A Semiotic Approach To Foregrounding Translation

Semiotics is an old discipline which studies signs and symbols. In the ancient times, Plato and Aristotle had ever explored the nature of signs. The tradition of modern semiotic theories is led by Swiss-French linguist Saussure and American philosopher Peirce. Saussure thought that language is a sign system to express thought. A sign is made up of a signifier and a signified. Peirce divided signs into icon, index and symbol according to the relation between a sign and its object.Semiotics has close connections with translation. They both deal with the interpretation, manipulation and use of meaning of signs. Many scholars have tried to apply the semiotic approach to translation studies. This thesis adopts the semiotic theory held by Morris to argue the literary translation, especially the foregrounding translation. Morris proposes three sub-field in the meanings of a sign: referential meaning, grammatical meaning or syntactic meaning and pragmatic meaning. From the three meanings of a sign, the thesis discusses the foregrounding translation.Foregrounding is borrowed from painting and opposite to background, automation and convention. Linguists of Prague School first introduced it into linguistics and poetics. In linguistics, foregrounding serves for some special purposes or functions by deviating from linguistic norms. In literary works, foregrounding is important for a writer to represent his or her writing style, express theme of the works and achieve aesthetic effects. For this reason, foregrounding should be laid emphasis in the process of literary translation.There are four chapters in this thesis. Firstly, it begins with the review of development of semiotics. It mainly introduces the theories held by Saussure, Peirce, Morris and Russian scholars.Then the thesis discusses the relation between semiotics and translation. By employing Morris' semiotic theory, the thesis analyses the process of translation and concludes that the semiotic ,approach to translation is of great significance in the practical translation process.Chapter3 introduces the concepts and classification of foregrounding. It touches the statements on foregrounding held by Prague School, Russian Formalists and functionalists. According to Leech, a famous linguist, there are two kinds of foregrounding: syntagmatic foregrounding and paradigmatic foregrounding. Syntagmatic foregrounding is also called parallelism which consists in the introduction of extra-regularities into the language. Paradigmatic foregrounding is a deviation from the language norm which can occur on each level of a language. There are eight kinds of deviation in paradigmatic foregrounding. The last chapter concentrates on the semiotic approach to foregrounding translation. By analyzing abundant examples of translation of foregrounding, the thesis holds that when translating, the emphasis laid to the three meanings may be different according to different cases.At last, the conclusion points out that the semiotic approach to foregrounding translation undoubtedly has far-reaching significance to both translation practice and translation criticism.