Abstract

Idioms are the essence of the national culture. It is an important project to translate them accurately between English and Chinese. Due to the differences between the two languages and cultures, it brings great difficulty in the actual translation process, which causes a lot of mistranslation. One of the main mistranslations between translation and the original idioms is that it looks the same in their literal meanings, but completely different in their pragmatic meanings. From the perspective of pragmatics, literal meaning is the propositional content of the idioms, while illocutionary force exists in their deep meaning. The aim of the translator is to use the deep meaning of idioms in order to achieve a certain purpose, which is involved with the understanding of social occasions and the background of communication. Otherwise, when translators lose contact with this context, they will be difficult to express clearly and forcibly the intention of the idioms used, thus literal meaning becoming the main choice. As a result, it is easy to make a mistranslation. So, when people translate idioms, people cannot just stick to the equivalence in form and semantics. To avoid mistranslation, it is better to seek the equivalence in pragmatics according to the characteristics of idioms.

Keywords:  English idiom  mistranslation  pragmatics  context

摘要

习语是民族文化的精髓。如何准确地翻译英汉习语是一项重要的课题。但是英语和汉语的语言和文化截然不同，这给实际翻译带来了许多困难，造成了大量误译。译文和原文之间最大的问题是字面意义看起来相同,语用意义却天差地别。从语用学的观点出发,字面意思是习语的命题内容,言外之力存在于它的深层含义。为了达到一定的目的,译者常使用习语的深层含义。对这个目的的理解，应参考社交场合和沟通的背景。否则,一旦脱离具体语境,就很难理解习语的使用意图。这时，字面意义便成为了主要的选择,误译很容易就产生了。所以,当翻译习语时,人们不能只坚持形式和语义上的对等。相反，人们要按习语的特点寻找语用的对等，以避免误译的产生。

关键词: 英语习语；误译；语用；语境

1.1 Research Background
As an important part of linguistics, translation is more complicated than just translates one language to another one, especially the translation of idioms. It has significance in mental level, semantic level and aesthetics level. Therefore, in translating English idioms, to translate more exactly and more effectively, we should strengthen the context analysis, notice the word’s exact meaning, think over the cultural differences between the original language and the translation and find a good connection between the two different contexts.