The article analyzed translations of the public signs installed on the territory of China and are aimed at native speakers of the Russian language. It is important to note that when translating from Chinese into Russian, while taking into consideration to the differences in the system of languages, the norms of the contemporary Russian literary language, including syntactic norms, are violated. In this paper, the authors propose a classification of the types of violations of the linguistic norms of the present-day Russian literary language based on the texts of public signs in Russian. The reasons for the occurrence of these violations are presented and a recommended translation option is proposed. Errors in the translation of public signs are described from the point of view of syntactic structures, e. g. various types of phrases and sentences. At the same time, along with the violation of syntactic norms in the translation of public signs into Russian, violations of lexical norms are considered. More precise equivalents for both languages are proposed, taking into account cross-cultural communication aspects. The set public signs translated into Russian can serve as a starting point for further research into graphic, spelling, lexical, grammatical and even pragmatic errors.