A Corpus-based Study Of Correspondences In Images And Meanings Between English Metaphorical Idioms And Their Chinese Translations

In the present study, we adopt the methodology of corpus linguistics to analyze the correspondences in images and meanings between English metaphorical idioms and their Chinese translations. Most of the English metaphorical idioms are selected from idiom dictionaries and their translations are retrieved from parallel corpora. With the aid of corpora and related corpus tools, polysemy of metaphorical idioms and its relationship with lexicography are discussed. Correspondence and non-correspondence in images are explored. Finally, within the model of extended lexical units, we investigate false friends and non-correspondence and correspondence in meanings between English idioms and the Chinese idioms as their translations.The major findings are as follows: first, context can disambiguate polysemous idioms. The Chinese loan translation of an English metaphorical idiom may create new meanings different from the English idiom. This is because its unit of meaning was negotiated, accepted and verified again and again by members of the Chinese discourse community after its repeated uses in different contexts; second, in the process of translating English metaphorical idioms, over 60% of the idioms may have no corresponding images in Chinese and almost 20% of the English idioms need a change of images in Chinese. Corresponding images occur when the indigenous information is shared and understood by the other language community or there happens to be the same images with the same metaphorical senses in Chinese expressions. We use non-corresponding images in Chinese translation, when we accept indigenous information but fail to find a corresponding image in Chinese and there is a ready-made and universally accepted expression with the same metaphorical senses in Chinese. We use no corresponding image in Chinese translation, when indigenous information is so alien to the Chinese language community that we fail to find a ready-made expression containing the same metaphors in Chinese. Conversion and lack of corresponding images cause low translability in Chinese; and third, false friends abound in metaphorical idioms with non-corresponding and no corresponding images in Chinese translation. Non-correspondence can be determined by observing the four dimensions including collocates, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody of the English idiom and its prima facie equivalent. But careful observation of corpus data reveals that full correspondence in meanings does exist.?The present study has potentially useful implications for English learning and teaching, translation learning and teaching, lexicography and machine translation.