Abstract：Idiom s are important, peculiar and indispensable part of a language. They are special linguistic units, for they are mainly characterized by their structural stability, semantic unity and contain various kinds of rhetorical devices and thus acquire a figurative meaning. Furthermore, being heavily loaded with cultural elements, they best reflect the culture of a nation. Consequently, they have been described as the crystallization of language and the concentrated culture. Having strong national characteristics as well as specific linguistic features, they bring about difficulties in translation. This paper suggests the principles that may be app lied in the translation of English idioms and also offers some points for attention. The author hopes that this paper will be of some help in guiding the English idiom translation and thus enhancing the effectiveness of cultural communication.
Keywords：idioms; translation; principles
1. Introduction
According to Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language(and college edition,1972), an idiom refers to an accepted phrase, construction, or expression contrary to the usual patterns of the language or having meaning different from the literal. That is, an idiom must be well established and accepted through common practice and an idiom usually has an implied meaning. In general, no elements in the idiom can be changed without destroying the sense as a whole and also it cannot be interpreted only according to its literal meaning. In a broad sense, English idiom s include set phrases, proverbs, sayings, colloquialisms, all us ions and
slangs. Idiom’s are important, peculiar and indispensable part of a language. They are special linguistic units, for they are mainly characterized by their structural stability, semantic unity and contain various kinds of rhe2torical devices and thus acquire a figurative meaning. Furthermore, being heavily loaded with cultural elements, they best reflect the culture of a nation. Consequently, they have been described as the crystallization of language and the concentrated culture. An appropriate use of them will add to the strength and vividness of our language. Men of letters, in modern or ancient times, in China or England, all excel in using idioms. Because of these properties of idioms, the idiom translation occupies a prominent place in the whole translation and the quality of translation is greatly affected by the translation of idioms. Therefore, idiom translation becomes an important issue in translation. A good translator should not only faithfully represent the meaning of the idiom in the target language, but also keep the full flavor of the idioms, such as associations, rhetorical effects, national features and local color, therefore, rendering idiom s of one language into another is always complicated, much more so if the two languages involved, such as English and Chinese, are of backgrounds and cultures so unlike each other. Starting from the review of the criteria for translation, this paper will be devoted to the discussion of the principles that may be app lied to English idiom translation.
2. The Criteria for Translation
Ever since human beings first engaged themselves in the act of translation, disputes over what should be as at is factory approach to translation and what should be the standard for translation have never ceased. Early in the Tang Dynasty(唐)in our country the learned monk XuanZang(玄奘)designed the criteria of translation with emphasis placed on accuracy and general know ledge. In the Qing Dynasty(清),Yan Fu(严复)established a three-character standard in translation: faithfulness(信),expressiveness(达),and elegance(雅),which are similar to“tri-ness” by Herbert Ro the in stein: faithfulness, expressiveness and gracefulness which were considered the golden rule in the field of translation. After the May 4th Movement,Lu Xun(鲁迅)proposed faithfulness(信)and smoothness(顺)as the criteria of translation and attached importance to the preservation of the original flavor. After the birth of new China, quite a lot of translators put forward various criteria: such as sp iritu2al conformity(神似)and sublimed adaptation(化境).The former, proposed by Fu Lei(傅雷),emphasizes the reproduction of the spirit or the flavor of the original, while the latter, advocated by QianZhongshu(钱钟书),focuses on the translator’s smooth and idiomatic Chinese version for the sake of the Chinese reader. Alexander Fraser Tytler, an English theoretician and professor of history at Edinburgh University, in his Essays on the Principles of Translation, laid down three laws of translation in 1791.They are(1)A translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.(2)The style and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original(3)A translation should have all the ease of original composition. Another famous translator who establishes influential criteria of translation is Eugene A. Nida who proposed the following fundamentals:(1)True to the original(2)Vivid(3)Smooth and natural(4)Equivalence of response Despite the variety of opinions, two criteria are almost unanimously accepted, namely, the criterion of faithfulness and that of smoothness. We may also take these two criteria as the principles of translation in general. Faithfulness refers to the loyalty to the original work. The translator must bring out the original meaning both comprehensively and accurately without any distortion or casual addition or deletion of the original thought. Faithfulness also includes fidelity to the original style including the rendering of the original writing style and the original emotions or feelings, such as anger or distress, satire or irony, joy or happiness. However, as far as culture is concerned, there is a problem. Culture exists in relation to other cultures, just as cultures are characterized by their differences. The western culture as a whole is completely different from the Chinese culture that belongs to an entirely different cultural system. Therefore, in reading, there is inevitably misreading or misunderstanding. In translation, it is very difficult to attain absolute faithfulness. What the translator can do is just to make every endeavor to be as faithful as possible. Smoothness requires that the version must be clear and distinct, flowing and easy to read without signs of the mechanical word-for-word translation, or obscure and crabbed language, or grammatical mistakes, confused structure and turbid logic. By smoothness weal so mean that we should make the language forceful, clear and idiomatic. Thus, our translation will be readable and understandable. In idiom translation, it is advisable that we should try to strike a balance between faithfulness and smoothness, these two basic criteria, to keep the full flavor of the original idioms as much as possible and at the same time keep the translated idiom s readable by following the four principles suggested in the next chapter.
