Foregrounding In Dong Leshan’s Translation Of 1984

Foregrounding was originally a concept borrowed from Art indicating that the painter highlights the figures among other objects to catch the observers’ eyeballs,while others serve as background. The application of foregrounding in literature originated from Russian formalists, elaborated by Prague scholars like Jan Mukarovsky and Jakobson, developed and eventually established by British stylists as Geoffrey. N. Leech and M.A.K. Halliday. Afterwards, foregrounding is widely introduced into stylistics, linguistics, especially the analysis or criticism on literary language like poem, fiction and drama. Moreover, Chinese scholar Ye Zinan proposed to “apply ‘foregrounding’ into translation and turn it into an effective tool in translation process for translators.” However, importance attached to the guidance of foregrounding to translation and the value of foregrounding in providing new perspective for translation criticism is still far from adequate.The source text in this thesis-English 1984,written by reputed British novelist George Orwell and published in 1949,is universally recognized as the most conspicuous political satire prophecy of dystopia and anti-totalitarianism in the 20th century.In China,soon after Dong Leshan translated the earliest Chinese version,“it stirred up a storm in the nation with the largest population”(Feng,2009).Some translated terms are still familiar to many people,for instance,“老大哥(Big brother)”,“思想罪(Thoughtcrime)”,“盖世太保(Gestabo)”,“双重思想(Doublethink)”and so on.This thesis lays its theoretical basis on linguistic deviation and parallelism differentiated by British linguist Geoffrey N.Leech,as well as Ye Zinan’s proposal on applying foregrounding into translation.Before underlining the significance and methods of recognition and representation in translation,the development of foregrounding will be sorted out.The main part of the thesis lies in the analysis of Dong Leshan’s translation of linguistic foregrounding in 1984 at the levels of phonology,graphology,lexis,semantics,register,dialect,and historical period from the perspective of deviation and parallelism.Lastly,based on what has been analyzed,the prominent traits of Dong’s translation of foregrounding in the fiction will be discussed,and his concern will also give inspiration to translators in view of the translation of foregrounding in literary works.