Comparison Of The Four-Character Idioms Employed In Two Chinese Versions Of Rabbit At Rest Based On The Eco-Translatology

As an important part of language,idioms have obvious advantages compared with ordinary words: simple and concise,rigorous structure,philosophical,vivid,and expressive.In English-Chinese translation,the misuse of the four-character idioms is quite common.Therefore,it's worthwhile for us to study whether the employment of these idioms is appropriate in English-Chinese translation or whether it conforms to the reading habits of Chinese readers.The author of this paper chooses two Chinese versions of Rabbit at Rest,Updike,an American writer in twentieth century,which includes??????(Version A)published by Chong Qing Publishing House in 1993 and??????(version B)published by Shang Hai Publishing House in 2008.According to the Eco-translatology,the author of the thesis discusses that translational ecology,textual ecology,the ecological environment of translation and the ecological equilibrium are the elements that the translators should coordinate when employing the four-character idioms in English-Chinese translation and the three-dimensional transformation is the practical method in translation when translators play a fully center role,adapt to the environment and select the final target text.In the process of summarizing the four-character idioms employed in Chinese versions,the author finds that there are more four-character idioms in version B than version A.The author divides the four-character idioms employed in the two Chinese versions into three kinds: Four-character idioms are employed in version B while no idioms are employed in version A in the same places;the same four-character idioms are employed in the two versions in the same places;the different idioms are employed in the two versions in the same places.The author analyzes the four-character idioms from the linguistic dimension,the cultural dimension and the communicative dimension.After conducting the comparative study,the author gets the conclusion: there are more misuse of the four-character idioms employed in version B,which fails to achieving the ecological equilibrium between the source language and the target language;the translator of version B translates the original language literally and ignores the context of the source text when using the four-character idioms during the translation.Although the translator achieves the transformation in the linguistic dimension,he ignores the expression the transformation in cultural and communicative dimension.Compared with version B,in version A,the meaning of the original text is often expressed in more colloquial language,more specific and more accurate achieving the ecological equilibrium between the two different versions.