A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of The Translations Of The Foregrounding Language In English And Japanese Versions Of Wei Cheng

Wei Cheng is a Chinese full-length satiric novel written by the literary scholar and writer,Qian Zhongshu.It has been translated into several foreign languages since it was published.The “foregrounding” theory is a core theory in stylistics.It refers to the language phenomenon of making the literary and artistic content prominent for artistic purposes,by using the conventional language as a background,and deviating the language from the norm.The copious amount of expressive and foregrounding language is one of the most successful achievements of this novel.The language itself is noteworthy when it comes to translation.When dealing with the foregrounding language,translators either choose to retain both the outstanding features and the meaning of the foregrounding language,or to retain the meaning by ignoring the form and features.Different translation strategies will give readers different reading experiences.This study will have a preliminary analysis on five levels of linguistic deviation of the differences between the two versions of translation.The original Chinese version,English version,and Japanese version of Wei Cheng are chosen to be used to build a trilingual parallel corpus.By studying the performance of each version at five language levels,this thesis will analyze what different translation strategies would the translators of different versions apply when dealing with the translation of foregrounding language.The relationship between the two languages,in the aspects of graphology,pronunciation,and culture,affects the translators' translation strategies.The Japanese translators usually use the translation strategies of preserving its form and meaning in the processing of foregrounding language,transmitting the features of the foreground language to the reader as much as possible.The English translators choose to express the meaning of the foregrounding language by applying paraphrasing,functional equivalence and other translation strategies,abandoning the form and features of the foregrounding language.