Influence of Cultural Differences on Chinese and English Idioms and Their Translation

文化差异对英汉习语及其翻译的影响 Influence of Cultural Differences on Chinese and English Idioms and Their Translation Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………….1 Key words………………………………………………………………….1 I. Introduction…………………………………………………………...2 II. Cultural Differences Reflected in English and Chinese Idioms......2

1. Differences in natural environments.....................................................3 2. Differences in custom..........................................................................4 3. Differences in religion…………………………………………………5 4. Differences in historical allusions…………………………………......7 5. Differences in thinking.........................................................................8

III. The Way to Translate the Chinese and English Idioms………….8

1. Literal translation…………………………………………………...8 2. Free translation………………………………………………………..9 3. A combination of the two methods……………………………………...9 4. Substitution………………………………………………….....10

IV. Conclusion………………………………………………………….11 References…………………………………………………...................11

Influence of Cultural Differences on

Chinese and English Idioms and Their Translation

Abstract: Idioms are the core and the essence of a language. They are heavily-loaded with

cultural information. Idioms are widely used in daily communications, newspapers, magazines and mass media because of their characteristics of being short, humorous and full of philosophic meanings. But because of the cultural differences, such as surroundings, habits, religion, history, custom and thought pattern, English and Chinese idioms are quite different, cultural differences constitute the main difficulty in the translation of idioms. This paper analyzes influence of cultural differences on English and Chinese idioms and indicates that literal translation, substitution, free translation are mainly applied in the translation of idioms of the two languages in order to convey as much the information of the original as possible.

Key words: cultural differences； English and Chinese idioms；ways of translating the idioms

摘 要: 习语是语言的结晶，是文化的载体。习语具有简洁,机智幽默以及寓意深刻等特点，因此广

泛地用于日常交际，报纸，杂志和大众媒体中。但是由于人们不同的生活环境，宗教信仰，历史背景，风俗习惯以及思维方式，英汉习语有很大的差异，而文化差异成为翻译习语的主要障碍。本文将分析文化差异对英汉习语的影响，以及在习语翻译中，为更好的翻译习语使之不失原意，而采用的直译，意译，替代等翻译方法。

关键词：文化差异；英汉习语；习语的翻译方法

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I. Introduction

Idiom is a kind of phrase or sentence whose meaning is not clear from the apparent meaning of its individual words and which must be learnt as a whole unit. Language is closely related to culture and can be said as a part of culture. Language is the carrier of culture which in turn is the content of language on Chinese and English idioms . We can dig out cultural features from language and explain language phenomena with culture.

Different languages reflect different cultures; different cultures entail different language expressions. Idioms as a special form of language exist in both of them and carry a large amount of cultural information such as history, geography, religion, custom, nationality psychology, thought pattern and etc, and therefore are closely related to culture. In a board sense, idioms include common sayings, proverbs, allusions and the allegorical sayings. Idioms in one language differ from those in other languages as a result of differences in background information of history, economic life, geographical environment, customs, religious beliefs, living environment, social conventions and literature tradition etc. Idiom is a mirror that can reflects clearly national or cultural characteristics. Idiomatic expressions are even difficult for English native speakers because their meanings cannot be determined through an analysis of their individual words. For we Chinese students, English idioms are a stumbling block. It is very possible that they often not only feel at a loss in understanding conversations because of a key idiom but also misuse idioms. For that reason, idioms are difficult to translate. In this paper, I am going to do some study on cultural differences reflected in Chinese and English idioms first and then explore the ways of their translation.

II. Cultural Differences Reflected in Chinese and English Idioms

Every nation has its own way of living and thinking, cultural environment and traditional culture. Because of this, the cultural information reflected by different languages is quite different.

Both Chinese and English has plenty of idioms. Some of them are in the same meanings or are quite similar with each other. But in most cases, they are quite different from each other just because they were the products of different cultures. If we do some comparison work, we would see many interesting examples:

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