Deviation And Overregularity

Fortress Besieged (Weicheng). not only is deeply appreciated by domestic readers, but also has been translated into many languages and attracted a lot of foreign readers. Its use of language has reflected the author's tactful skills of manipulating language. Humor, satire, witty remarks, vivid figure of speech as well as other means of artistic expression are perfectly combined in this great novel. Among them, a lot of foregrounding is employed to make the expression more attractive and to create certain artistic effects, which constitutes the unique style of this works.Foregrounding is one of the most important concepts in literary stylistics. It originally derives from visual arts, in which it refers to the phenomenon that some art image is made prominent to attract the viewer's attention, thus achieves a certain artistic effect, while other things in the painting are the background. Later, the notion of foregrounding is applied to literature by the Russian formalists V. Shklovsky. Then it is illustrated and developed by Prague Scholars J. Mukarovsky and R. Jakobson. Later it is completed by G. N. Leech, M. A. K. Halliday and other linguists. Foregrounding refers to the intentional violation of the norm of the standard, or the linguistic phenomenon with unexpected frequency. The former emphasizes qualitative departure, while the latter focuses on quantitative one. According to Leech and Short, foregrounding can be classified into qualitative foregrounding and quantitative foregrounding. And deviation is the main way to realize qualitative foregrounding. while overregularity is the major means to achieve quantitative foregrounding.Since foregrounding plays an important role in the text, it is of great significance to make a thorough study of its translation in the target text. The English version of Fortress Besieged, translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao, is the first foreign version and also a very important one. It was first published by Indiana University Press, USA, in 1979 and has been widely discussed since its publication. According to the classification of foregrounding by Leech and Short, integrating the specific features of foregrounding in this novel. this thesis makes a detailed analysis of the English translation of foregrounding in Fortress Besieged from the aspects of various kinds of deviation and overregularity. The study intends to draw the researcher's attention to this important linguistic phenomenon through the analysis of the translation of foregrounding in Chinese literary works and to help the translators build a clearer purpose during their translation, thus to improve the quality of translation, rebuild the original style as well as comprehensively present the rich connotation of Chinese literary works to western readers.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one provides a general introduction to the study. It first introduces Fortress Besieged and its English translation. Next, it makes a general review of the studies on the English translation of Fortress Besieged. Then it explains the purpose and significance of the study. Chapter two is the theoretical basis of this thesis. It first gives an introduction to the concept and development of foregrounding. Also, it illustrates the classification of foregrounding and the means of realizing each kind of foregrounding. Chapter three and Chapter four are the main focuses of the study. Chapter three makes some detailed analysis of the English translation of qualitative foregrounding in Fortress Besieged from the perspectives of graphological, phonological, lexical, grammatical, semantic and dialectal deviation. Chapter four makes some concrete analysis of the English translation of quantitative foregrounding from the aspects of lexical and syntactic overregularity. Chapter five is the conclusion part of the study.