Research Into Foregrounding Languages In Red Sorghum And Their Translation

The concept of foregrounding originated from the art of painting,and afterwards it was introduced into literature.In the field of literature,foregrounding language refers to the language that is repeated or deviated from standard language.By virtue of that feature,foregrounding has been taken as a significant method in literary composition since it was introduced in 1950 s.However,foregrounding has not been linked with translation before 2001.Ye Zinan(2001)firstly advocated that foregrounding theory should be applied in translation and translator must retain the features and effects of foregrounding language in target text.It is regrettable that Ye has not put this idea into in-depth research,and scholars at home and abroad have not probed into the research on the translation of foregrounding language integrally and intensively.Therefore,based on the foregrounding theory developed by Geoffrey Leech(1966),this thesis does the research on the foregrounding language and its translation in Red Sorghum from vertical and horizontal dimensions.Geoffrey Leech(1966)classified foregrounding into two types: paradigmatic foregrounding that refers to deviation from standard language and syntagmatic foregrounding that signifies the parallelism of standard language.In addition,he subdivided deviation into eight variations from the perspective of linguistic levels.Under the guidance of foregrounding theory,initially,this thesis probes into the paradigmatic and syntagmatic foregrounding phenomena in Red Sorghum with textual analysis.Furthermore,by comparing the parallel texts,it analyzes the translation strategies for various foregrounding phenomena in Red Sorghum,and comments on the translation effects of foregrounding language.Through the research,several findings have been attained.On one hand,Goldblatt applied domestication as the primary strategy and foreignization as supplement to translate paradigmatic foregrounding language.Specifically,free translation,imitation,variation translation and literal translation take up the proportions of 62%,18%,9% and 10.5% respectively and the ratio of recovery of paradigmatic foregrounding effect in target text accounts for 22%.On the other hand,domestication and foreignization almost play the equally important roles in translating syntagmatic foregrounding language.Under this condition,literal translation,free translation and variation translation separately occupy the proportions of 45%,35% and 20% respectively;and the ratio of recovery of syntagmatic foregrounding effect in target text reaches up to 50%.By virtue of these finding,it has been concluded that because of the cultural and linguistic differences between two countries,Goldblatt primarily relied on domestication to translate the foregrounding language in Red Sorghum.However,this translation strategy undermines the original foregrounding effects of source text and deprives target readers of the aesthetic experience,although it yields a text easily accepted by target readers.Therefore,translators should endeavor to balance domestication with foreignization and to recover the foregrounding effect in target text at the full might.