On Cultural Differences Between Chinese and English Idioms 英语优秀毕业论文.doc

on cultural differences between chinese and english idiomsabstractlanguage is the carrier of culture. peoples words and deeds reflect certain culture connotation consciously or subconsciously. the idiom is the unique regular expression in the using process. this paper discusses idioms which, in broad sense, include idiom, proverb, two-part allegorical saying, allusion, etc. not only the wording is precise and to the point, but also the image is vivid and witty. because of the difference in custom, lives, geography, history, religious belief, etc, understanding of idioms bears the task of conveying national characteristics and culture information. different people from different cultures may have different understandings of the same sentence because they know little about the target cultures. while the ultimate aim of english teaching as a foreign language is to cultivate students competence to apply english correctly, fluently, and appropriately in cross-cultural communication. however, due to lack of knowledge of cultural differences, many college students fail to achieve this purpose during the actual communicating activities. it is necessary for us to study the cultural differences in some fields between china and western countries. language is the most principal means for inter-cultural communication. idioms, a part of language, are the essence of culture in every country. using language in such communication, people often come across some idioms with distinctive cultural characteristics, so it is a very important and complicated thing for us to understand and use these idioms correctly. therefore, in this paper, this paper will discuss the idioms reflecting the differences of chinese and western cultures in various levels with many lively, important, and interesting examples of idioms. key words: idioms; origins; english; chinese; cultural differences摘 要语言是文化的载体，人们的言行反应了一种意识或潜意识的文化涵义。而成语是被独特的表达并运用在它的使用过程中的习语。本论文论述的习语从广义上讲,包括成语、谚语,双寓言说,暗示,等等。语言的措词不仅要很精确,切中要点,而且要形象，生动，风趣。但由于习惯上的差异,生活、地理、历史、宗教信仰等因素,习语则承担起了民族性传达信息的任务。同一句话，不同文化背景的人的反应有时是不同的，甚至会截然相反。究其原因，是说话双方没有真正掌握对方的文化。大学英语教学的目的，是使学生在跨文化交流中可以正确、流利与恰当的运用英语。而大学生在实际交流活动中，往往不能达到这一目的，这是因为他们对中两方文化差异不够了解。因此，完全有必要对中西文化差异进行详细的研究。语言是跨文化交际中最主要的手段。在运用语言进行跨文化交际时,由于民族文化差异,难免会遇到具有鲜明文化特色的成语和习语,而对此确切地理解并正确地加以运用,则是一个十分重要而又复杂的问题。习语是各国文化的精髓，反映各国的风俗习惯。因此，本文从最能体现中西文化差异的习语着手，论述习语在文化的各个层次上所反映的中西文化差异，并采纳大量生动有趣的例子作为论据进行适当的分析关键词: 习语;来源;英语; 汉语; 文化差异contentsabstract in englishiabstract in chineseii1.introduction12.idioms and culture32.1. the definition of idioms32.2. the definition of culture42.3.the relationship between idioms and culture53.cultural differences reflected by chinese and english idioms63.1.different living circumstance63.1.1geographical environment73.1.2. climate83.2.different religious and beliefs93.3.different historical allusion123.3.1. historical events123.3.2. fables and mythologies143.4.literary works154.different traditions and customs174.1.social customs174.2.animals184.3.numbers204.3.1. the chinese numeral idioms and their culture204.3.2the english numeral idioms and their culture204.4.the taboo215. conclusion23acknowledgements24bibliography251. introductionthe thesis analyses the influence of cultural differences on chinese and english idioms, the importance of studying idiom from the perspective of culture lies in the following aspects: first of all, studies of the cultural distinction in idiom are still relatively weak in the field of research in china. it is known that cultural connotations engage in idioms. exclusive research on idioms is still inappropriate and incomplete. in the last twenty years, idiom has mostly emphasized on the level of interlingua communication, but cultural differences were rarely involved in it. in 1998, chen ding-an wrote a book on comparison and translation of english and chinese idioms, it can be concluded that it is time for us to study idiom from the culture differences, today people should pay more attention to such studies. secondly, it is inevitable that culture differences will affect the understanding of the idioms .in the broad sense, culture and language are closely related to each other. language is part of culture; it is also the carrier of culture. in the narrow sense, cultural differences have great influences on idiom translation. idioms are culture-loaded linguistic symbols and people can find almost every aspect of national culture in idioms. idioms are just like a huge mirror whereby we can see the kinds of cultural views of a nation. it is certain that the special difficulties for the translation of idioms will rise. in fact, is not only interlingua communication but also intercultural communication. a good leaner is supposed to understand idioms underlying the culture. england and china have totally different cultures while their sources and development roads are distinctive. having different living environments, social customs, religious beliefs and historical allusions, chinese and english idioms loaded with cultural connotations are characterized by certain cultural terms. the idioms were endowed in the two different cultures and were brought about by cultural barriers for the receptors to comprehend and appreciate. in that case, a leaner should consider the cultural terms in idiom translation and make efforts to find the accurate solution underlying these terms. america and britain are the countries that have christianity and hebraism as their cultural background. most idioms produced in this background carry rich religious elements. getting to the roots of idioms, we can find that they originated from literary masterpieces, the bible, greek and roman mythologies, ancient