Abstract: With the development of China, more and more foreign people come to China to do some trading, to travel and to settle down in Shanghai. Therefore, the use of English public signs is playing a more and more important role in our daily life. These signs not only make the foreigners’ life more convenient, but also reveal the openness of a city. However, there are many translation errors in the street. The mistranslation of the public signs can both cause communication barriers and have bad influence on our city’s image, even affect our country’s international image. Thus, we should pay more attention to the mistranslation of information in public places. In order to improve the quality of the public sign translation, we should know the cause that lead to mistranslation first. In order to make the essay trustier, I have found examples in different places in Shanghai. Also, I have read many books and journals to analyze why the translation errors exist. I find that there are three main types of mistranslations: misspelling, syntactic errors and chinglish. The analysis strongly suggests that there are four reasons that cause mistranslations in public signs, such as limited English language proficiency, neglect of culture difference, careless and the lack of supervision and uniform standard. Only after we analyze the type of errors and the cause that lead to the mistranslation can we find the method to avoid the translation errors. Thus, in this paper, I have concluded five translation principles and suggested five methods to avoid translation errors in public signs. According to my analysis and reference to other people’s ideas, I have found that it is a long way for us to improve the quality of public sign translation.

Key words: public signs; mistranslation; translation errors; cultural difference; translation principles