In the article On Translation, Mr. Zhu Guangqian said: "The most difficult thing for foreign literature to understand and translate is the meaning of association ...", "It has a special emotional atmosphere, which is profound, extensive and subtle, but it is extremely important for literature. If we are not familiar with the customs and cultural and historical background of a country, we will be at a loss about the meaning of words, especially when translating. " Edward tylor, a British cultural anthropologist, put forward the concept of culture for the first time in his book Primitive Culture (187 1), and stated: "Culture is a kind of complexity, which includes knowledge, belief, art, morality, law, customs and their abilities and habits acquired in society." It can be seen that culture covers a wide range and is a complex system. As an integral part of culture, language reflects the colorful square phenomenon of a nation. After summing up, we believe that the cultural differences between English and Chinese idioms are mainly manifested in the following aspects:

1, differences in living environment

The appearance of idioms is closely related to people's work and life. Britain is an island country, and the navigation industry once led the world in history; The Han people live and multiply in the Asian continent, and people's lives are inseparable from the land. Metaphor is a waste of money. The English word is flower.

Money is like water, while Chinese is "spending money like water". There are many idioms about boats and water in English, but there are no identical idioms in Chinese, such as to rest.

A person's paddle, keeping his head on the water, at sea, etc.

In the cultural atmosphere of Chinese, "east wind" is "spring breeze", and summer is often associated with the summer heat system. "The sun burns like fire" and "The sun burns like fire" are words that are often used to describe summer. However, Britain is located in the western hemisphere and has a maritime climate, but it is the news that the west wind heralds spring. Ode to the west wind by Shelley, a famous English poet, is a hymn of spring. Summer in England is a warm and pleasant season, and there are often

Cute, gentle and beautiful are interlinked. Shakespeare compared his lover to summer in one of his sonnets. Can I compare you to a summer lover?

Day? /You are cuter and gentler.

2. Differences in customs

There are many differences between English and Chinese customs, the most typical of which is the attitude towards dogs. The dog is a humble animal in China. Most idioms related to dogs in Chinese contain derogatory meanings, such as "a bunch of dogs", "a dog jumps over a wall", "heartless" and "dog legs". Although the number of pet dogs has greatly increased in recent years and the status of dogs seems to have changed, the derogatory image of dogs is still deeply rooted in China's language and culture. In western English-speaking countries, dogs are considered to be the most loyal friends of human beings. Except for some idioms influenced by other languages, most English idioms about dogs are not derogatory. In English idioms, the image of a dog is often used as a metaphor for human behavior. Ruyou

You are a lucky man (you are a lucky man). Dogs have their own days, but old dogs don't.

Learn new skills and so on. "As sick as a dog" is used to describe a person who is "very sick" and "as tired as a dog" is used to describe a person who is "extremely tired". On the contrary, people in China love cats very much, and using "greedy cats" to describe people's greed is often associated with family ties. In western culture, "cat" is used to describe "a woman with ulterior motives".

3. Religious belief

Idioms related to religious beliefs also appear in English and Chinese. Buddhism has been introduced into China for more than 1000 years. People believe that there is a "Buddha Lord" who controls everything in the world. There are many idioms related to this, such as "offering flowers to Buddha", "don't burn incense in your spare time, cram for Buddha's feet temporarily" and so on. In many western countries, especially in Britain and the United States, people believe in Christianity and related idioms such as Good.

Help those who help them (God helps those who help themselves), and there is a curse like going to hell.

4. Historical allusions

There are also a large number of idioms formed by historical allusions in English and Chinese. These idioms are simple in structure and profound in meaning, so they cannot be understood and translated literally. Such as "learning from the East is effective", "falling into Sun Shan", "Ye Gong loves dragons" and so on. Most English allusions and idioms come from the Bible and Greek and Roman myths, such as Achilles heel (the only fatal weakness) and meet.

One's Waterloo, Penelope's net, Pandora's box, and so on.

Second, the specific principles and methods of English-Chinese idiom translation

Chinese and foreign translation theorists have put forward different views on translation standards. From Yan Fu's "Faithfulness and Elegance" and Fu Lei's "attaching importance to the spirit rather than the shape" to Mr. Zhang Peiji's "Faithfulness and Expressiveness"; From Qu Qiubai's Concept of Equivalence to Eugene, a famous American translation theorist.

From the "functional equivalence" or "dynamic equivalence" of Anaida, we can see that these ideas are interactive, complementary and constantly improving. Although the emphasis is different, the crystallization of the center is that translation should faithfully and accurately express the meaning of the original text, maintain the style of the original text and be faithful to the original text. The so-called faithful expression of the meaning of the original text should mean faithful expression of the literal meaning, image meaning and implied meaning of the original text. However, not every sentence, idiom and vocabulary in the original text has three meanings at the same time, and some may only have literal meaning without image meaning; Some may have both literal meaning and image meaning, but there is no implied meaning. In particular, no two languages and cultures are exactly the same.