含动物词语的汉语成语翻译分析
I. Introduction
Language is a part of culture as well as a cultural carrier as the principal means of cross-cultural communication. Idioms are like a mirror that reflects culture in a best way. Both English and Chinese are full of colorful-specific idioms, and they are used widely in all kinds of works as well as in our daily life. As early as in 1978, a representative book A Study on Chinese Idiomatic Usages was published by Rose in Hong Kong. After that, many papers and books about English-Chinese Idioms mushroomed in China. However, as far as animal idioms are concerned, there still remains much to explore. 24033
As a group of culture-bound words, animal words reflect cultural persities in the aspects such as social psychology, customary habits, beliefs as well as value orientations. With the deepening of intercultural communication between China and the Western World, it has been realized that animal words are likely to form an area in which misunderstanding in intercultural communication seems inevitable because of the persities of their cultural connotation. So many researches have been done both at home and broad.
Animals are inseparable from our daily life. Many examples provide a tremendous range of potentiality for metaphor. That’s why languages of all nations contain a lot of animal idioms, and so do Chinese and English. Sometimes people may use different animal words to express certain feelings of figurative meanings. While on some other occasions, people may give different figurative meanings and connotative meanings to the same animal words.
This paper focuses on the different cultural connotations between English and Chinese through comparison and research from many aspects, such as the same or similar cultural connotations of the same animal words and different animal words. The paper is pided into three parts. The first part gives a definition of culture connotation. The following parts make a detailed comparison of cultural connotations of animal words in those two languages. Then it is safe to conclude that to be aware of different cultural connotations of animal words in the two countries will help us understand each other’s language and culture much better.
II. An Overview of Previous Studies on Animal Idioms
2.1 Previous Studies on Idioms in China
In recent years, many Chinese linguists, as Cai Xiangfan (98), Bao Hongming(160), have paid much attention to intercultural communication. They devote much to pragmatics, comparison of languages and cultures between English and Chinese. They also published many papers on the comparison of animal words in the two languages. But there are only a few papers on systematic comparison of cultural connotations of animal words in English and Chinese.
When Chinese talk of birds and animals, the words “公” or “母” to indicate a creature is male or female. However, in English, more specific terms are often used, including terms for the young.
2.2 Previous Studies on Idioms Abroad
At the vast English vocabulary, there is an extended family can not but arouse our attention, that is, the animal vocabulary. These words are animals, their different forms, characteristics, as well as the impact of history and culture of different countries, have been assigned different meanings. In different countries or regions, different ethnic groups or associations hope that mutual understanding between the desires to learn from each other, resulting in the translation the spirit of product requirements (Newmark 223). This makes the translation of animal words in theory and practice has become an issue worth studying.
The so-called animal words, implies that animals, including these words and phrases, and other idioms (Bates 30). These words not only visualize the performance of a quality, character, but also succinctly describe some events and to convey a certain emotion. They have integrated into the language of all ethnic groups for people accepted and widely used. This will be a symbol of animal words in English to discuss the meaning of, and to put forward some ideas of their translation methods, from which the West is not only the symbolic implications of language differences in animal words can also be found in common.