Communicative Translation Of Idioms From English Into Chinese

Idiom translation has been a hot topic in translation study.Idioms are vivid and powerful language with rich cultural connatations.These characteristics also make idioms hard to be translated.It’s important to study idiom translation to learn how to retain the vividness,the power of the language and the cultural elements.However,the existing studies are mainly about translation of separate idioms,instead of idioms drawn from one text.Moreover,as for idioms drawn from one text,most of the studies are about translation of Chinese idioms into English.This report may fill the gap by analyzing the translation of idioms drawn from the popular fiction The Lincoln Highway.The research questions are as following:How to use communicative translation in idiom translation in popular fiction?When communicative translation is not appropriate,how to use semantic translation?The author uses the concepts of communicative and semantic translation for analysis and focuses on communicative translation.First it’s because communicative translation aims to produce similar effects on target language readers with that on the source language readers,making the translation powerful and vivid.Second,communicative translation is appropriate in popular fiction,so the idioms in popular fiction should also be translated communicatively.This report also relies on the concepts of figures of speech,rhyme and rhythm and images,as well as the classification of idioms for analysis.The findings are that there are two strategies for communicative translation.First,a Chinese idiom is used to replace the English one.Second,when there’s no proper Chinese idiom,change the way of expressions and use idiomatic language.Semantic translation is used to explain the real meaning of the idiom.Besides general principles,in practice,it’s important to consider the idioms’connotations,parts of speech,emotion colors,registers and take into consideration the personalities of characters if idioms appear in dialogues in popular fiction.