On Idiom Translation From The Perspective Of Culture

Language can never be separated from culture, for language is the mirror of culture. It is commonly accepted that an idiom is a group of words with a meaning different from the combined meanings of its component words. Idioms are, be it in China or abroad, the pith of language and culture. As the essence of common people's wisdom, idioms mirror the local customs and practices of a nation. To some extent, idioms are the living fossil of a specific culture.Though there are some differences, both Chinese idioms and foreign idioms mainly originated from daily life, working experience, religion, myth, fable, classical works, sports activities, entertainment, etc. During the thousands years before the industrial revolution, the common people, including seamen, hunters, farmers, workers, soldiers or housewives, had an intimate touch with the natural surroundings to make a living. In the process, they realized some principles from the surrounding familiar environments and, with their innate creativity, they generalized the principles about their working experience and expressed their emotions with some fixed words. East or west, religion is considered on of the most important elements of human culture. Being a kind of culture phenomenon, idiom is closely bound with culture that it can reflect the religion's effect on language. Myth is one of the most important arts descended from the primitive man. It has distinctive features of a nation and is the treasure-house of the nation's culture. It has great influence over this nation's language, and also its idioms. Literature works often have highly refined expressions. In terms of language, it vividly reflects human life, expresses thoughts and emotions. Usually the literary language is the prime of a nation's language. Those brilliant words and sentences from the literary masters have become idioms after the wide use in the folk people. As the society developed, it is not necessary for the human beings to put all of their time and energy to the laborious activities for food and clothes. So, various entertainments appeared to meet the need of releasing their surplus energy. The history of the social development has great impact on language. As the time goes on, modern new languages emerged frequently to instead of those out-of-date ones. In the process of language development, the influence of the history mainly remains in idioms.Living in the same world, Chinese and western cultures share plenty of similarities, hence the equivalence of a multitude of idioms. Since both Chinese people and the western people belong to the same superordinate—human being, they, of course, resemble to each other in anatomy. Similar structure of the brain brings similar processing of information and, which unavoidably makes it possible that they share some similarities in the conception of outside world. Apart from that, there are many cultural overlaps between the two cultures, such as general knowledge of nature, the response to human kindness and love, and the desire for meaning in life, etc. In other words, Chinese idioms and western idioms share some similarities both synchronically and diachronically. A case in point here is"火上浇油"in Chinese and "add fuel to fire" in English. As we know,"油","火"in Chinese and "fuel", "flame" in English roughly refer to the same substances. Anywhere, whenever fuel is added to flame, the flame will be more vigorous, hence some metaphorical use of this idiom both in Chinese and English.Nonetheless, as different peoples, Chinese and the western cultures unavoidably differentiate with each other in plenty of aspects. As a result of the far distance between the East and West, the two cultures had communicated very little before recent centuries. So it is no surprising that there are often different expressions to the same meaning in different languages. Here, it is justifiable for us to quote an example from William Shakespeare, "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow…is wasteful and ridiculous excess." In this sentence, "gild refined gold", "paint the lily", "throw a perfume on the violet", "smooth the ice" and "add another hue unto the rainbow" all bear the same meaning—doing something completely unnecessary. It is easy for us to find an equivalent in Chinese, that is "画蛇添足". However, the two languages convey the same meaning with different images. While in English there are images such as refined gold, lily, violet, ice, and rainbow, in Chinese there is only snake. In spite of the differences, they have the same connotation.This paper starts from some basic concepts of idioms and then it analyzes the cultural factors of idioms so as to delve into the translation strategies of Chinese and English idioms. The past centuries have witnessed the constant emergence of new translation theories. And in the long history, some great translators stand out, such as Peter Newmark and Eugene Nina, to name just a few. Nida is famous for his Functional Equivalence theory. In this theory, Nida initiated two distinct definitions of functional equivalence:the maximal and minimal definition. Furthermore, he classified the formal equivalence and the dynamic equivalence. While the former pays attention to form and content of the message, the latter emphasizes the equivalence effect. Besides, Nida makes "making sense", "conveying the spirit and manner of the original", "having a natural and easy form of expression" and "producing a similar response" four basic requirements of a translation. Through the Literal translation and free translation are two translation strategies mainly applied in cultural translation. Literal translation is the source language and source culture oriented, while free translation is the target language and target culture oriented. English idioms have unique characteristics and rich cultural connotations. To preserve the original national flavor and be faithful to the original content and style, it concludes that the strategy of translating English idioms depends on cultural circumstances and a combination of literal translation and free translation in specific circumstance is appropriate. As two essential components of idiom, set phrase and proverb merit specific attention, and the translation methods of them should be out of the ordinary.