摘要

习语是词组、结构或表达法，其结构特殊，意义有别于其构成词的字面意义的简单相加，并且带有强烈的民族文化特色。本文首先对习语做了简要介绍，接着从文化角度对英汉习语进行对比研究，分析了英汉习语在地理条件、风俗习惯、历史、寓言神话、动植物认知以及宗教信仰等方面的差异。最后提出了英汉习语的翻译策略：异化法、归化法和异化归化结合法，并且总结归纳了异化法和归化法的优缺点以及异化归化相结合的必要性。

关键词：习语；文化；翻译

Abstract

An idiom is a phrase, construction, or expression and it either differs from the usual syntactic patterns or has a meaning that differs from the literal meaning of its parts simply taken together. Idioms carry extraordinarily national and cultural characteristics. The thesis first gives a brief introduction of idioms, then studies and compares both Chinese and English idioms in the cultural perspectives of geographical environments, customs and habits，history, fables and myths，cognition of animals and plants and religious beliefs. Finally, the article puts forward the strategies of the idiom translation: foreignization, domestication and combination of both, and summarizes their respective merits and demerits.

Key words： idioms; culture; translation

1.    Introduction

Idioms are the essence of language, and they carry distinguished cultural features. Cultural information loaded by idioms is tremendously concentrated. English and Chinese are abundant in idioms, which mirror the well-established, extensive and profound culture of the East and the West. Therefore, the translation of idioms is actually the translation of cultures. That is to say, the comparison of cultural characteristics of idioms absolutely needs unneglected attention as they determine the success of the translation of idioms. But there exist some problems in the practice of the idiom translation, which have aroused increasing attention. These problems such as mistranslation, missing translation, mainly lie in the misunderstanding of cultural information carried by idioms. Webster’s New World College Dictionary (1996) defines an idiom as “a phrase, construction, or expression that is recognized as a unit in the usage of a given language and either differs from the usual syntactic patterns or has a meaning that differs from the literal meaning of its parts taken together”.