On The Translation Of English Idioms: A Cultural Perspective

Idioms, generally regarded as the essence of language, deposit of culture, a unique composition in the process of culture construction and development, play an important role in language. Owing to their conciseness in form and riches in meaning, they are widely employed by both Chinese people and English people in daily life and literary works. However, the merits of idioms also bring out difficulties in translating The E-C idiom translation involves not only the transfer of language but also the transmission of culture. According to Nida, "For truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function (2001:82)."Chinese and English cultures are quite different from each other, which are included in their respective language and expressed through each of their own languages. As Wang Zouliang, a famous Chinese scholar of translation theory and practice, once said, "The differences between two different cultures are the greatest difficulty in translation. What he/her (the translator) handles are individual words or expressions and what he faces are two great cultures". To be sure, language and culture are interwoven and they are closely linked, too. The intercultural communication means nothing if the translator takes no notice of culture and the conversion of cultural senses. Therefore, it is a must for translation studies to probe into strategies to deal with cultural difference between Chinese and English.The difficulty of translating idioms consists in the following facts:first, the divergence between form and meaning; second, the words in an idiom usually bear the secondary or figurative meaning rather than the primary; last, compared with ordinary expressions, the meaning of an idiom is probably difficult to be expressed in the receptor language because of the existence of cultural gap. As is discussed already, idioms and culture are tightly connected, and culture is reflected mainly via the form of the idioms. Therefore, when an idiom is translated, the translator is required not only to transfer the meaning of the original text but also to be confronted with the problem of how to handle the cultural elements contained in the idiom. From the perspective of culture, the thesis is aimed at finding a solution to the problem of cultural transplantation in idiom translation. There are two fundamental strategies, domestication and foreignization in dealing with cultural factors in translation. Guided by the two principles, some methods to the translation of idioms are discussed. In this paper so many examples are cited to help the readers be aware that there are words that implied different cultures from ours, which should be attached importance to in translation. The author also hopes those translation principles and methods cited in the thesis would provide some constructive clues while doing translation.