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Redundancy in Chinese-English Translation of the Report at the 18th National Congress of the CPCFrom the Perspective of the Economy Principle of LanguageAuthor：Wang Qian Number：09080817 Tutor：Tan XiaoliAbstract: In order to make our countrys fundamental policy not only understood by Chinese people, but also the worlds people, translation of political reports has become a necessity. However, due to its Chinese characteristics, many new concepts and new expressions are of Chinese features, which are quite difficult to be found in Chinese-English dictionaries. Therefore, translators have no choice but to adopt word-for-word and sentence-for-sentence translation strategies to ensure political security. And in this process, the translators have not only brought an abundance of redundancy information to the translation work, but decreased the intelligibility and aesthetic value of it as well. So in this thesis, the author will analyze these redundancy phenomena in the Report at the 18th National Congress of the CPC, basing on the economy principle of language, at lexical, syntactic and textual levels.Key Words: redundancy; political report; Chinese-English translation; the economy principle of language; the 18th National Congress of the CPCI IntroductionWith the rapid development of economic globalization, communication between countries has deepened gradually, thus the role of translation is becoming more and more important. The 18th National Congress of the CPC, which was held on November 8th, 2012, in Beijing, has formulated its action agenda and fundamental policy according to the demands of time and the desires of the people. In order to make our countrys fundamental policy not only understood by Chinese people, but also the worlds people, translation of this kind of political reports has become a necessity.However, due to its Chinese characteristics, many new concepts and new expressions are of Chinese features, which are quite difficult to be found in Chinese-English dictionaries. Therefore, translators have no choice but to adopt word-for-word and sentence-for-sentence translation strategies to ensure political security. And in this process, the translators have not only brought an abundance of redundancy information to the translation work, but decreased the intelligibility and aesthetic value of it as well. With regard to the redundancies appearing in the Chinese-English translation of the Report at the 18th National Congress of the CPC, this thesis will start from the economy principle of language and discuss the strategies of redundancy elimination, and will concentrate on the following three points: first of all, what has caused so many redundancies in the Chinese-English translation of the Report at the 18th National Congress of the CPC; secondly, how many categories of redundancies are there and what are the negative effects of these redundancies; last but not least, how can such redundancies be avoided and what is the significance.II Theoretical Framework In this chapter, this thesis is going to concentrate on the concept, forms and functions of the economy principle of language.2.1 Concept of the Economy Principle of Language The economy principle, as a universal principle, can be applied to different facets of the natural world. And the concept of economy in linguistics also has different values and meanings and can be considered and studied from diverse viewpoints. In order to determine its several readings, a lexical and etymological definition has been attached to the word “economy”, which reveals a positive interpretation as a whole: “economy” means gain, thrift, less burden, and saving. Therefore, economy in language has a strong controlling function over the whole system, something which is carried out with the least possible cost in terms of energy. The concept of economy - a tenet or tendency shared by all living organisms may be referred to as “the principle of least effort”, which consists in tending towards the minimum amount of effort that is necessary to achieve the maximum result, so that nothing is wasted . And George Kingsley Zipf, the person who firstly makes this principle clear, believes the principle of economy also plays an important balancing role: any non-economical change, which would bring about an excessive cost in terms of efforts and constitute an obstacle to comprehension, will be automatically removed or avoided (Vicentini, 2003: 37-39). From these, we can conclude that speech, as a natural phenomenon, is governed by the principle of least effort, which is an inclination to economy that acts as a criterion regulating any aspect of human behavior, and operating within linguistic evolution as well. In such a dynamic process as linguistic change, words are constantly being shortened, permuted, eliminated, borrowed and altered in meaning. However, thanks to the guidance of the principle of least effort, a general equilibrium with a maximum of economy is always preserved. So the economy principle of language naturally becomes one of the basic principles that guide human behaviors. And it will not only save time and improve efficiency, but also fulfill peoples requirement towards least effort. Whats more, the motives of least effort do exist in the process of speech production of the speaker as well as the process of speech comprehension of the recipient. In a nutshell, the concept of the economy principle of language is to use the minimum cognitive expenses exchange for the maximum communication earnings.2.2 Forms of the Economy Principle of LanguageIn Sun Yongs article Enlightenment to English-learners by Language Economy Principle (孙永，2009：139), the author claims that the economy principle of language is a fundamental principle which guides language use. It asks for using fewer words, avoiding complexity and favors for the quick-and-easy way of expression. Moreover, he believes economy principle is fully embodied in three levels of English language, which are pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. So here, this thesis is going to give a brief introduction towards these three forms of the economy principle of language.2.2.1 The Economy Principle Reflected in Pronunciation Liaison and slur are natural phenomena occur when you speak quickly, which fit the economy principle. For example,He is a good boy.In this sentence, the words “is” and “a” can read continuously just sound like one word.Next one!Oh, my God!And here, the letters “t” and “d” are actually slurred.2.2.2 The Economy Principle Reflected in Vocabulary The vocabulary in modern English shows a tendency towards simplification, thus more and more lengthy and complicated vocabularies have been gradually simplified into simple and easy ones, and widely accepted and applied. For example, the word “mathematics” has been simplified into “maths” in English spoken language and “math” in American spoken language; “laboratory” into “lab”; “influenza” into “flu”; “examination” into “exam”; and “television” and “advertisement” have been individually taken place by “TV” and “ad”.Whats more, conversion, a method means to form new words through converting its word class, also reflects the principle of economy. As we all know, the number of verb suffix is limited, so the conversion between nouns and verbs becomes the most economical and effective method to create new words. Generally