摘要

习语是语言的精华，是人类智慧的结晶，也是一种最有文化内涵的语言形式。英语和汉语都有漫长的发展历史，因此都拥有极丰富的习语。他们是民族风格的提炼与升华，并且具有强烈的文化特征。然而各民族之间存在着诸如地域、宗教信仰和风俗习惯等众多的差异；而这些文化特征的重要表现之一就是许多习语中包含着鲜明的形象，习语往往运用形象的联想来使语言变得更为生动有力。因此，习语翻译最能体现两种文化的不同，而习语翻译过程中文化差异的处理在很多情况下就是习语中所包含的形象的处理。

关键词：习语；形象；文化差异；形象处理

Abstract

Idiom is the essence of language and the crystal of people’s wisdom, and it has rich national cultural connotations. Both English and Chinese languages enjoy a long history of development, thus in possession of abundant idioms，which are the abstraction and sublimation of national color with strong cultural stamps in terms of differences in geography, religious beliefs, social customs, etc. The most striking cultural stamps is that many idioms contain lively images, which make language more vivid and forceful．Therefore，idiom translation highly embodies the difference between two cultures，and the treatment of cultural differences in the process of idiom translation, in many cases，is to deal with images contained in idioms．

Key words: idiom; image; cultural differences; image rendering

1. Introduction

Idiom is the essence of language, the crystal of people’s wisdom. And it has rich national cultural connotations. Language and culture have close relationship with each other. Language is a part of culture. And it is the important carrier of culture. It is used to serve and reflect cultural needs.
Both English and Chinese are rich in idioms. However different nations have different culture because of geographical, historical and social differences. English idioms have rich cultural connotations. So there are so many difficulties in idioms translation. Only if we can translate the cultural connotations of the idiom reasonable the target language readers can surely understand and accept the original spirits and meaning of the English idioms. For example “I am no Hamlet.”(I won’t hesitate on more) It is difficult for target language readers to understand what the meaning of “Hamlet” is. Hamlet who is the hero of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy is the typical representative of indecision. If the target language reader got the cultural background of this idiom then he can understand the idiom appropriately. It will be seen from this example that successful translation of English idioms will surely pay more attention to the successful study of cultural connotation.