摘要

 “前景化”是文体学中常见的一个术语, 与背景、自动化和常规相对应。“前景化”的概念来源于俄国形式主义, 经过穆卡罗夫斯基、雅各布森等布拉格学派学者的阐发, 后又经过利奇、韩礼德等英国文体学家的加工与发展而最终形成。由于英汉语言体系的内在差异和文学这一体裁的特殊性，文学作品中前景化现象非常普遍，因此，在英汉文学翻译过程中重视并正确恰当地处理前景化语言至关重要。

关键词：前景化，文学翻译，有意偏离，无意偏离

Abstract

As a commonly seen stylistics term, foregrounding is usually accompanied by terms of background，automation and convention. Originated from Russian Formalism, then developed by scholars of the Prague School, Jan Mukarovsky and Jacobson as representatives, and perfected by English stylisticians such as Geoffrey Leech and Halliday, the foregrounding theory finally came into being. Due to the differences between English language and Chinese language and characteristics of prose, foregrounding is common in literary works. Hence, it is essential to attach importance to foregrounding languages and correctly and appropriately translate them in translating English to Chinese.

Key words: foregrounding theory, literary translation, intentional foregrounding, unintentional foregrounding

1.    Introduction
The aesthetical power of a literary work lies not only in its message, but also the ways in which the message is expressed. In literary works, some language features stand out because they have violated the norm of standard language. Such violations are foregrounding language. Foregrounding, a means by which language is expressed not in agreement with standard norm and logics, deviates from standards and is free from restrictions and limits, stimulating people’s aesthetical feelings and arousing people’s interest in literary works. As a commonly seen stylistics term, usually compared with terms like background, automation and convention, foregrounding has gone through a long process before it is finally developed into a complete theory.
As translating consists in reproducing the closest natural equivalent of source text in the target language, in terms of both meaning and style, it is necessary for translators to take foregrounding features into consideration in the process of translating so as to best represent meaning and style in the original. However, it seems that foregrounding features are often overlooked in English—Chinese literary translation, which the author thinks is due to translators’ unconsciousness of the functions of foregrounding, their failure to recognize foregrounding and their failure to translate foregrounding appropriately and sufficiently in English—Chinese literary translations. Therefore, this paper is intended to answer two questions: how to recognize foregrounding language and how to translate them into the most appropriate source language. With respect to foregrounding recognition, two types of foregrounding—intentional foregrounding and unintentional foregrounding—should be differentiated across languages. And with respect to foregrounding representation, different techniques need to be employed respectively.