On Chinese Numeral Idioms Definition In Chinese-English Dictionaries

Numbers in China have a long history and they exist not only as mathematical symbols, but also as a kind of cultural form which embodies Chinese thinking modes. Moreover, Chinese worship of numbers made them full of mystical meaning colors. Numbers in idiom structure enrich the idiom forms and conceptualize their original meanings with numeral notional reference, phantom reference, general reference as well as meaninglessness. As a result, to distinguish numeral meanings rightly and give definition precisely is of great significance in the process of Chinese-English bilingual dictionary compilation. Since bilingual dictionaries are expressed in two different languages. There are some scholars who point out that definition in bilingual dictionaries is projection and conversion of cognitive semantic structures in source language and target language, which is called translation.A sample-based dictionary survey will be made in six large and medium-sized Chinese-English dictionaries. We adopt Chinese numeral idioms starting with numbers as �?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?� as the corpus. Through comparison and analysis on the six dictionaries, research on deep definition situation and problems of nonequivalence between source language and target language of Chinese numeral idioms is carried out from prototype feature and representation effects.In order to solve the problems of Chinese numeral idioms in Chinese-English Dictionaries(short for CEDs), we construct the Multidimensional Definition Model(short for MDM) of Chinese numeral idioms in CEDs under Meaning Driven Theory(short for MDT) and MDM. In the end, it is essential to propose optimizations and improvements in the treatment of Chinese numeral idioms definition in CEDs.