English Translation Of Chinese Idioms: A Cultural Translation Perspective

Nowadays, cultural translation as an emerging translation theory is drawing more and more concern from scholars who study translation, so the author decides to focus on translation from a cultural translation perspective in this thesis. Then the author narrows this large topic down to English translation of Chinese idioms from a cultural translation perspective, since an idiom is like a mirror reflecting culture, but is relatively difficult to be rendered into another language. The whole thesis is divided into six chapters.Chapter I is a general introduction to culture and idioms, as well as the outline of this thesis.Chapter II presents a literature review on cultural translation theories put forward by various scholars, among whom Nida's views on functional equivalence and the relation between culture and translation is the key point of this part.Chapter III compares and contrasts Chinese and Western cultures as reflected in idioms from such aspects of sources as historical background, religious thoughts, social systems, natural environment and living conditions. People form different ways of thinking in different cultures. The Chinese think in a holistic, synthetic and concrete way, while the Westerners think in an individualistic, analytic and abstract way, which are also reflected in their idioms.Chapter IV explains a set of English translation methods of Chinese idioms. This set includes translation methods with annotation and without annotation. The latter can be further divided into Image Recurrence, Image Replacement, Image Addition, Image Reduction and Image Omission. Here, the term "image" assumes a new connotation—the scene implied in an idiom or the associative imagination of a picture in the reader's mind after he has read this idiom.Chapter V deals with two controversial issues in idiom translation: one is translatability of culture and idioms, and the other is choice of adaptation and alienation. With logical argumentation and convincing examples, the author proves that culture and idioms are both translatable. As to the choice between adaptation and alienation, theauthor argues that four important variables can be decisive. In addition, Adaptation and alienation have been integrated into the translation methods with or without annotation introduced in Chapter IV.Chapter VI is a conclusion, which summarizes the main points of this thesis and concludes that before rendering a Chinese idiom, a translator needs to contemplate its cultural discrepancies between Chinese and English, and then flexibly make use of translation methods so as to provide a good English version.The author hopes that this paper can make its due contribution to translation studies, particularly idiom translation.