An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Chinese Idioms’ Decomposability And Translation Strategies

Idioms are an indispensable part of language and culture, representing one of the figurative expressions which are frequently used in daily life. They are defined as expressions whose meanings are not a direct function of the literal meanings of their constituent parts.Decomposability is one of their most distinguishing features. The term “decomposability” means to what degree the literal meaning of the individual parts contributes to the whole idioms’ figurative meaning. Because of this peculiarity, scholars all over the world have conducted research on idioms, especially with regards to the translation strategies of idioms. However,research on idiom strategy has been mostly restricted to the comparison of the relationship between the target language and the source language. Additionally, research to date tends to focus on translating Indo-European languages. Far too little attention has been paid to Chinese idioms. Furthermore, half of the studies failed to specify whether there is a relationship between the decomposability and the translation strategies. The present study hopes to collect the insightful data in this aspect. This thesis seeks to answer the various practical questions: What kinds of translation strategies are preferred by translators when they translate four-character Chinese idioms with different levels of decomposability? Does the decomposability of Chinese idioms have an effect on the selection of the translation strategies? Is the selection of translation strategies influenced by the English proficiency of subject?The study adopts the triangulation method, the combination of “thinking aloud”, “keyboard logging” and interviews. The empirical study was conducted with 18 English subjects from Qufu Normal University. Nine of them were first-year undergraduate English majors who have not passed the TEM-4. The rest of the students were recruited from the first-year graduate students who all majored in MTI(Master of Translation and Interpreting). They all had passed the TEM-8.The participants were required to translate 9 Chinese four-character idioms with different levels of decomposability into English. The participants were asked to verbalize their thoughts during the translation process. The subjects took the experiment individually without time limit.However, they could not use any reference tool.The main findings can be summarized: first, as for the translation strategy structure, the basic structure is the most frequently used one. The explanation could be inferred as the translation problem and the tendency that subjects are likely to take the basic structure at first when they confront translation problem. As for the translation strategy types, Type V and Type I were the top two being used. When it comes to the translation strategy potential elements, the REPHR.SL, CHECK and MSL are the frequently used. The reasons could be concluded as thecultural difference and the preference of the subjects. Second, the main effect of the decomposability of idioms is significant. The result indicates that the decomposability of idioms has an effect on the selection of translation strategies. Third, the main effect of English proficiency is significant when it comes to translation strategy Type V. However, there is no interaction among the decomposability of idioms, English proficiency and translation strategy types. The results demonstrate that English proficiency has an influence on the selection of translation strategies Type V. And there is no interactive influence between the decomposability of idioms, English proficiency and translation strategies.The study has implications for translation teaching. It was discovered that one of the translation difficulties is that the subjects cannot find the equivalent terms in the target language.As a result, students should pay more attention to the related vocabulary. Meanwhile, they should have a good command of the culture difference. Pedagogically, this study can make contributions to the use of Translog, which would help teachers and students analyze translation process and improve translation teaching.There are also some shortcomings in this study. For example, the number of the subjects in each group is not large enough. And more advanced instruments and methods should be considered to improve the research. Therefore, the present study is only an empirical exploration of the process of translating Chinese idioms with different levles of decomposability into English.