A Report On E-C Translation Of The Sci-fi Novel "Farewell,Odysseus" From The Perspective Of Foregrounding

Since the beginning of the 20th century,formalism,which advocates taking the formal features and conventions of literature as the research topics and the formal elements of literature as its research focus,has become more and more dynamic.During this period,Russian formalist Shkalovsky first advanced foregrounding theory.Based on the previous research results,the British stylist Leech further subdivides syntagmatic foregrounding and paradigmatic foregrounding.Syntagmatic foregrounding and paradigmatic foregrounding can be categorized as parallelism and deviation,respectively.Ye Zinan introduced foregrounding theory into translation initially,thus advancing the foregrounding from intralingual research to interlingual application.Leech and other scholars’ongoing study of foregrounding has provided specific implementation rules and operational norms for the translator to identify foregrounding features.Nowadays,themes of sci-fi novels are not confined to scientific and technological civilization,but involve a wide range of social problems.This indicates that human beings may be beset with psychological,political,economic,and moral challenges.Published in August 2020,the short science fiction "Farewell,Odysseus" has no official Chinese translation yet.The author J.G.Willem examines human nature through science fiction,fantasy,and horror.Literary authors tend to make writing poetic,but literary translators are information-oriented.To breathe life into literary translations again,translators assume responsibility for reproducing the foregrounding features derived from the author’s intentional violation of the convention of the source language of "Farewell,Odysseus".A close analysis of "Farewell,Odysseus" proves that parallelism at the phonological level,parallelism at the lexical level,parallelism at the syntactic level of syntagmatic foregrounding and lexical deviation,grammatical deviation,graphological deviation,semantic deviation and deviation of historical period of paradigmatic foregrounding are noticeable.Regular means and strategic means are conducive to reproducing foregrounding features.The regular means include equivalence and synchronizing.The strategic means are more flexible,including such translation techniques as diction,addition,omission,transliteration and four-character words.However,untranslatability exists objectively.Therefore,restoring foregrounding usually leads to three kinds of results in translation practice,namely,equivalent foregrounding,creative foregrounding,and zero foregrounding.The foregrounding theory provides translators with a new perspective of thinking and can solve some problems in the translation of sci-fi novels.In this translation practice,the translator integrates foregrounding theory with a sci-fi novel,takes the degree of how well foregrounding features are recreated as a standard to assess the quality of the translated version,and makes every effort to reproduce the literariness,scientificity and popularity of the novel.The translator hopes that this translation report can diversify the application of foregrounding theory and provide reference and enlightenment for future research on sci-fi translation.