Idiom In Chinese And Japanese Translation Skills

As we all know, translation is a very difficult aspect in language study, especially the translation from Chinese idioms to Japanese. So far, there are few researches on translating Chinese idioms into Japanese, and the translation studies on idioms in Lao She's novel, The Yellow Storm, remains blank. For those reasons, through study the idioms translation examples in the translation versions done by Takulo Suzuki and Kousyou Asida for The Yellow Storm, the author tries to find out the common characters of translation methods in those two versions, to summarize the idiom translation methods used in those two versions and to point out problems that we need to pay attention to while translating Chinese idioms.There are five chapters in this thesis:Chapter One introduce the research motivation, research methods and the significance of the study.Chapter Two elaborates on the study of Sino-Japanese proverb, idiom translation studies and an overview of related researches.Chapter Three is the main part of this thesis. This chapter mainly analyzes the translation methods in the two versions of The Yellow Storm from Takulo Suzuki and Kousyou Asida. There are four sections in this chapter. The first section analyzes the situations that can translate literally. The second section introduces the situations of Chinese classical works and presents some problems when we translate famous persons'names in Chinese history or the idioms that are not very familiar by Japanese. The third part shows some idiom translation situations of metaphor from the aspects of simile and metaphor. And the last section analyzes the situations of extending meanings.Chapter four points out the problems that exist in the two versions of The Yellow Storm from Takulo Suzuki and Kousyou Asida.Chapter five is the summary and conclusion of the whole thesis.The conclusion of the thesis is as following:When translate idioms, literal translation would make idioms more comprehensive. In The Yellow Storm, Takulo Suzuki and Kousyou Asida used the method of literal translation besides using abbreviation and mimetic words. When translation idioms with Chinese people in history, free translation would be adopted. It would omit the person's name. When translating the idioms unknown to Japanese, free translation would be adopted. Besides, it would translate the idioms into proverbs or phases.When translating idioms with simile, it would translate "like""as" into "～のように" and "～のごとく". When translating idioms with metaphor, it would translate the omitted "as" and "like" into "～のように" and "～まるで".When translating idioms, translators should be clear with the cultural difference between Chinese and Japanese.When translating the idioms with extended meaning, it would take the extended meaning into consideration.The version by Takulo Suzuki and Kousyou Asida has so many problems with translating idioms. It mainly comes from the translators ignorance of the idioms' extending meaning.