Abstract
There are six translation tactics in translating English idioms into Chinese: literal translation, compensatory translation, free translation, explanational translation, borrowing, integrated approach. Each tactics should be reasonably employed in the process of translating, so as to keep the flavor of the original English idioms as well as to cater for the Chinese readers. In this paper, one of the tactics: literal translation will be discussed, which is the most commonly used tactics in translating English idioms.
Highlights
There are six translation tactics in translating English idioms into Chinese: literal translation, compensatory translation, free translation, explanational translation, borrowing, integrated approach
Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American English (1988) defines “idiom” as: 1) the language proper or peculiar to a people or to a district, community or class; the syntactical, grammatical or structural form peculiar to a language; 2) an expression established in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either in grammatical construction or in having a meaning that cannot be derived as a whole from the conjoined meanings of its elements; 3) style or form of artistic expression that is characteristic especially of an individual, a period or movement, or a medium or instrument
Literal translation is usually employed in the complete representation of the original when the original almost accords with the target language in the form of vocabulary, grammatical structure and rhetorical device, which means literal translation is a way by which the rhetoric, national and regional characteristics are kept in the target language
Summary
Literal translation is usually employed in the complete representation of the original when the original almost accords with the target language in the form of vocabulary, grammatical structure and rhetorical device, which means literal translation is a way by which the rhetoric, national and regional characteristics are kept in the target language. Translators should make every endeavor to retain the figurative image, rhetorical devices and the national characteristics of the original idioms In this way, the meaning and form of the source language are unchanged. As Nida says, “Finding satisfactory equivalents for idioms is one of the most difficult aspects of translating.” (Nida, E.A., 2001: 28) Many English idioms can be translated in a literal way, for instance: “A wolf in sheep’s clothing” is translated literally into “Pi Zhe Yang Pi De Lang”; “To pull chestnut out of the fire” is translated literally into “Huo Zhong Qu Li” and “To be led by the nose” into “Bei Qian Zhe Bizi Zou” As to these idioms, in the process of across-cultural communication, June, 2009 we have absorbed a lot of them into our language
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