On Redundancy In Translations Of Governmental Publicities Targeted At Overseas Readers: A Functional Approach

Overseas-oriented governmental publicities play an essential role in international communication, whereas the translation of governmental publicities is not satisfying due to the word-for-word translation. A great number of redundant words and expressions make the translated version wordy, lengthy, and time-consuming, which reduces the target audiences' reading speed or even causes discomfort. As a result, the foreign readers may give up reading such translated versions.From the perspective of functionalist translation theory, the present study aims to analyze the redundancy in the translations of governmental publicities in the hope of elaborating the application of functionalism and finding a workable guiding theory for redundancy. Examples of redundancy taken from governmental publicities are first categorized into different types from lexical, sentential and discourse levels, and then analyzed in the light of the functionalist translation theory. Strategies and techniques to solve redundancy are illustrated.