On Translation Of Dialect Idioms In Howard Goldblatt’s Frog From The Perspective Of Leech’s Foregrounding Theory

Along with the “Chinese Culture Going Global” initiative,the translation of Chinese literary works is gaining great momentum in a way rarely seen before,among which novels are being translated frequently.As one of the most widely recognized and influential novelists throughout the world whose works have been translated into other foreign languages,Mo Yan is well-known for the idiosyncratic use of unusual language and special rhetoric in his works.He writes in a humorous manner and the simple and dialect wording in his works has a resonance with a multitude of readers.The production of the unique language style in Mo Yan’s works is by no means easy when it comes to translation.Howard Goldblatt has played an important role in introducing Mo Yan’s novels to western readers.The term foregrounding was originally applied in paintings,aiming to deviate those minor characters from the background and highlight the objects in the foreground.Previous studies have applied foregrounding theory into stylistics and linguistics,but very few translation studies combined with foregrounding theory have been conducted.Mo Yan’s works are characterized by the use of foregrounding language,especially the use of dialect words,and the Frog is no exception.This thesis discusses the types of foregrounding language in Frog and analyzes the translation of dialect words based on Geoffrey Leech’s qualitative foregrounding and quantitative foregrounding.It is found that in terms of qualitative foregrounding,there are six types of deviations in Mo Yan’s Frog(lexical deviation,grammatical deviation,phonological deviation,semantic deviation,dialectical deviation and the deviation of register),and two types of quantitative foregrounding(repetition and parallelism).Howard Goldblatt mainly adopts the method of literal translation to translate the deviated languages;however,he also adopts liberal translation and the method of equivalence to handle to some lexical deviations;liberal translation and the method of replacing the concrete with the abstract to handle some grammatical deviations;liberal translation to translate a small portion of phonological deviations,dialectical deviations and semantic deviations;the methods of addition and equivalence to reproduce the deviation of register;the method of addition to reproduce lexical repetition,and the method of conversion to handle syntactic repetition.This thesis,which centers on the translation of dialect idioms in Frog based on Leech’s Foregrounding Theory,can help people better understand the features of language in Frog and provide guidance to the translation of literary works.