Translation Of Chinese And English Animal-name Idioms From The Perspective Of National Cultural Semantics

Language of any nation is a combination of pronunciation, meaning, vocabularyand grammar created by thousands of generations in the long historical process.Therefore, any language has its own deep cultural background. Idioms, relative to anyother form of language, are more typical in reflecting the cultural characteristics of thelanguage. After the evolution of history, idioms precipitate the special characteristicsof the national culture. The animal is a human partner and friend for millions of years.They are closely related to human beings, and play a very important role in human life.People use animal or animal metaphor to express different emotions and socialphenomena, thus forming a wonderful treasure, animal idioms. This thesis finds in theprocess of studying animal-name idioms that animal-name idioms are involved in allaspects of human society: politics, economics, military affairs, diplomacy, language,art, religion, customs, and so on. These animal idioms are loaded with a uniquenational psychology, forming a unique animal culture in various ethnic groups.However, due to the East-West similarities and differences in culture, economicdevelopment, geography, literature, customs and religious beliefs, they both havesimilar views and different views on the same animal. Therefore, the English andChinese animal-name idioms may differ in cultural meaning. As a result, a deeperstudy on animal-name idioms is of great significance. It not can only arouse moreinterest in learning a language but also can help us gain a deeper understanding ofboth English and Chinese. What’s more, only correct cultural meaning of variouslanguages can lead to the correct translation.The past research of animal-name idioms mainly focused on the comparisonbetween English and Chinese and the analysis of the causes of similarities anddifferences from the aspect of geography, culture and literature. There are somestudies focusing on the translation of idioms of different animal names. But so far, theresearch on the animal-name idioms from the perspective of national cultural meaningis relatively rare. This thesis makes a comparative analysis of animal-name idioms from Englishand Chinese from the perspective of national cultural meaning, dividing them intothree categories: Firstly, national cultural coincidences in animal-name idioms, whichincludes two aspects: similar national cultural meaning of same animal words inChinese and English idioms; similar national cultural meaning of different animalwords in Chinese and English Idioms; secondly, national cultural diversities inanimal-name idioms; thirdly, national cultural vacancies in animal-name idioms.The causes of the categories are given. Finally, it briefly discusses the inspirations onforeign language teaching and intercultural communication.