Acknowledgements
My deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor Professor Zhao. It is my honor to be his student. He has devoted his precious time to my paper and given me generous help to revise my thesis time and again. He is amiable, patient and serious, which I appreciate a lot. Without his senior insight on the subject, I would not have made such an academic success.
In addition, I would like to thank all my teachers in our school for their contributions to education. Still, I would like to thank all my friends in that they have shown their concern for me and assist me in completing the investigation. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their ever-lasting support, understanding and love.
Abstract
In the long course of the development of human history, animals usually keep a close relation with human beings and influence human existence and development deeply. The close relation results in human complex feelings of fondness, sympathy or hatred. Also, people often use animals to express their feelings. So many words about animals come into human languages. There are a lot of vocabularies with relation to animals in both English and Chinese culture. Words of the language reflect differences of cultural development. Because of the influence of cultural components in history, custom, pricing view, religion, and belief and so on, the two languages, Chinese and English, give their own connotations to animal words. This article is to compare the cultural similarities and differences in terms of animal words’ cultural backgrounds and their fundaments, and cultural connotations of animal words in English and Chinese. It also analyzes how to translate animal words between English and Chinese to help people do well in the cross-cultural communication smoothly and properly.
Key Words: animal words; culture; translation; connotations; figurative meaning
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1. Close Relationships between Animals and Human Beings 2
1.1 Influence of Animal Words in both Chinese and English Culture 2
1.2 Culture is Also Historical Phenomenon 2
1.3 English and Chinese are Rich in Animal Words 2
2. Same Animal Words as Association Vehicles 4
2.1 Animal Association Vehicles and Similar Figurative Meanings 4
2.2 Animal Association Vehicles and Different Figurative Meanings 5
2.3 Teaching Method with Mother Tongue 8
2.4 Semantic Gaps 9
3. Influences of Figurative Meanings of Animal Words on Intercultural Communication 12
4. Translation of Animal Metaphors 13
4.1 Importance of Translation 13
4.2 Methods of Translation 13
5. Conclusion 17
Bibliography 18
