional symbolic meanings can be of great help to avoid taboos when doing ChineseEnglish translation. Thought patternsThe most important value in American culture is individual freedom, a sort of culture in which the individual is the basic unit and emphasizes all men are created equal. (楊自儉, 2000: 247) Under the influence of individualism, people pay attention to themselves on the assumption that everyone is equal when municate with each other, which could be obviously reflected by their form of address. With the exception of addressing the president or professor, people only plus Mr. /Mrs./Ms/ Miss before the family name or sometimes call by the given name, even if in front of the superiors or the elders. Should the same case happen in China, the person who does as the aforementioned addressing is likely to be regarded as impiety. This kind of thought pattern can also give a faithful representation in the public signs as follows:Example 7. No parking It is one of the most monest public signs we could see, whose correspondent Chinese is “不準(zhǔn)停車”or “嚴(yán)禁停車”, in which the imperative is adopted and pared with the English version, the tone is much stronger and more serious, which seems a leader or a superior giving an order that the subordinates have no choice but to obey. Rank the nouns, the gerunds and the verbs according to the manner of speaking, nouns is the most polite, the gerunds the next and verbs takes the last place. 4. Strategies of Meizhou public signs translationPublic signs, including words, phrases or sentences with “sign language” and “l(fā)ogo”, have such a wide range of use that they can be seen almost everywhere. Take Meizhou for example, public signs cast their shadows at the gas stations, on the vehicles, in the scenic spots and vocation villages, as well as the supermarkets, restaurants and banks, etc. Some of them are used to give the directions to the pedestrians or people who are on their tours or show the prompt messages to offer information needed, some warn people that there are something dangerous and need to be cautious, and some are used for prohibiting a certain behavior lest severe consequences be caused. However, most translations of public signs have e out to be erroneous or irregular in recent years, in addition to its growing importance owing to the development of international exchanges, it has bee a new field that draws many scholars’ attentions. As a matter of fact, translation of public signs is a particular way of munication, implication of which is that successful munication lies in proper uses in words, tones, grammar and prehensive understanding of culture and other aspects, which makes “the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message” (E. A. Nida, 1964：159). Only when language conforms to the context, people choose appropriate topics and use proper words in accordance with specific time and place, could a successful munication be achieved. “Context”: (A) Words or phrases before or after a certain linguistic unit in a discourse. (B) Features of the external world as represented by the discourse. (Hartmann and Stork, 1972: 52) Meaning and function of words can only be realized when they are put into a certain context for the context can help to avoid ambiguity or vagueness and ascertain the exact meaning of a word in a specific situation despite of polysemy. Language is always used under a certain circumstance and is bound to involve some factors as follows: the information transmitter, the information recipient, the time, the occasion as well as the events, which in the process of message transforming, can make words’ meaning specific and influence people’s understanding about the sentences. Based on the relationships between context and language, context falls into two general categories: linguistic context and extralinguistic context. Linguistic contextLinguistic context indicates discourse that constitutes the environment of the linguistic elements, surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation. Dynamic Equivalence Translation could be used for reference in discussing public signs translation in semantic and grammatical context since language of public signs is characterized as simplicity, conciseness and its close relationship with the public, it has strict requirements in wordselecting and sentence structure. In accordance with the Functional Equivalence, which was brought forth by E. A. Nida，translations should focus on the accuracy and equivalence of function between two languages instead of textualism, if necessary, at the expense of literalness, original word order, the source text39。s grammatical voice, etc. Semantic contextSemantic and context are closely interconnected with each other that the former is conditioned by the latter one. For instance, in MerriamWebster Collegiate Dictionary, the none “head” has several meanings: “(A). the upper or anterior division of the animal body that contains the brain, the chief sense organs, and the mouth。 (B). one in charge of a division or department in an office or institution。 (C). the end that is upper or higher or opposite the foot…When a prompting sign saying “Watch your head” is represented in the public place, on the instant people can realize perhaps the ceiling or something else above their heads is too low and they have to be careful lest their heads be hit rather than look at the headmaster as the meaning of the word is confined by the context. Semantic context’s restricting effects can be manifested not only in semantic understanding, but also in word selecting when doing ChineseEnglish translation.Example 8. Chinese:花萼樓 Original translation: Hua E Ho