Any discourse, a conglomeration of different sentences, features background information as well as foreground information both at the clause level and at the discourse level. The information which knits the thread of a discourse and which moves the discourse forward is called foreground information and the information which does not immediately and crucially contribute to the speaker’s goal, but which merely assists, amplifies, or comments on it is background information. Information grounding theory holds that an acceptable discourse results from the modulation of both foreground information and background information. The present paper, by taking three translations of the first paragraph of the Chinese literary discourse “Zuiwengting Ji” as an instance and through extracting and back-translating into Chinese their respective foreground information, aims to make readers fully aware of the important role that foreground information plays in achieving global coherence in discourse structuring.
LI Ming
. Role of Information Grounding in Literary Translation for Discourse Structuring: A Study of Three English Translations of a Chinese Prose “Zuiwengting Ji”[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2015
, 15(12)
: 60
-64
.
DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2015.12.013
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