English Translation Of Chinese Idioms From The Cultural Implication Perspective

Globalization has seen the ever-increasing communication between different cultures, but such communication is almost impossible without translation. It is through translation that different cultures can come to understand each other. However, good translation, especially when it concerns the implications of two cultures as different as Chinese and Western ones, is not so easy to come by. That is why nowadays people are attaching much importance to the study of cultural translation theory.The author of this thesis approaches translation in the light of cultural translation. In due course he narrows his topic down to English translation of Chinese idioms from a cultural implication perspective, since an idiom is like a mirror usually reflecting peculiar cultural implications, and is relatively difficult to be rendered into another language. The whole thesis falls into six chapters.Chapter 1 is a general introduction to culture and idioms, as well as the outline of this thesis.Chapter 2 presents a literature review on cultural translation theories put forward by various scholars, of whom Nida's views on functional equivalence and the relation between cultural implication and translation are discussed emphatically.Chapter 3 compares and contrasts Chinese and Western cultural implications as reflected in idioms from such aspects of sources as historical background, religious thoughts, social systems, natural environment and living conditions. People have different ways of thinking in different cultures. The differences are also reflected in their idioms.Chapter 4 expounds a set of English translation methods of Chinese idioms. This set includes translation methods with annotation and without annotation. The latter can be subdivided into Image Recurrence, Image Replacement, Image Addition, Image Reduction and Image Omission. The term"image''herein used refers to the scene implied in an idiom or the associative imagination of a picture in the reader's mind.Chapter 5 deals with two controversial issues in idiom translation: one is translatability of culture and idioms, and the other is the choice of domestication and foreignization. With logical argumentation and convincing examples, the author proves that culture and idioms are both translatable. As to the choice between domestication and foreignization, the author puts forth four decisive variables.Chapter 6 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 implications 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 English translation of Chinese idioms.