3. The Principles for the Translation of English Idioms
Based on the criteria of faithfulness and smoothness and the characteristics of idioms, we may put forward four principles for the translation of English idioms. Firstly, the cultural flavor should be kept as much as possible when the cultural element is used as the language feature of the original work; and it can only be done without going beyond the norm of the target language and the acceptability of the target reader. Lu Xun once said,“凡是翻译,必须兼顾着两面:一当然力求其易解,一则保存着原作的丰姿。”(Each and every translation must have two concerns: first, it should be intelligible; and second, it has to keep the refined quality of the original work)(ChenFukang,2000:299).By intelligible, he means that the translation should be in conformity with the norm of the target language and the acceptability of the target reader. By keeping the refined quality of the original work, he means that the cultural flavor should be well conveyed in the translation. As we know, idioms best reflect the special features of a nation or a culture. Thus it is quite necessary for the translator to keep the original flavor as much as possible to help the target reader understand more foreign culture. For example, the idiom “to kill two birds with one stone”can be translated into“一箭双雕”,“一举两得”,“一石二鸟”.All of them accurately convey the meaning of the original idiom. However, for the sake of keeping the full flavor of the original,“一石二鸟”best fulfills this aim and is also acceptable to the target reader. Whereas,“一箭双雕”and“一举两得”fail to transfer the images of“石”and“鸟”.Nevertheless, idioms are fixed and mainly characterized by their semantic unity. Therefore, some idioms may not be translated literally to keep the full flavor or the translation can be violating the norm of the Chinese language and going beyond the acceptability of the Chinese. They must be translated as a whole. For instance, we cannot put the idiom “to rain cats and dogs”into“下猫下狗”,which is extremely nonsense to the Chinese reader who can never imagine cats and dogs are falling down from the sky when it rains. Because of its semantic unity, the idiom should be understood as a whole and translated into“大雨倾盆”.Secondly, the content/implied meaning should have priority over the form/literal meaning if they are contradicted. Idiom s usually possess imp lied meaning that cannot be deduced from their component parts; therefore, the contradiction between the content/implicit meaning and form/literal meaning is also what the translator has to deal with. In idiom translation, it is the content of the source message that is of prime importance to be carried over first from the source language to the receptor language. To reach the highest level of approximation to the source idiom, the translator should make explicit in the translation the implicit meaning in the original idiom that is absolutely essential for comprehension by the target reader. Take two sentences for example: First, the sentence “She is a fox. “may be put into“她是个狐狸”.This translation undoubtedly transfers both the content and the form of the original.“Fox “or“狐狸”is a symbol of one who is cunning and greedy both in English and Chinese cultures. It can be asserted that this translation is a perfect translation. However, take the sentence “She is a cat. “for example, it cannot be translated into“她是只猫”,which would be nonsense to the Chinese reader, for the Chinese culture does not endow the signifier“猫”with any associated meaning and the sign “cat” is simply an animal. But the English culture prescribes that the sign can be associated with a person, especially a woman having evil intentions. The translation“她是只猫”would prove to be a failure though it has kept the cultural flavor of the original. Being a culture-loaded word in the English language, the word “cat” in the sentence has to be put into“阴险”to convey the implied meaning of the sentence as indicated in the western culture. Possibly, the translation can be annotated as “Cat is regarded as a person, especially a woman, having evil intentions in the western culture.”In this way, though the annotation may spoil the readability, the original flavor is translated and the receptors of the translation are informed that there is such a signifier in English culture, which may someday be accepted as one component of the Chinese language. Thirdly, the translation should be in conformity with the context of the original text. So far as the translation of English idiom s is concerned, some people may p resume that a good dictionary of English idioms with Chinese translation will be sufficient for a translator to produce adequate translation. But the actual translating process is not so simple as they have presumed. The Chinese version offered by a dictionary is often out of context. But when we translate an English idiom, we translate it in certain context, as is stated by Peter New mark (2001:73),“We do not translate isolated words, we translate words all more or less(and sometimes less rather than more, but never not at all)bound by their syntactic, collocation, situational, cultural and individual dialectal contexts.”A mechanical replacement of the original idiom with the Chinese version offered by the dictionary often results in an inadequate translation, which does not conform to the context of the original text. Therefore, instead of merely relying on the dictionary, translators must first take into consideration the context in which the original idioms occurred. And this is often decisive for translators to produce adequate translation. For example, the translator must pay attention to the differentiation of the commendatory from the derogatory in the context. This can be illustrated by the idiom such as “to be hand in glove with”, which can be used both in a commendatory and derogatory sense. And we should only make a choice according to the context and translate it accordingly. Let’s compare the following: The two girls were once hand in glove with each other.