Redundancy In Legal English And Its Chinese Translation

Since Claude Shannon, an American mathematical engineer, put forward the concept of redundancy in his Information Theory in1948, it has been applied gradually by scholars in various fields, especially in the field of linguistics. In linguistics, redundancy is regarded as a phenomenon that exists objectively in communication. Namely, redundancy is a phenomenon that information senders use more information signals that excess the minimization in the process of communication in order to accomplish exchange successfully. In legal language, redundancy should have been abandoned. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, redundancy and accuracy are compatible in order to express legal meaning accurately and transmit legal tone powerfully. In other words, the statement of accurate language can never deviate from the assistance of redundancy. Furthermore, due to the differences in legal language and culture, redundancy is distributed differently in different languages, making necessary the study of redundancy in legal translation.In the view of the significance of the redundancy in legal language and legal translation, this paper researches into the redundancy in legal English and its Chinese translation strategies from such three aspects as follows. Firstly, this paper studies from various phenomena of the redundancy in legal English, and then attaches great importance to the analysis of the factors contributing to the non-equivalence of redundancy in legal translation. Secondly, based on the general translation norms of legal English:accuracy, clarity and brevity, and consistency, the present study proposes two special translation norms for the redundancy in legal translation:equivalency and feasibility. The norm of equivalency means that translators make the subtle and implied meaning in the source text apparent and obvious in the target text on the basis of "functional equivalence", as such, the target language transmits the original information accurately; while the norm of feasibility means that although legal translation is a cross-culture, cross-system, and cross-language communication activity, the translation of the redundancy is not only possible, but highly productive. Finally, this paper discusses various manifestations of the redundancy at both lexical level and syntactical level respectively, and puts forward some strategies to deal with them in translation.In short, the researches into the redundancy in legal English and its translation are of great theoretical and practical significance. This paper aims to play a role in a multi-dimensional and multi-level study of legal language from one point of view, hoping to make some contributions to this field in the future.