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Traditional culture has developed into today’s human civilization. It is impossible to build the Tower of Babel, but the best way to communicate is building a bridge to connect two cultures of east and west. Under the trend of globalization, 21st century is bi-culture age, which needs to hold other cultures as well as native culture. I think the translation of Chinese four-character phrases is an important part to contribute to the cross-culture.
This paper will conduct a comparative analysis of idioms of China and English. From different aspects, it can learn Chinese and Western culture similarities and differences, and have a discussion on the translation of Chinese four-character phrases under the circumstance of cross-culture.
II. Cross-cultural Communication and Chinese Four-character Phrases
Chinese four-character phrase is an important part of Chinese language. With the development of globalization, Chinese is popular over the world, so the translation of Chinese four-character phrase must comply with the different cultures.
2.1 Definition of Cross-culture
There are many definitions of culture, but none of them are the same. Sapir says,” Culture may be defined as what a society does and thinks”(180). Benedict says in her book Patterns of Culture, “What really binds men together is their culture-the ideas and the standards they have in common”(16). Now, most scholars agree on the definition that: Culture is a system of shared benefits, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.
Based on the definitions mentioned above, Samovar, a leading figure in cross-cultural communication, proposes his own definition that is perhaps more suited to the communication between cultures: We define culture as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through inpidual and group striving(36).
2.2 Chinese Four-character Phrases
2.2.1 Definition of Chinese Four-character Phrases
Before we study the translation of Chinese Four-character Phrases, it’s important for us to have a clear understanding of Chinese four-character phrases, which we Chinese called “Chengyu”. According to Chinese Grammar and Rhetorical Dictionary, a Chinese four-character phrase is a set pattern which is composed of four Chinese characters. The Chinese four-character phrase is a fixed phrase or short sentence with concise form and a long period usage by people, which has its unique origin. In some cases, we can understand some four-character phrases without difficultly according to their literary meaning such as “三心二意” and “七嘴八舌”, however, there are more Chinese four-character phrases which we couldn’t master their real meaning if we don’t know their origins and some literary quotations, such as “买椟还珠” and “闻鸡起舞”.
2.2.2 Origins of Chinese Four-character Phrases
Chinese four-character phrases have been refined through a long period of time. They are so frequently employed in our conversations and literature works that they constitute the core and essence of our language. Chinese four-character phrases originated from various areas of human social life, including historical stories, legends, ancient poems and articles, oral language of common people, proverbs, the Buddhist scriptures and foreign fables from the anecdotes of the historical figures and the historical events taking place thousands of years ago.
We can take mythology and fable as an example. Chinese myths generated numerous idioms, such as “精卫填海”, which has a meaning that the mythical bird, called Jingwei, tries to fill up the ocean with pebbles, also”夸父逐日”,which means that Kuafu runs after the sun. There are also plenty of fables which animals and things are personified to give a meaning. Such as “黔驴技穷”, means the donkey has exhausted his tricks, and “自相矛盾”, shows a meaning of one’s own spear and shield to infer that one is inconsistent.