A Study On Chinese And English Proverbs And Their Translation

Proverbs, as a type of highly concise and allegoric language, are very popular around the world, which are used and enriched from generation to generation in written and spoken forms. With profound cultures in a long history, China has given birth to numerous colorful proverbs. It would be regrettable to introduce Chinese cultures to the rest of the world without introducing its proverbs. In the meantime, with the cultural globalization intensifying, foreign proverbs, especially the English proverbs are continually introduced to Chinese readers. Subsequently, in the increasing cross-cultural communication, the inter-translation of Chinese and English proverbs is becoming more and more frequent.In studying the Chinese and English proverbs and their translation, the author has found that the cultural phenomenon is much bigger than the linguistic one. Therefore, the inter-translation is, to some extent, well beyond the literal translation. That is, the cultural references are much involved in rendering the proverbs from one language into the other. How could the Chinese proverbs be translated into English so that the Western readers can understand them in exactly the same way as they are understood by their Chinese counterparts? This is always a Herculean task and it is definitely a subject worth deliberating.This paper, based upon the relevant achievements, intends to put forward some new points of view regarding proverb translating methods.