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Language is an indispensable part in people’s daily life and if we pay more attention to it, we will easily find that people incline to use idioms or slang involving animal words to express their feelings more effectively and more accurately. Since animals are closely related to our life and most people are fond of them, the author thinks research of animal words between Chinese and English can intrigue people’s interest. An animal word with the same literal meaning in English and Chinese may have only one figurative meaning while it can also has two totally different figurative meanings. There might be factors that lead to these differences and similarities. The analysis of these factors helps to inspire the interest of English learners, thus can enhance their learning efficiency. In addition, it can also help translators to pay more attention to accurate expression which on the one hand can vividly express writers’ emotion and on the other hand can help readers understand and appreciate another culture better. Last but not least, it might be helpful to promote the relationship between English and Chinese people through relevant researching.
2. Literature Review
Many people have researched animal words in English and Chinese for different purposes. Wang Li has written an essay about the animal words and their translations. Ji Yunqi has researched the use of metaphor in Chinese and English animal words. Li Yan has compared animal words between Chinese and English. Liao Guangrong has listed a number of animal words and classified them into a few categories. He also analyzes the factors and gives some examples of how to make a contrast and comparison of these animal words. And there are also many professors who make many similar researches. The thesis tries to focus on the relationship between culture and language and takes the connotations of animal words as examples to analyze the factors that cause differences and similarities in Chinese and English from cultural perspective to make readers understand easily and deeply.
3. Culture and Language源/自:751:;论-文'网www.751com.cn
Language is the carrier of culture. Specific languages reflect and also are influenced and restricted by specific cultures. Vocabulary is the most obvious information carrier of culture. Each language has a lot of animal words. In daily life, people tend to associate some specific emotions and qualities with animals to express certain reactions or emotions. Dating back to ancient times, people from different cultural backgrounds inclined to use animals to describe people or things in order to express their feelings more vividly and effectively. Culture is a complicated system of knowledge, moral principles, beliefs, arts, law and customs, etc. Language is a part of culture and mirrors the rich and varied cultural information. For example, in greeting, Chinese people tend to greet people by saying “你吃过了吗? or 上哪儿去啊?”, while English people tend to greet each other by saying “Good morning / afternoon”. When praised by others, Chinese people will respond by saying “哪里哪里” or “过奖过奖” to show their humbleness which is regarded as one of the Chinese traditional virtues, but this reaction may be considered dishonest by the English-speaking people. When complimented by others the English-speaking people would like to say “Thank you”, because they are direct and open-minded. But it may be regarded arrogant by the Chinese. This phenomenon vividly shows the huge difference of attitudes towards compliment between the Chinese and the English and it has something to do with culture, so it is of great necessity for people to have basic knowledge about different cultures. This essay focuses on animal words in Chinese and English to show not only the differences but also the similarities of animal words in Chinese and English in order to give readers a better understanding in this regard. Due to different emotions endowed by people from different cultural backgrounds, the connotative meanings sometimes may be the same or similar, but sometimes they are totally different. The cultural traditions of a nation, especially the cultural mentality, have a great inspiring and guiding function on the production and development of associations of animal words. On the one hand, owing to cultural differences among nations, people endow meanings of animal words with strong national cultural characteristics and profound social and historical origins. Although animal words in different languages may have the same or similar conceptual meanings, they may have totally different connotative meanings. The different meanings of the same animal words in Chinese and English reflect the differences of the cultural backgrounds between them. However, people may also express the same meaning with different animals. For example, black sheep in English means exactly the same as “害群之马” in Chinese, while“马”is “horse” in English. “You chicken” is used to refer to those who are timid, not brave. While in Chinese, people tend to use “胆小如鼠(鼠 means mouse)” to express a similar meaning.