Strategies For Idiom Translation-From The Cultural Perspective

Idioms are an important part of the language and culture of a people. English and Chinese are both rich in idioms. As a medium of cultural communication, idiom translation is quite important. It is generally recognized that there are cultural similarities as well as differences between English and Chinese. The similarities between them make idiom translation quite easy. However, owing to differences in living environment, geographical conditions, social customs, religious beliefs, historical and literary allusions and modes of thinking and so on between China and the English-speaking countries, the cultural information carried by their respective idioms correspondingly shows some difference. And this difference is a difficult point in idiom translation. If we treat cultural factors improperly, we will make mistakes in idiom translation.This paper mainly approaches English-Chinese and Chinese-English idiom translation from two translation strategies, that is, domestication and foreignization. They have long been the point at issue in the field of translation theory. Nida is the representative of domestication and Venuti is the representative of foreignization. Domestication is target language-culture oriented, stressing natural and fluent expression in the target language, while foreignization is source language-culture oriented, emphasizing in the target language the retention of the exotic cultural flavor of the source language. In idiom translation, similarities of the two languages make translation possible, but the peculiar cultural features carried by idioms bring translators communicative barriers between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL). This means that translators can't use only one strategy thoroughly in idiom translation to transfer the peculiar cultural connotation and communicative intentions of the source language. Under such circumstances, translators should make a concrete analysis of concrete cases, that is, to choose domestication, foreignization...