Redundancy In Legal English And Its Translation Equivalence From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The concept of redundancy was first proposed by Shannon,an American information engineer,in his information theory.He points out that communicators use information more than the minimum amount needed to achieve the desired communicative purpose,such linguistic phenomenon is called “redundancy”.Redundancy has been widely recognized and used in various major areas since its proposition,and the legal language is no exception.Doubts are inevitable in the process of applying redundancy to the translation of legal English.It has been suggested that redundant information can not achieve the goal of legal English of being precision,but will undermine its brevity,therefore should be abandoned.However,the reason for the application of redundancy is to meet the requirement of accuracy of legal translation.In the process of translating legal English,the use of redundancy can make the translation more precise in language expression and more rigorous in form.Although there are redundancy in both legal English and legal Chinese,the performance and use of which are different because of the differences in cultural background and expression habits.Whether the redundancy in the process of legal translation can be correctly dealt with has a direct impact on the accuracy of Chinese translation and its overall quality.Therefore,the study of the translation techniques of redundancy in legal English translation is critical.This paper mainly analyzes and studies the Chinese translation of redundancy in legal English from the perspective of the functional equivalence theory proposed by Nida.In addition to emphasizing that the original text and the translation should be consistent in content and form as other translation theories,the "functional equivalence" has an unprecedented focus on the reader's response.Nida points out that the idiomatic translation is to pursue the same response between the target and original readers,for the legal language emphasizing rigorousness and accuracy,this is precisely what is required.Therefore,the "functional equivalence" theory can not be neglected in the process of Chinese translating of legal English.