The Translation Of Chinese Idioms Into English From The Perspective Of Cultural Equivalence

With the increasing popularity of cross-cultural communication, a shift from a linguistic approach to a cultural approach has been found in translation studies. Now translation has been broadly regarded as an act of intercultural communication. As the crystallization of human language and culture, idioms translation has drawn attention in the translation field, but the translation of Chinese idioms into English is far from being satisfactory, from which, to a great extent, is culturally derived. As a matter of fact, the influences of culture on the idioms are so pervasive that scarcely any text can be adequately understood without a profound knowledge of its cultural background, let alone an exact translation of it.This paper, based on a thorough study of the idioms'translation taken from the first eighty chapters of the two versions of Hong Lou Meng (one is A Dream of Red Mansions by Mr. Yang Xianyi, and the other is The Story of the Stone by Mr. David Hawkes), aims at discussing the translation of Chinese idioms into English from the angle of conveying cultural information. Therefore, making a deep comparative study of Chinese idioms from a cultural perspective is not only helpful to have a good grasp of the meaning and use of the language, but also will improve the translation quality, thereby facilitating intercultural communication.This thesis falls into seven chapters:Chapter one is an introduction of the background of present study, the questions needed to be answered in this study and the purpose of the study, the methods employed in this study and the significance of it.Chapter two is the literature review of this thesis. In this part, the author mainly reviews and analyzes the domestic and overseas studies and their findings about all the aspects involved in this study, including studies on HLM and its translation, studies on cultural translation, studies on idioms, studies on translation of idioms in HLM, studies on the theories of equivalence and cultural equivalence, the views of the author of this paper on these studies, her further studies and her new views on cultural equivalence as well, thus making sure that the readers have a clear and comprehensive understanding of the theoretical and practical foundation of the present thesis.Chapter three is a discussion on the close relationship among language, culture and translation---they are mutual influenced. Language is the bearer of culture; culture is loaded in language; and translation is essentially an intercultural communication...