Accordingly, this study presents the definition and features of metaphorical idioms, and makes a comparison of metaphorical idioms in English and Chinese from the aspects of structure and image connotation, and then explores their translation strategies. It is helpful for people to understand and master metaphorical idioms, as well as summarize methods and bring more convenience for translation. What’s more, it can enable people to understand two kinds of culture modes of thinking and cultural background.

II. An Overview of Metaphorical Idioms

   The definition and features of metaphorical idioms as well as their previous studies are presented in this part.

2.1 The Definition of Metaphorical Idioms

   An idiom is generally defined as a phrase whose meaning is difficult or sometimes impossible to guess by looking at the meaning of inpidual words it contains ( Chen,  45). Idioms are the essence of language, and they are fixed phrases and expressions used by people over a long period of time. Characterized by concise and expressiveness, they carry a nation’s lifestyle, customs, habits, historical background and religious belief. The metaphorical idioms take simile, metaphor, synecdoche as structures, and exist metaphorical meaning, namely the presence of a variety of images collectively.

Metaphorical idioms are the core of imagery language, which use some different things to describe a thing or things, and also hint the imagery and contain similar characteristics of idioms. In English and Chinese, there are a large number of idioms, and English and Chinese idioms are an integral part of the vocabulary, they are often used in both spoken and written language, which greatly enriched the language. Some scholars define metaphorical idioms as: “There are a lot of English idioms with the help of a specific image to express meaning to the image of a certain meaning, this kind of idiom is called metaphorical idioms” ( Chen, 169). That is to say, these idioms including the metaphor are called the metaphorical idioms, which are the main body of English idioms. In Chinese, there are many metaphorical idioms with vivid images of its concise and comprehensive, such as “big spenders”. Language is the carrier of culture. Metaphor is more often used as the brand of national culture, especially idiomatic analogy, including simile and metaphor with national color.

2.2 The Features of Metaphorical Idioms

   There are a large number of metaphorical idioms in English and Chinese. They are the most important part of words in both languages. They are widely used in spoken and written languages. Therefore, it is very important to understand these metaphorical idioms correctly.

   Metaphorical idioms mainly conclude simile, metaphor, synecdoche and some other idioms. Metaphorical idioms are the combination of words which means something different from the inpidual words of the idioms when they stand alone. They are semantically unclear, that is to say, they have particular meanings that the meanings are different from the meanings of its constituent words. They are usually metaphorical rather literal. Metaphorical idioms are stored in long-term memory and detained with regard to their semantic and syntactic structure as well their pragmatic applicability. It’s important and indispensable for people to learn metaphorical idioms in vocabulary building. However, the studying of metaphorical idioms shows a great difficulty to second language leaner, because the literal meanings of the metaphorical idioms do not reflect what they really mean and the learners have to understand them from their background information. What’s more, people need to learn the differences and similarities in English and Chinese metaphorical idioms.