Influence of British and Chinese Culture on their Idioms and their Learning and Translation 英语毕业论文.doc

Influence of British and Chinese Culture on their Idioms and their Learning and Translation Introduction A Chinese student promised her British teacher that she and her three classmates would win the 100-meter-relay-race. She said, “I can run very fast. I will not pull my classmate’s leg. There is a bamboo in my heart. A Pyrrhic victory is right there.” She smiled joyfully, without noticing that her teacher was in a fog. Why could not the English teacher understand his student? The reason was that the girl misused three idioms. First, she used “pull one’s leg” to substitute the Chinese idiom “拖后腿”. However, the true meaning of this English idiom is “to play a joke on somebody”. Second, Chinese people may literally translate “There is a bamboo in my heart” into “胸有成竹” and know that it means “to have a preconceived idea at heart”. But this word-for-word translation is not right and it may puzzle our foreign guests. The girl should have explained to her teacher its original meaning “to have a bamboo in an artist’s mind before drawing a picture of it”. Third, “a Pyrrhic victory” originated from an ancient Greek myths .Its correct meaning is a victory gained at such cost that it is almost equivalent to a defeat. She only saw the word “victory” while she did not pay attention to the allusion in this idiom. Many people want to create vividness by using idioms in their speeches and writings. However, many of them cannot make an appropriate use of them. An appropriate use of idioms in our writing, daily communication and important situations, such as a press conference, will add to the strength and vividness of our language to be used. It also helps to narrow the cultural gap among different nations and facilitate cross-cultural communication as well. Providing suggestions about learning and translating idioms may contribute to the appropriate use of idioms. In this thesis, a number of examples are cited to illustrate the national characteristics of idioms and the translatin