这俩女孩曾一度亲密无间/亲如姐妹。The traitor and the enemy were working handing love with each other.卖国贼和敌人狼狈为奸。The officials were hand in glove with him.当官的和他穿一条裤子。Fourthly, the translation should be concise, vivid and pleasant to the ear. Idioms are usually vivid and forceful. They read more smoothly and sound more pleasant to the ear, because they contain euphony in their word combination and strongly accented rhythms in their sentences(Yu and Guo,1999:176).That is why it becomes so easy for the common people to imitate and memorize them, and spread them far and wide. In idiom translation, the translator should try to reproduce the style of the original idioms. For example, the English proverb “Men may meet but mountains never “can be translated into“山和山无法碰头,人和人总会相遇”(B aoHuinan,2001:168),which is concise, vivid and pleasant to the ear. However, if it is translated into“人也许会相见,可是山头却不会”,the effect is obviously inferior to the former. In addition, since most Chinese idiom s are set phrases of four characters, quite a few English idioms may be rendered into the Chinese set phrases of four characters to give the best sound effects. To mention just a few: again and again屡次三番to call a spade a spade直言不讳Time and tide wait for no man.时不待人all at sea不知所措A cat has nine lives.猫有九命to have an axe to grind别有用心to talk through one’s hat胡言乱语after one’s own heart正中下怀one’s hair stands on end毛发倒竖six of one and half a dozen of the other半斤八两.
4. The Points for Attention in the Translation of English Idioms
Idiom translation is rather complicated. In spite of the principles listed above, there still exist two points which should merit our attention in translation practice.(1)Avoiding word-for-word translation As we know, idioms have the feature of semantic cunity and we cannot deduce the meaning from the component part of an idiom, thus a word-for-word translation may lead to the distortion of the original message. For example, a word-for-word translation for“free living”may be“自由生活”,but it actually means“奢侈的生活”;“He has the legs of me”cannot be translated into“他有我的腿”,but“他比我跑得快”;“Last night I heard him driving his pigs to market”does not mean“昨晚我听见他把猪赶进市场”,but“昨晚我听见他鼾声如雷”. Furthermore, some idioms are similar to each other in image, and people are easily tricked into translation pitfalls in dealing with this kind of idioms. For instance,“child’s play”may be rendered as“儿戏”wrongly at the first sight. However, these seemingly correspondent idioms are not correspondent at all.“child’s play”means something very easy to do or something not very important; the Chinese“儿戏”means trifling matter or not paying attention to an important job; Likewise, the seemingly correspondent idiom for“to pull someone’s leg”is“拉后腿”.Unfortunately,“to pull someone’s leg”means to tell someone something untrue as a joke in order to shock them temporarily and amuse them when they find out later that it was a joke, but“拉后腿”means to hold someone back or be a drag on someone.(2)Avoiding in discriminate substitution of the original idiom with a Chinese idiom which is highly culture-bound. Since idioms best reflect the special features of a nation or a culture, we should no t exchange for another in the target language an idiom with distinctive national and local flavor. Such an idiom may be associated with some specific situations of a nation such as history, economy, culture, life, customs, natural environment etc. In translating these idioms, we should take full account of cultural differences and national flavors, and oppose a blind substitution with a highly culture-bound Chinese idiom. Otherwise our translation will bring about the loss of the original images and causes cultural confusions and incorrect associations. For example:“to carry coals to Newcastle”(运煤炭到纽卡斯尔去-多此一举)should not be translated into“带着瓷器上浮梁”,because浮梁is a place where china was produced in ancient China. For the same reason, the following translations are also unacceptable: Two heads are better than one:三个臭皮匠胜过一个诸葛亮(一人不及两人智)to meet one’s Waterloo:败走麦城(遭遇惨败)a blessing in disguise:塞翁失马,焉知非福(因祸得福)Do not teach your grandmother to suck eggs:不要关公面前耍大刀(能人面前莫逞能)
5. Conclusion
In short, this paper contributes to the discussion of the principles for the translation of English idioms on the basis of the criteria of faithfulness and smoothness. In the background of the increasing intercultural communication, these principles may prove to be reasonable to help the translator to convey mo re foreign culture in English idiom translation and at the same time keep the translated idiom s readable.
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