Balance Of Redundancy In Translation-an Analysis Of Zhang Guruo's Version Of The Return Of The Native

Language is an important medium for human communication. But some factors, such as geography and history, have caused the diversity of languages, which blocks the communication between peoples and nations. Therefore, as an important means to transferring languages, translation has drawn wide attention. The Cultural Turn took place in the 1990 s, and translation scholars got into the maze of it, being unable to find their way out. Since then, the translation studies has stepped into a time of cultural studies under diversified angles, which, as a result, led the translation studies away from its ontology. In such a situation, translation studies is going further and further astray from an ontological study. There is no doubt that such situation does no good to the construction of the translation discipline. Therefore, in recent years there has been a growing voice in the academic circles to bring translation studies back to the studies of the ontology, which means focusing on the language and text. This thesis is initiated in such a background, conforming to the requirement of the development of translation studies.In fact, while guaranteeing the ontological status of translation theories, combining some effective theories to study the text is undoubtedly meaningful. It goes without saying that information is very important to human life in such an information age as we are living in. And translation is also a tool to transmit information across different languages and cultures. Doctor Eugene A. Nida applies the Information Theory to translation studies innovatively and does research on translation theories and practice with a scientific method. Redundancy is a basic ingredient of the Information Theory. In reality, there is enough redundancy in any form of communications between any two languages. Redundancy is a necessary requirement to ensure effective communications. A moderate amount of redundant information will not hamper communications, but the degree of redundancy is differently required in different languages. During the process of cross-cultural communications, target readers will find it difficult to understand the version if the translator merely copies the redundancy pattern from the source text without considering enough of target readers' acceptability. As a result, the acceptance and spread of such versions will be greatly discounted. For this reason, the translator needs to consider the differences in redundancy pattern between different languages so as to take effective measures to keep the balance of redundancy in the target text.After a brief review of the extant studies on redundancy and The Return of the Native at home and abroad, the author finds out that there haven't been too many studies applying redundancy to literary translation studies. Accordingly, in spite of the fact that some scholars have researched Zhang's version, it is difficult to find out interdisciplinary studies concerning redundancy. After making the significance of this study clear, the author mainly adopts a qualitative research method to analyze some typical examples chosen from Hardy's novel and Zhang's version. In order to carry out a comparative analysis and strengthen the persuasiveness of this research, the author also takes the quantitative method. Through comparison, the author discovers there are three possible causes for the redundanc0 y imbalance in translating: first, the inherent differences between English and Chinese meanings and structures; second, the cultural differences due to geographical conditions, histories, religions and so on; third, translators' different interpretation of the source text and translation modes. To prove the objectivity of redundancy in texts and discuss the redistribution of it in the target text, the author analyzes some examples chosen from The Return of the Native. It is founded out that redundancy exists on lexical, syntactical and pragmatic levels and it has been redistributed in the target text, which prevents the redundancy imbalance effectively. Then, the author concludes that explicitation and implicitation are two valid translation strategies to keep the balance of redundancy through analyzing Zhang's translation strategies exhibiting in this version. These two translation strategies can also be classified into lexical, syntactical and pragmatic strategies separately. Unlike literal or free translation, explicitation and implicitation strategies require the translator to take the appropriate degree of redundancy in the target language and target readers' channel capacity into account. The author hopes that by discovering useful strategies of keeping the balance of redundancy in translation, the research can provide practical reference for dealing with similar translation problems and does some help to improving the quality of translation when introducing foreign literary works into our country. What's more, this research provides new insights for the subsequent studies in the future.