A Study On The Translation Of Big Breasts & Wide Hips From The Perspective Of Foregrounding Theory

As the first Chinese winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,Mo Yan has authored numerous books which have attracted wide attention from readers at home and abroad.As one of Mo Yan’s representative works,Big Breasts & Wide Hips was translated into English by Howard Goldblatt and was published overseas.It can be found that there are a large number of foregrounding languages in Big Breasts & Wide Hips.As an important way to accomplish literariness,the translation of foregrounding languages not only reflects the fidelity to the literariness of the original text,but also evaluates the quality of the translated text to some extent.This study chooses Mo Yan’s Big Breasts & Wide Hips and its English version as the research object and explores the translation of foregrounding languages in this novel on the basis of foregrounding theory.According to Leech and Short’s classification of foregrounding,this study selects 1049 pieces of expressions with qualitative foregrounding feature and quantitative foregrounding feature,among which 197 are phonological deviation,6 are graphological deviation,172 are grammatical deviation,12 are deviation of register,86 are lexical deviation,208 are dialectal deviation,8 are deviation of historical period,174 are semantic deviation,87 are repetition and 134 are parallelism.Using the three theories proposed by Liu Miqing,namely corresponding code,recasting code and decoloring code,this study summarizes Howard Goldblatt’s handling of the foregrounding languages.It is discovered that the three strategies of corresponding code,recasting code and decoloring code can achieve the preservation,recreation and removing of foregrounding effect respectively.And the proportions of using these three strategies are 60.55%,5.25% and 34.19% respectively.The foregrounding languages can be divided into the translatable and the untranslatable.For the translatable foregrounding languages,corresponding code can be used.The foregrounding effect can be retained through using the methods of literal translation or imitation.Besides,recasting code is a feasible way.By the employment of transliteration or liberal translation,the foregrounding effect can be reconstructed.For the untranslatable foregrounding languages,decoloring code is an option.Through free translation or omission,the meaning can be conveyed but the foregrounding effect is lost.Based on the analysis of the translation of the foregrounding languages,this study summarizes three principles that was manifested by the three strategies: the principle of functional equivalence,the principle of aesthetic reproduction and the principle of acceptability.By focusing on the translation of foregrounding languages,this study summarizes different translation strategies and methods adopted by Howard Goldblatt with the intention of serving as a guide for similar translation practice in the future.In addition,as an important carrier of literariness,the translation of foregrounding languages is also of great significance for literature to “go out”.