A Comparative Study On Two Chinese Versions Of The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison, one of the most distinguished writers in America, is the first African American female writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. Her works have a strong focus on life and spiritual world of African women. The Bluest Eye, her first novel, deals with the miserable life of Pecola whose life is trod by the mainstream White aesthetics and the black community with distorted cultural identity.Foregrounding is an important concept in stylistics. A technique in painting art, it is commonly used by artists who deliberately highlight particular elements to draw attention. The Prague School was the first to use this term to describe deliberate deviation from the norm in the use of language.Building upon the theory of foregrounding, this thesis analyses the features of foregrounding in The Bluest Eye, and, by comparing two Chinese versions of the novel, discusses strategies for translating foregrounded elements with an aim to fill the gap in studies in the Chinese translation of the novel.This thesis consists of5chapters. Chapter1briefly introduces The Bluest Eye, the theory of foregrounding, the goal and structure of this thesis. Chapter2elaborates on the theory of foregrounding and translation theory of Black English with a focus on Leech’s contribution to the theory of foregrounding, laying the theoretical basis for comparative discussion in Chapter4. Chapter3reviews studies on The Bluest Eye and other works of Morrison, and studies on translation strategies for foregrounded features in literal works. Chapter4explores translation strategies for3categories of foregrounded features in the novel by comparing two Chinese versions of the novel. Chapter5concludes that foregrounded features should be translated in a way that they are also foregrounded in the target texts.