On Translating Foregrounded Language In Literature Work

As an important concept in stylistics,foregrounding was firstly introduced by the Prague School to describe the deviant use of language in literature work.Since foregrounding is a common technique used by literature writers to generate rhetorical aesthetic and thematic meanings,the translation of the foregrounded expressions is of particular importance in literature translation.This paper takes Willa Cather's One of Ours,the Pulitzer prize winning work,as the English to Chinese translation source text,which provides us with a rich pool of foregrounding expressions.These expressions were firstly identified and classified according to English linguist Geoffrey Leech's theory.Then they were analyzed using Halliday's stylistic analysis approach.Finally,the translation strategies for the foregrounded expressions were presented and the underlying conceptualizations were discussed.As the translation of foregrounded language has no regular pattern,the author hopes this paper would provide a new insight into the translation of foregrounded language in literature work.