Abstract: There are many animal idioms in Chinese and English. They contain unique cultural connotation and reflect the living environment, experiences and ways of thought which belong to different ethnic groups. Every nation has its own customs so that some animal idioms have totally two different meanings in two languages. The universality and specificity of culture exist at the same time but specificity is common too. Firstly we take their characteristics into consideration when we translate animal idioms and we should associate them with the culture. Metaphor is not only a matter of language but also the carrier and a vehicle of thought. Lakoff and Johnson think that metaphor is conceptualized in human’s cognition and involves conceptual mappings and individual linguistic expressions. An animal metaphor is an important aspect part in metaphor. This paper shows us that there exist similarities and differences of mapping mechanism in English and Chinese. It also explores the features of the animal metaphor from diverse cultural background. This paper collects the metaphorical expressions in English and Chinese systematically, as well as analyzes the factors resulting in their universalities and differences to help people further understand the emotion of metaphors.
Key Words: animal idioms; metaphor; culture; translation

摘  要：英语和汉语中有许多动物的习语。这些习语含有独特的文化内涵，反映了不同民族人们的生活环境，经历和思维方式。每个民族都有自己的风俗习惯所以某些动物习语在不同的语言中有着两个完全不同的含义。这说明文化的普遍性和特殊性的存在，但是特殊性更为常见。因此，我们翻译动物习语的时候一方面要考虑动物的特点，另一方面要考虑所处的文化环境。隐喻不仅是一种语言也是一种思维的载体和工具。Lakoff 和Johnson认为隐喻是人类认知概念化，涉及到概念映射和个人语言表达式。动物隐喻是隐喻中非常重要的一部分。本文表明在英语和汉语中都存在着相似性和差异性的映射机制。文章还将探讨不同文化中动物隐喻的特点。本文系统的搜集了英语和汉语部分动物习语，分析导致其普遍性与差异性的原因来帮助人们更进一步的理解情感隐喻。
关键词：动物习语；隐喻；文化；翻译

By reading a growing number of literatures in English and Chinese, we find it is common for animals as a metaphor in idiomatic expressions and their translation. Animals are very important part of human life. The most primitive life and animals are connected closely. When human beings started to use symbols to make a record in ancient times, the images of animals had already been existed and they have been circulating since that time. Language is a production of human’s spiritual civilizations while idioms are treasures of the language. Idioms are stable words which are to express a certain meaning. Idioms are fixed phrases or short sentences derived from a long-term use of language. Idioms contain a wealth of cultural information, cultural characteristics and cultural background. (Bao, 2001:148) Animals as a metaphor in idioms are ways that people express their feelings by associating with some animals according to their characteristics. Particularly, languages are enriched and enlivened by the use of words denoting animal idioms. These animal idioms are simple in forms and interesting in images, with very specific structures and different translation methods. Through the animal appearance and behavior description of animal idioms, we express people's folk culture and way of thinking. Animal idioms as a part of language contain an important part of national cultural information.