A Study On The Translation Of Foregrounded Language In David Copperfield

The charm of literary work not only lies in the content it means topresent, but also the way it presents. It is the unique way of expressionthat forms the specific style of a writer. The language that deviates fromthe regularity in literary works is called foregrounding. As for thetranslation of literary works, it requires that the transaltor should translatethe information of source language and the style and feature of the writer.Foregrounding is the main way to show writer’s style, so the translatorwho wants to achieve the thematic significance and aesthetic value oforiginal text, should pay attention to foregrounded language andreproduce it in the translated version as much as possible. This thesis isaimed at having a research on foregrounded language in DavidCopperfield and analyzing its translation versions. Foregrounding theoryis usually applied in poetry appreciation and stylistic analysis at thebeginning. At the end of20th century, Chinese scholar Ye Zhinanproposed that foregrounding theory could be used in translation, which isan innovation for the translation study. Afterwards the research onapplying foregrounding to translation is increasing.The thesis takes the reproduction of the foregrounded language intranslated version as a standard for the analysis of David Copperfield’s two Chinese versions (Zhang Guruo’s and Dong Quisi’s versions). Thethesis chooses24typical foregrounded language elements to discriminateforegrounding and analyze their translations. In the end, the thesisconcludes that the translation of foregrounded language has greatinfluence on the style of the original works and on the expression of theauthor’s intention. At the same time the thesis summarizes relatedmethods of translation, namely reservation and transformation, whichprovide some suggestions to literary translation.