Abstract
Idioms are the essence of a language, which have strong national colors and distinctive cultural connotations. So it is difficult for both English and Chinese readers to understand the idiom translation thoroughly and exactly. Different people from different cultures may have different understandings of the same sentence because they are ignorant of target cultures. However, due to lack of knowledge of cultural differences, people 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. This thesis first analyzes the relationship between idioms and culture. Then compare the same object idioms in the East and West idioms. After that, it probes into the causes of the differences in English and Chinese idioms from the aspects of different living circumstances, different cognitions of animals, different religions and beliefs, and different historical allusions and myths, etc. All the significance of this thesis is to convey the idioms’ cultural information as much as possible, which is very useful for the language learning.
Keywords English Idioms; Chinese Idioms; Comparison; Cultural Differences; Cross –culture;
Contents
Abstract I
Contents I
Introduction 1
1. The relationship between idioms and culture 2
2. Contrast between Chinese and English Idioms from animal Idioms 3
2.1 Same animal idioms having the same meaning 3
2.1 Different animal idioms having the same meaning 3
3. The main reasons for the differences between English and Chinese Idioms 4
3.1 Different living circumstances 4
3.2 Different Religions and Beliefs 4
3.3 Different Historical Allusions and myths 4
4. Conclusion 5
References 6
