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It is difficult for us to give a clear definition to proverbs. First, people are often confused with their scope, form and contents. What kind of language expression really belongs to proverbs? By looking up Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese dictionary , it can be regarded as “a well-known phrase or sentence that gives advice or says something that is generally true”, for example “waste not, want not”.
2. Literature Review
Proverb is one of important aspects that influence the effects in college English learning. If we want to translate an article or a paragraph well ,we must learn some special sentences, especially proverbs because we can see and say them from time to time.. Studying the differences and similarities between English and western culture will help us improve the understanding, translation and the ability to use English proverbs.If you want to be a good English learner,You must learn special sentences very well.
Chinese scholar, like Zhou Shuping finds that different countries proverbs reflect different culture in the library. She published an article: A comparative analysis of English and Chinese proverbs origin in Journal of Nanping Teachers college,She thought English proverbs have some associate with history. A proverb like “All roads lead to Rome”(条条大路通罗马),This proverb comes from history when Rome rule in Europe, built roads extending in all directions,after then,people use this proverb metaphor use different methods and means can reach the same destination, Chinese scholars, like Chen Min, In her book Differences between Chinese and western culture Her studies also have confirmed that among English majors, we have to great understanding proverbs; we can translate foreign language well.So, we can obviously find proverbs are essential between western and Chinese learning.来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn
3. Analysis of the Cultural Differences on Proverb Translation
3.1 Geographical Environment and Climate
The formation of the culture is closely related to the natural geographical environment,there are a plenty of words concerned with the characteristics of geographical environment,The influence of the specific geographical has produced particular culture and the ways of proverbs expression were created by particular culture,There have great differences in ecological geographical environment and climate between China and English that we can see these from proverbs,In college English study. The location of UK is by the sea, so that there have a great number of proverbs most closely associated with water and sea.Such as: “spend money like water(花钱如流水）”,“many drops of water will sink the ship（滴水穿石）”, “being on the sea, sail; being on the land, settle(随遇而安)”, “Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass(生活没有目的就像航海没有罗盘）”,“a smooth sea never made a skillful mariner(平静的湖面孕育不出优秀的水手）”，“all at sea(不知所措）”，“to keep one’s head above water(奋力图存）”and other related navigation proverbs.
However, China is a land of country and people’s life depend on land which lead to a large amount of proverbs are linked with land or the things on the land.For example: 挥金如土,流得青山在，不愁没柴烧。树倒猢狲散。In British history, people usually make a living by fishing, so there are many proverbs that metaphor is sea and fishing；While China is an ancient agricultural country, the people plow farm for a living, but the sea and fishing as metaphors of proverbs really few .on the other hand ,Proverbs can reflect a country’s climate, such as “an English summer, there hot days and a thunderstorm”.we can understand the characteristics of the British summer weather, three days hot, a heavy rain; at the same “One early winter, three quarter is good, also can reflect the characteristics of China’s four seasons: If the winter comes earlier this year, the other seasons will more nice. From the above proverbs, we can be found that different geographical environment and climate conditions in the two countries.