A Study Of Foregrounding In The Chinese Translation Of A Leaf In The Storm

The past few years have witnessed a growing interest in American Chinese literature among domestic researchers.Among the writers who have migrated from China to the United States,Lin Yutang is a prominent figure who has written extensively in English with the aim of introducing and preserving traditional Chinese culture and thought for foreign audiences.Despite the significance of his work,his novel,A Leaf in the Storm,has received little attention from domestic scholars.While the foregrounding theory has been widely used in previous research on literature and language,there has been limited application of this theory to translation studies,particularly in exploring the foregrounding that exists in the translation.This thesis applies Leech’s foregrounding theory to descriptively study the foregrounding in the Chinese translation of A Leaf in the Storm,analyze the functions of such foregrounding and explore the motivations behind these foregrounding.The findings of this research are manifold.Firstly,two types of foregrounding can be identified in the Chinese translation of A Leaf in the Storm.One is the deviation that occurs in comparison to standard Chinese,including register and dialectical deviation;the other is the deviation based on the original text,including lexical and rhetorical deviation.Secondly,these foregrounding serves to reconstruct the historical context,emphasize the Chineseness of the text,construct the image of the Japanese,enhance the aesthetic appeal,enhance the narrative vividness,and enhance the coherence of language.Thirdly,the main reasons for translators to foreground the language in the original text are related to the background and theme of the novel,the translators’ translation ideas,and the readers’ reading habits and aesthetic expectations.By analyzing the foregrounding in the Chinese translation of A Leaf in the Storm based on the foregrounding theory,this research is expected to enrich the translation studies of works by Lin Yutang and provides a novel perspective for the bonding of foregrounding theory and translation studies.