fables, historic events, anecdotes, customs, seafaring, agriculture, daily life, animal habitual behaviors, etc, which involved every aspect of life. that is why idioms are hard to understand. the essential point of studying idioms well is to realize them through the background of the traditional culture, thought pattern, geography, religion, and custom. this thesis is organized as follows: chapter one, the introduction, gives a general description of the background and the direction of the research. chapter two contains the definition of the idiom and culture and the relationship between them. chapter three mainly discussed the cultural differences reflected by chinese and english idioms from four aspects. in a word, this chapter focuses on the different reasons that lead to this differences. chapter four presents the different troditions and customs from four ways. chapter five, the conclusion, summarizes the implications and limitations of the study and gives recommendations for future research.2. idioms and cultureas we all know, language is closely related to culture and can be said as a part of culture. from a dynamic view, language and culture interact with each other and shape each other. language is the carrier of culture, which in turn is the content of language. the learners can dig out cultural features from language and explain language phenomena with culture.idioms as a special form of language exist in both of them and carry a large amount of cultural information such as history, geography, religion, custom, nationality psychology, thought pattern and so on, and therefore are closely related to culture. they are the heritage of history and product of cultural evolvement. consequently, people will know much about culture through studying idioms and in turn get better understanding of idioms by learning the cultural background behind them.. the definition of idioms as for the definition of idioms, there are various versions according to different dictionaries and scholars. this paper picked out some of those definitions from some authoritative dictionaries as follows: (1) an idiom is an expression which functions as a single unit and whose meaning cannot be worded out from its separate parts (carlson, 1988，53) (2) an idiom is 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. (chinnery, john d, 1984，88) some experts, who have been engaged in the study of idioms for many years, also have opinions of the definition of idioms. (1) weinreich held the view that a phrase logical unit involving at least two polysemous constituents, and in which there is a reciprocal contextual selection of sub-senses will be called and idiom. (2) robibett, betty wallace and liu chun-jo have the idea that idioms are common expressions used in colloquial speech with accepted, figurative meanings that differ from their present-day literal meanings. these above are from dictionaries and experts or scholars. to sum up, we may come to the conclusion that idioms are those concise and incisive set phrase or short sentences, which mean something different from the literal meaning of the individual words, refined from peoples long-term employment, whose elements cannot be changed at random with simple words producing profound truth, thus widely spread among the common people.2.2. the definition of culturethe word culture has many different meanings. for some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food. for a biologist, it is likely to be a colony of bacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrient medium in a laboratory petri dish. however, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. the term was first used in this way by the pioneer english anthropologist samovar.l.a.et.al. in his book, understanding intercultural communication，1981. he said that culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”of course, it is not limited to men. women possess and create it as well. since tylers time, the concept of culture has become the central focus of anthropology.culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. it is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. they are not culture in themselves. for this reason, archaeologists can not dig up culture directly in their excavations. the broken pots and other artifacts of ancient people that they uncover are only material remains that reflect cultural patterns-they are things that were made and used through cultural knowledge and skills.2.3. the relationship between idioms and culturea great number of definitions have been given to culture. therefore, idiom is a part of culture. as such, it cannot but serve and reflect cultural needs. today, the type of figurative language is highly used in the daily life in america. it is necessary for us to have such knowledge of how to comprehend. the ability to understand idioms is important to successful communication. the difficult comprehension of english idioms may also lead to communication breakdown for the persons from different language communities. failure to grasp the meanings of idioms can impinge upon an individuals understanding of language in social, academic, and vocational settings. in order to communicate with each other fluently, the study of the relationship between the idiom and culture is significant and promising.3. cultural differences reflected by chinese and english idiomsboth china and britain have a long history, which fertilized their brilliant cultures. the common experiences and reciprocal interaction in various aspects through long-time communication between the two countries induce a lot of common points in culture.although chinese culture and english culture have much in common , but they have more in discrepancy owing to their different geographical environment, history, religion and so on. the differentiation is a common phenomenon, which appears in varied forms, one of which is idiom. this article will analyze four cultural divergences resulting in differences between chinese idioms and english idiom.3.3.1. different living circumstancelanguage is a carrier of the culture; any kind of language reflects its corresponding culture. english and chinese are two totally different language systems. it embodies two kinds of totally different cultural systems. the languages of nationality should reflect national culture. the different languages of easter and western countries determine they must have some difficulties in communication, namely the cultural difference.