A study on the Foregrounding Language in the English Translation of Happy Dreams

Jia Pingwa’s rural novel Happy Dreams portrays the lived experiences of marginalized groups through the urban dream of the protagonist Liu Gaoxing, a scavenger. The novel employs a significant amount of foregrounded language, which serves as the central means of character construction. Drawing on Leech’s theory of foregrounding as its analytical framework, this paper examines both the original text and its English translation Happy Dreams (translated by Nicky Harman), focusing on the translation strategies applied to various forms of foregrounded language, specifically lexical, grammatical, and dialectal foregrounding, through close textual analysis and comparative study. The findings reveal that the translator mainly adopts the domestication strategy, prioritizing reader accessibility. While this approach somewhat diminishes the rural authenticity and cultural otherness of the source text, it successfully facilitates cross-cultural communication, offering valuable insights into balancing literary integrity and readability in the translation of rural literature.