A Comparative Study Of The Cultural Connotation In Chinese And English Animal Idioms Based On Cultural Empathy

Language is an important tool for communication between people,and it carries the heritage of a nation’s culture.In the process of cross-cultural communication,semantic expression are extremely important.Idioms are the essence of language,but the connotations of idioms in different languages are quite different.This article takes Chinese and English zodiac animal idioms as the research object,and mainly adopts the contrast method and the case analysis method.First of all,the author counted the idioms of Chinese zodiac animals in the Chinese-English idiom dictionary and analyzed their cultural connotations;Secondly,the author summarize the differences in the cultural connotation of animal idioms between Chinese and English,and explore the reasons for the differences in cultural connotations and their impact on cross-cultural communication;Finally,the theory of cultural empathy is applied to the interpretation of the cultural connotation of animal idioms to provide a guarantee for cross-cultural communication.The number of animal idioms is quite large.This article narrows the research scope to animal idioms of the zodiac.The author selects Chinese Idioms Dictionary,Cambridge International English Idioms Dictionary and English Animal Metaphor Dictionary as the source of idiom words.Through manual statistics of three dictionaries,321 Chinese animal idioms and 437 English animal idioms were screened out.In addition,a detailed analysis of the four Chinese zodiac animals(dog,horse,cow,chicken)that are among the top six(dog,horse,cow,chicken)in both Chinese and English.This article conceives the article based on the ideas of discovering problems,exploring causes,and solving problems.The four zodiac idioms of "dog,horse,chicken,and cow" are the main research objects,and the cultural connotation of Chinese and English animal idioms is carried out in-depth research,and the culture of animal idioms will be studied.Cultural misunderstandings and conflicts caused by differences in connotation can be divided into preconceptions and cultural discounts.They also compare Chinese and English animal idioms in terms of geographic location,history,culture,thinking style,context,and the vocabulary level of cross-cultural communicators,and cultural empathy.Explore the reasons for the differences in cultural connotations,and use the theory of cultural empathy to solve cross-cultural communication problems.Through the analysis of the importance of cultural empathy ability,a strategy for cultivating cultural empathy ability of "appropriate empathy,firm seeking common ground while reserving differences,and constantly advancing with the times" is proposed.