学士学位论文__the strategies of english idioms’ translation 英语专业.docVIP

1 Introduction Idiom is derived from the Greek “Idioma” and “idiomatikos”, which means peculiar or peculiarity. Although linguists of different ages differ from each other on the scope of English idiom, in a broad sense, idioms with a great number of vocabularies, may include “set phrases, proverbs, sayings, epigrams, slang expressions, colloquialisms, quotations, two-part allegorical sayings of which the first part is always descriptive, while the second part often carries the message” [1]. Not only do the linguists of different ages disagree with each other on the scope of English idiom, they have also made different definitions of it. But while studying so many documents about English idiom of different times, you can find that the older the documents are, the more indistinct the definitions are. For example, some linguists just defined the idiom as “an accepted phrase, construction, or expression, which is different from the literal”[1]. English idioms are fixed expressions or phrases, often carrying special meanings that cannot be guessed from their individual parts. They often have a distant origin and a long development, full of relatively strong national coloring or local features, widely used among the people and established by the people through long social practice. Some of the idioms are vivid, humorous and explicit, while others are implicit, containing more than one meaning, and can bring varieties of associations. So you have to judge the meaning from the whole text. Idioms are the language or dialect of people, of a region and a class, etc. And they are the special way of people expressing their culture, region, ideas and life patterns, etc. They have characteristics of nationality, regionalism, and fixedness of structures. Collocated by more than two words customarily, they are fixed phrases, prohibiting any change of words or of each individual part of the idiom from each other at will. For example, “kick the bucket” is made up of three morpheme