Chinese Idiom Translation: A Functionally Isomorphic Perspective

This thesis explores how to represent the content and form of Chinese idioms in English at a maximum from an isomorphic perspective. The word of "isomorphism" originally has its application in natural science to indicate the similarities between two or more things, or systems. With time going on, it is gradually introduced to other fields for describing the same phenomena. When constructing the theory of functional equivalence, Eugene Nida brings it into the world of translation so as to solve the problem of socio-cultural correspondence with the concept of "functional isomorphism" which lays a foundation for replacing the source expressions with their equivalents of different form but effecting similar responses within receptors in two languages. Also, although its diction is different from Nida's "functional isomorphs", the terms of "family resemblance" by Wittgenstein also plays an emphasis on similarity. With the latter one, he accounts for the reason why languages in different forms fall into the same family of language, i.e. similarities among them. Whether they are termed as "family resemblance" or "functional isomorphs", they can be considered isomorphs when they are of similar functions regardless of the fact that they are in the same form or in different ones.Idioms are the essence of language and the crystallization of culture, most of which are concise in form but pretty rich in implied meanings. Chinese idioms are of various forms, including set phrases, common sayings, proverbs and two-part allegorical sayings as well as some vulgar expressions. With their own unique features, Chinese idioms are characterized as lexical integrity, formal compositeness and semantic unity, and rhetoric richness, etc., for which it has long been remaining a focus in the circle of translation how to translate them into other languages faithfully both in form and in content. Aiming at the translating of Chinese idioms, scholars have put forward some guiding principles, which, more or less, conform to the criteria of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" by Yan Fu. Such principles can be summarized as two: one is faithfulness both to content and to form; the other is priority of content over form.Taking for a case study the idiom translation in a famous ancient novel A Dream of Red Mansions, the author discusses the relationship of isomorphism between Chinese idioms and their English translations at the lexical, syntactical and rhetorical levels, and focuses on the translation techniques, namely, literal translation, substitution, variant substitution, and syntactic substitution.As a result of this, the author concludes that the theory of isomorphism can be conceived as effective to contribute greatly to Chinese idiom translation in retaining the original contents and forms. However, the content and form of the source language are represented in the target language with some distortion. It is hoped that such a limitation of isomorphism can be solved in the future.