Bilingual public signs are extensively used in Chinese-speaking regions such as China's Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong. This article concentrates on issues relating to English-Chinese public signs in Tianjin and their translation countermeasures. Based on examples collected from public places, it can be found that English-Chinese public signs in these places constitute a special genre and tend to use a descriptive and/or figurative language style to convey a simple message, which creates challenges for translation. The paper mainly discusses the status quo of public signs in Tianjin, the Skopos theory and its application in public signs translation. It is found that under the guidance of the Skopos theory the translation may be well conducted. The paper concludes that the unique nature of public signs in public places suggests a need for further investigation of the language styles used in such signs in both languages and the most appropriate strategies for their translation.
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