Foregrounding,Communicative Clue And Style Representation In Fiction Translation

"Foregrounding" is an important notion in stylistics.It explains why some linguistic features are more salient than others in literary texts.In stylistics,foregrounding may refer to linguistic features.Foregrounded language can be regarded as manifestations of style of literary works and therefore,translation of foregrounded language is significant in style representation.This thesis combines foregrounded language translation with what Gutt's Relevance-Theory view called "communicative clue"" to discuss the translation of the short story Nemecia.To begin with,this thesis introduces some significant discussions on foregrounding and draws a summary that figure of speech,deviation from grammar and deviation from context and consistency can be considered as qualitative foregrounding whereas repetition and parallelism can be regarded as quantitative foregrounding.This is the basis for recognizing and selecting translation examples.In addition to that,to deal with the challenge from translation itself,the thesis further puts forward the essential argument that foregrounded language can be compared to communicative clues.Last but not least,this thesis puts forward that "optimal relevance" should be considered as an important factor in foregrounded language translation.Relevance translation theory considers translation as inferential communication where the translator infers from the original text intentions of the author and conveys them to target readers on condition that the contextual effects deserve processing efforts of the target readers.By analyzing plenty of translation examples,this thesis draws two conclusions:1)The notion of "communicative clue" can give insights into translation of foregrounded language.It helps the translator overcome disparities in language from and convey intentions of the original author to target readers by applying direct translation;2)It also suggests that the translator should apply indirect translation when language differences make it impossible to preserve foregrounded features.