摘 要：成语是生活中常见的语言形式，蕴含着大量的文化历史信息。成语是语言中文化内涵积淀最深厚的部分, 是语言的核心和精华。英汉两种语言历史悠久, 内容丰富多彩, 都拥有大量的成语，因此英汉成语的翻译成了众多学者研究的核心。本文采用对比分析的方法，以英汉成语的翻译技巧为研究对象，指明了成语所具有的文化和历史意义，分析了影响成语形成的因素，提出了几种常见的英汉成语翻译策略，继而举出了诸多成语翻译的实例，以期对读者和翻译工作者有所裨益。

关键词：成语; 影响因素；翻译策略

Abstract：Idioms are frequently used in our daily life, which contain great cultural and historical information. Idiom is the most profound part of the cultural connotation of the language, and the core and essence of it. English and Chinese both have a long history, with rich and colorful content, and contain a large number of idioms. Therefore, English and Chinese idioms translation has become the research center of many scholars. By adopting the comparative analysis method, with the translating strategies of the English and Chinese idioms as the research object, this paper points out the cultural and historical meanings of the idiom, analyzes the factors influencing the formulation of idioms, proposes some translating strategies with many practical examples, hoping to benefit readers and translators.

Key Words：English idioms; influencing factors; translating strategies

Contents

摘要i

Abstract... ii

I. Introduction 1

II. The Introduction of Idioms 2

2.1 The Significance of Idioms 2

2.2 The Formulation of Idioms 3

III. Strategies Employed in Idiom Translation 6

3.1 Literal Translation 6

3.2 Free Translation 7

3.3 Abridged Ttranslation 8

3.4 Borrowing Ttranslation 8

IV. Practical Idiom Translation ....... 9

4.1 Three Commanded Methods of Idiom Translation 9

4.1.1 Literal Translation 9

4.1.2 Literal Translation with Footnotes or Explanatory Phrases 11

4.1.3 Equivalent or Corresponding TL Idioms Note 12

4.2 Some Other Correspondin Idioms.14

V. Conclusion.... .14

Bibliography 16

Acknowledgements 17

The Translating Strategies for English and Chinese Idioms

I.Introduction

Idioms and some other fixed expressions are an integral part of languages, and are largely used in most languages. Since the meanings of these collocations cannot be understood from the superficial meaning of each word, there are some problems in the process of understanding and translation. The work of translating idioms from one language to a fixed expression in another is demanding. It requires the translator to not only master the resource and target languages and their accordance culture of sharing, but to have the ability to use that knowledge and find an effective equivalence when translating. Different languages use completely different way to express the same meaning. Some may express in the same way, while have completely different meaning. If translators give the meaning word by word, he may find that it’s not easy to understand and words seem to be exactly fuzzy, or even in some cases, are nonsense. This is due to the fact that each language has a specific cultural background which is completely different from the corresponding items in other languages. In addition, there are differences in religion, geographical location, ideologies as well as the understanding, the developing processing of language and society, and some other factors.

Therefore, in this paper, the two main problems are going to be talked: 1) how to understand the meaning of idioms and fixed expressions in a specific language. 2) How to create equivalences so that they can accurately convey the original ideas in a second language. The purpose of this study is to explore the difficulties in the interpretation and translation of Idioms from one language to another.