Idioms: The Mirror Of Culture--The Translation Of Idioms Between Chinese And English

This thesis is aimed at studying idiom translation between Chinese and English from cultural aspect.Chapter 1 is the introduction to the whole thesis. The recent development of translation theories and the aim and the arrangement of the thesis are introduced briefly. In Chapter 2 it is introduced that the new trend of translation theory which is to study translation from cultural perspective. Simultaneously, the closed relations among idiom, language, and culture will be analyzed further more. In Chapter 3 plenty of idioms are taken as examples to compare Chinese culture and English culture in geographical conditions, religion or belief, numbers, animals, and colors so as to reach the conclusion that idioms reflect cultural characteristics evidently. They are just like the mirror of culture. In Chapter 4 the different features of Chinese idioms and English idioms are compared first of all. The difficulties in idiom translation are also analyzed thoroughly. Next, the translation principles are put forward as the basis of following methods of idiom translation. Then, the five methods of idiom translation from cultural aspect are discussed with lots of examples.Translating process should be focused on not only on language transfer butalso--and most importantly--on cultural transposition, especially for idiomtranslation. The translation methods which I discussed in the thesis are not only useful for disclosing the cultural factors in idioms, but also be helpful for other translation work to focus on cultural characteristics in the text.