英汉对比之动物习语.docVIP

The Differences Between Chinese and Western Culture in Animal Idioms Both in English and Chinese, there is a great amount of idioms, which reflect history background, custom and its peoples ways of thinking of a nation. Both in English and Chinese, animal idioms play an important part of idiom and exist in our daily life. It is well known that there are many similarities and differences in English and Chinese, especially animal idioms and therefore we are justified to make an attempt to investigate this phenomenon. Animal is mans best friend. Different animals have different natural instincts and life styles. And because of the culture communications between east and west and the similarity of thinking manners, an animal word would have same or similar connotations. For example, English people would say, He is a fox. Similarly, Chinese people can understand the meaning of the sentence in Chinese他是一只狐狸. This example shows that in English fox can be used to describe somebody who is cunning and dishonest. In addition, wolf is a kind of greedy and cruel beast, so in China there exist such expression: “狼心狗肺”，“狼狈为奸”，“狼子野心”. Similarly, the savage, sinister, dishonest character of wolf also displays vividly in western culture, eg: a wolf in a sheeps clothing or a wolf in lambs skin(披着羊皮的狼). The following are some other familiar examples: as busy as a bee (像蜜蜂一样忙); as slow as a nail (像蜗牛一样慢); as free as a bird (像鸟儿一样自由). These idioms are given the same cultural meaning from their characteristics, so that both English and Chinese can understand each other directly and easily in cross-cultural communication. At the same time, with more and more communication, lots of foreign words come into both languages. We can find some idioms with even the same images and the same intonations, such as:fish in troubled water浑水摸鱼a dark horse 黑马 etc. The majority of animal words carry different connotations, because of their different natural environment, customs, and society systems. Bes