IN the list of bilingual (双语的) public signs issued on November 3, 2006, “严禁明火” is translated into “No Open Flame”. One user suggests that a separate（分开的） English translation of “森林内禁止烟火” be provided since it is so different from “严禁明火”. There is no question that you can translate it into “No Flame in the Forest, Smoking or Lighting Fires Strictly Forbidden in the Forest”, or whatever. The real question is: is it necessary to translate every Chinese word into English? The answer is, “No”!
It is important to note that we pick up information from environments（环境） and situations（情景） as well as from public signs. If the sign board is put up in a forest, then “森林内” in “森林内禁止烟火”does not have to be translated into “in the forest”, because this piece of information is already there in the environment. Of course, if it is put up at the edge（边缘） of the forest, this bit of information needs to be overtly（公开地） supplied.
Note also that there might be a causal（原因的）relation between two situations. What does the English proverb（谚语）“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” tell us? Well, it tells us that there is an informational link between a smoke situation and a fire situation. Since the information that there is smoke can be derived（推导出） from the information that there is fire, “烟”(smoke) doesn’t have to be translated into English either. Why, then, does the Chinese public sign contain the word “烟”? Well, we don’t accept “禁止火”, which means the same as “禁止烟火”, most probably for prosodic(韵律的) reasons.
