Approaches To Redundancy In E-C Translation Of Business Correspondence From The Perspective Of Information Theory

With the advance of economic globalization, more and more Chinese enterprises and companies participate in international trade directly, which makes business communication more and more important. English business correspondence, which serves as a good way for transmitting information, facilitating business communication, and enhancing connection, has become a most frequently used tool in international business and trade. Since the contents and the translation of business correspondences have direct influences on business activities and economic interest of both parties, such issues as how to improve the quality of English business correspondence translation and how to transmit the information of business correspondence accurately have aroused wide concern of researchers on business English translation.Information theory is a theory that studies on information transmission and processing, it has been applied to many fields since it was created, including the study on translation theory and practice. Such concepts in information theory as communication load, channel capacity, noise, and redundancy have been introduced to explain the process of translation which is considered as a complicated interlingual communication. Business correspondence falls into the category of informative texts, and serves as an important communication tool in international business activities, therefore, information theory is an appropriate theory for study on translation of business correspondence as guidance. Business correspondence shares some common grounds with other pragmatic text in translation. However, the characteristics of business correspondence, including its conciseness in wording, clearness in semantics, preciseness in writing, politeness in language and so on, make it different from other pragmatic English translation. This study applies redundant information theory to analyze such aspects of business correspondence as wording, syntax, style by citing a large amount of business correspondence examples. By this study, the author categorizes five factors contributing to the redundancy imbalance when translating English business correspondence into Chinese:differences in wording, differences in syntax, differences in format, differences in style and differences in culture. The study also finds that accurate information transmission, including accurate transmission of semantic information and pragmatic information, should be the priority concern when translators translating English business correspondence into Chinese. Therefore, the translator should apply translation strategies of repetition, restructuring, addition, and omission to deal with the redundancy in business correspondence, so as to transmit the information of source text accurately and properly.By the study on business correspondence translation from the perspective of information theory, the author hopes to prove that redundant information theory is feasible in the study of business correspondence translation, explore the application field of information theory, and meanwhile, give some guidance on the practice of business correspondence translation.