On Foreignization Tendency In Idiom Translation

Idiom is an important part of the language and culture of a people. English and Chinese are both rich in idioms. Idiom is also a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to its own grammar and cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements. We also know that idioms are heavily-loaded linguistic signs. Thus, the idiom translation involves not only the transfer of language but also the transmission of culture. Translation, in its essence, is intercultural exchange.Domestication and foreignization are two main cultural strategies adopted in translation. The former refers to the translation strategy in which a transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for target language readers, but it tends to veil the source language's cultural features from the target readers; while foreignization is source-language-culture-based and it helps the target language readers to fully appreciate the special source language culture and enriches the target language, but it may hinder the target readers' understanding when the source language terms are too unique to understand.Though these two strategies have their own respective merits and demerits.Today, with the globalization of politics and economic, foreignization has already been an irresistible tendency in translation, and this tendency also appears in idiom translation. Because from the aspects of faithfulness in translation, the resistance to ethnocentrism, the promotion of cultural transmission and the acceptance of readers, foreignization should and can be the main strategy in idiom translation. Foreignization in idiom translation aims primarily at reproducing the "foreigness" and cultural features in the original as much as possible. The application of foreignization in idiom translation can be realized through two methods, simple foreignization and foreignization plus explanation.The thesis reaches the conclusion that foreignization should be applied as the dominant strategy while domestication as the supplementary one, sometimes a combination of both is also necessary in idiom translation so as to better serve the cross-cultural communication between the two languages.