speaking, most common nouns can be converted into verbs without any change. For example, through Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ( in the following thesis, the author will short it into LDCE), we know that “sugar” means “a sweet white or brown substance that is obtained from plants and used to sweeten food and drinks” (2007: 2002) when it is a noun, however, it means “to add sugar or cover something with sugar” (2007: 2002) when it is a verb; and “charge” refers to “the amount of money you have to pay for goods or services” (2007:292), but “an official statement made by the policy saying that someone is guilty of a crime” (2007:293) when it is a verb. 2.2.3 The Economy Principle Reflected in GrammarThe economy principle in grammar is mainly displayed by the briefness in grammatical structure in which omission plays a predominate role. And elliptical sentence means, under the precondition of no effects towards the declaration of intention, some words, expressions and elements in the sentence can be omitted. E.g.:I have studied English for five years. = I have studied English five year.The preposition “for” is omitted.If it is necessary, we shall send a telegram home. = If necessary, we shall send a telegram home. The subject “it” and the predicate “is” are omitted. (孙永, 2009:140).However, we also have to admit that this kind of omission can also bring mistakes and misunderstanding into communication.E.g.:To be or not to be, thats a question. Because the word “be” has no certain reference, there are many understandings and translations of this sentence. For example, Martin Stephen holds that this sentence means: “Is it better to submit and live; or fight and die”; however, Samuel Johnson, an English author, paraphrases it like “Is it better to endure the torture of life; or arm up to fight. And its English-Chinese translations vary a lot as well, like “生存还是毁灭（朱生豪）”，“活着还是死去（卞之琳）”，and “妥协呢还是斗争（张庆路）”，etc. In conclusion, the economy principle is fully embodied in the three levels of English language, and they are pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.2.3 Functions of the Economy Principle of Language According to Buhler, the three main functions of language are expressive, informative and vocative functions, and these are the main purposes of using language as well (Newmark, 2001: 39). As far as the author is concerned, the economy principle of language also has these three functions. So the next chapter is to concentrate on these three functions of language.2.3.1 Expressive FunctionJust as Newmark has mentioned in his book A Textbook of Translation (2001), the core of expressive function is the thought of the speaker or the writer, who uses utterances to express his feelings irrespective of any response (Newmark, 2001:39). Language is a set of abstract symbolic system which lies in our head, being an important tool in information transfer and affective interaction. Once connected with the specific environment of communication, it is actualized, reflecting those observable speeches. From the aspect of information transfer, concise and breviary language is more expressive and efficient in the conveyance of ones thought and emotion when compared with complicated and cumbersome one. And in the long process of history, brevity has long been regarded as the spirit of intelligence. One famous remark of Julius Caesar - Veni, Vedi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) (我来了，我看见了，我征服了) describes his success in a concise and sprightly way, which has fully displayed his perfect calm and collection in commanding the army (魏晓斌, 2010: 97). This is because when we regard information transfer as a process of encoding and decoding, those speakers who adopt a concise and brevity encoding scheme will on the one hand reduce themselves burden, and on the other hand, make their listeners decode the meaning more quickly. 2.3.2 Informative FunctionThe core of the informative function of language is external situation, the facts of a topic, reality outside language, including reported ideas or theories. For the purposes of translation, typical informative texts are concerned with any topic of knowledge, but texts about literary subjects, as they often express value-judgements, are apt to lean towards expressiveness. The format of an informative text is often standardized: a textbook, a technical report, an article in a newspaper or a periodical, a scientific paper, a thesis, minutes or agenda of a meeting. (Newmark, 2001: 40) For example, Chinese: 汽车行驶时请勿与司机谈话。Original Chinese-English translation: Passengers are requested not to communicate with the driver while the vehicle is in motion.Present Chinese-English translation: Please do not speak to the driver while he is driving.From this example, we can easily tell that the version of present translation is better.2.3.3 Vocative FunctionThe core of the vocative function of language is the readership, the addressee. The first factor in all vocative texts is the relationship between the writer and the readership, which is realized in various types of socially or personally determined grammatical relations or forms of address. And the second factor is that these texts must be written in a language that is immediately comprehensible to the readership. (Newmark, 2001: 41)So, from the definition of the vocative function given by Newmark, we can find that the economy principle of language is totally bestowed with this kind of function.For example:Chinese: 质量第一，荣誉第一，服务至上，平等互利。English: Quality Primacy, High Reputation; Service Supremacy, Equality and Mutual Benefit.Chinese: 优质高效，客户满意。English: Good Quality, High Efficiency and Client Satisfaction.III An Analysis of Chinese-English Translation of the Report at the 18th National Congress of the CPC It is difficult to give an exact definition to political reports, which is a specific type of discourse. And this is not only due to political reports integrating features, but different people hold different views of them as well. This thesis would like to define it as a genre of authoritative writings which aims at providing information or making comments on the current social, economical and political events, covering the countrys basic principles, policies and achievements of the government, etc. So in this chapter, the author will do some analysis of the Chinese-English translation of the Report at the 18th National Congress of the CPC, on the basis of the linguistic features of political reports, in order to find the definition, causes and forms of redundancy.3.1 Definition of RedundancyIn regard to definition of redundancy, there are many versions in different dictionaries. For example, Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary (2009: 1665) defines redundancy as: “the state of not being necessary or useful.” However, according to the meaning given by LDCE (2007:1650), it means: “a situation in which something is not used because something similar or the same already exists”. While being a core concept of information theory, redundancy means elements among signals which have no relation with informative contends. In the worlds developed languages, they all contain nearly 50 percentage of redundancy information, and English is one of them. And some people even claim that English possesses 67 percentage to 80 percentage of redundancy information. For example, the “-s”, the “are”, and the “-s” in th