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2.1 Geographical Conditions
Every nation has its specific geographical environment, which differs from one nation to the other. The factor of geographical conditions plays an important role in the production of the idioms, for many idioms are born to it.
As far as we know, Britain is a sea sailing country, which as a matter of fact has a lot of idioms containing words concerning the sea. For example, “rest on one’s oars”(暂时歇一歇), “keep one’s head above water”(奋力图存), “sink or swim”(不知好歹), “go with the stream” (随波逐流), etc. Obviously, we can hardly find any equivalent figurative idioms in Chinese for those idioms. It is because of the distinctive geographical condition between these two nations. Different from Britain, China has long been a large agricultural country, and an overwhelming majority of the people lives in the rural area. In the translation of English figurative idioms, geographical conditions should be taken into consideration. For example, we translate “spend money like water” into “挥金如土”, “spring up like mushroom” into “雨后春笋”.
“To drink like a fish”, frankly speaking, this idiom is illogical. The purpose for the fish to open its mouth in the water is to take in air rather than to drink water. Apparently, this idiom is the result of the misunderstanding by English ancestors of the surrounding. So, when the idiom comes to be translated, it isn’t suitable for us to translate it into “像鱼一样喝水”. In Chinese, there are certain words to indicate someone that is good at drinking, that is “牛饮”. Owing to the geographical condition, Chinese people have a close contact with the cattle for this animal helps the Chinese to work in the field through history. Many Chinese words are associated with the cattle. While English people say “work like a horse” as they use horse to plow in the early time, Chinese say “像老黄牛一样干活”.
3.2.2 Historical Events
Being the precious treasure of the nation, historical events certainly take on the national and traditional characteristics, in the mean time, are a reflection of the profound cultural specialties. A large number of English idioms originate from the legends and myths, historical events or literary works, which have simple structures but rich meanings.
There are a lot of English idioms coming from certain legends and myths. Idioms like “to cry wolf” (狼来了--发假警报), “sour grapes” (酸葡萄--得不到而佯称不好, “cat’s paw” (猫爪子--被人利用做冒险或厌恶事情的人), “to pull the chestnuts out of the fire” (火中取栗--替人冒险) all come from Aesop’ Fables. Idiom “rain cats and dogs” stems from the San Dinavia myths. It is said that the wizards taking charge of the rain and wind. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why the Chinese translation for “rain cats and dogs” is “倾盆大雨”.
Some idioms, such as, “to meet one’s waterloo” (遭遇滑铁卢--毁灭性打击), “to eat the crow” (吃下乌鸦--忍辱负重), “Columbus’ egg” (哥伦布竖鸡蛋--万事开头难), “Dunkrik evacuation” (敦刻尔克大撤退--溃退) come from the true historical events. Thus, an awareness of the history is of significance in translating these idioms. Let’s take “Hobson’s choice” as an example. Hobson was a famous boss of a post for renting horses in 16th century of England. He rented his horse in fixed order, so people could not choose the horses they liked but accepted the one offered, even it was an inferior one, otherwise they could get on horses at all. Thus, this idiom is now used to express the meaning of the choice between taking what one is offered and getting nothing at all. After the und本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。