（chen anding，1991,76）he said in terms of translation: the most difficult to understand and translate in foreign literature is the first, it has special emotion atmospheres. it is deep and broad and more delicate. we have no way of finding it out in the dictionary, but extremely important to literature. if we are not familiar with the human custom of one country, cultural or historical background, this kind of meaning in the characters will be ignorant. especially this kind of meaning of word is the most difficult to deal with in translation. once a cultural anthropologist in one book of primitive culture, regarded culture as a concept to propose for the first time, and described as: “each complicated culture, includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law and custom as ability and habit in the society ” .it is obvious that coverage of culture phenomenon of a nationality is a part of culture. cultural difference between english and chinese idioms can be shown in the following several aspects... geographical environmentthe production of the idiom is closely related to peoples work and living. geographical environment plays an important role in shaping one countrys culture and human beings have no choices and opacities to change the geography. as a result, idioms based on geographical features appear different. the culture is defined by geographical environment is a subject view of geographical determinism. it cannot be denied. britain is an island country; the navigation industry has once dominated the world in history. the nationality of chinese multiplies and lives at asian continent. peoples life cannot do without the land. in english, there are many idioms about ship and water, but in chinese there is not the same corresponding idioms.such as:burn ones boats比喻“破釜沉舟. a small leak will sink a great ship. 微小的裂隙能使一艘巨轮沉没. a smooth sea never makes a skillful mariner. 平静的大海孕育不出优秀的水手.britain is an island country, which does not share land border with any other countries except the republic of ireland. in history, its navigation industry has ever been the first one for a long time. so, british people have a special passion for water. a drop in the ocean 沧海一粟； plain sailing 一帆风顺；all at sea 不知所措；take the sea（择业）when ones ship comes home（当某人发财致富时）；between the devil and deep sea 进退两难；while it is fine weather mend your sail 未雨绸缪。big fish (大亨), dull fish(枯燥无味的人), make fish of one and flesh of another喻厚此薄彼, 偏爱一方.rain cats and dogs (倾盆大雨)means to rain heavily（hard）. over head and ears in love（深坠情网）；over head and ears in work（埋头工作）。however, the most part of china belongs to inland place where people cannot live without earth. this very geographical difference results in different idioms in the two languages. for example, to show somebody being extravagant, there is a chinese idiom “挥金如土” （ robibett betty wallace and liu chun-jo,1988,97）. but in english the idiom is “spend money like water”. to rest on ones oars（暂时歇一歇）， all at sea（不知所措）。to keep ones head above water（奋力图存）， there are a lot of english idioms about ship, water and fish: for example, bigger fish to fry means if you arent interested in something because it isnt important to you and there are more important things for you to do, you have bigger fish to fry. shooting fish in a barrel means it is so easy that success is graranteed.one side is so much stronger than the other that the weaker side has no chance at all of winning .ridiculously easy, as in setting up a computer nowadays is like shooting fish in a barrel. to have other fish to fry(另有企图) between devil and blue sea (进退维谷), hoist ones colors (升起旗帜,宣布观点), sail under false colors (用假冒的旗帜航行引申为冒充欺世盗名), in low water (搁浅引申为缺钱), on the rocks (在岩石中触礁,引申为遭遇失败).3.1.2. climateclimate is another factor in the living condition. while britain is located in western hemisphere, with north temperate zone and marine climate, so “west wind” is the symbol of spring. take the other instance, in southern china with mild and moisture weather, bamboo is a familiar plant for people there, so they use the idiom “雨后春笋” to describe the new things cropping up in great numbers. correspondingly, english have the idiom “spring up like mushrooms” to tell the same meaning, since in england mushroom in spring can be seen everywhere.britain used to be known as a country of fog partly due to the dampness and warmness of the weather condition and partly to the air pollution as side product of the industrial revolution. therefore, in english there are some idiomatic expressions concerning fog, such as in a fog（云里雾里），and to have not the foggiest idea. spring up like mushrooms (雨后春笋) may become incomprehensible to chinese learner if he is unaware that this idiom implies the richness of mushroom growing in the wet area in britain just as bamboo in chinese specialty, and as plentiful as blackberries(黑莓遍地) also indicates the ecological environment in britain, for blackberries are easily av