Chapter Four Characteristics of Idioms Translation in Fortress Besiege    16
4.1 Accuracy    16
4.2 Conciseness    17
4.3 Readability    17
Chapter Five Conclusion    19
5.1 Major Findings    19
5.2 Limitations    20
References    22
Characteristics of Idioms Translation in Fortress Besieged
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background Information
It’s inevitable that globalization brings cultural exchange. Literature is an important part of culture and it is greatly influenced by culture. To some extent, literature can’t be separated from culture. As a crucial part of literature, idioms show exactly what the author wants to express in an implicit, humorous and vivid way. Sometimes one can hardly know their meanings without any cultural background information. In this circumstance, how to translate the background information becomes a considerable issue. English readers may have a better understanding towards the work and even become interested in Chinese culture if the idioms are well translated. Whereas inappropriate translation may have a negative effect on foreigners in viewing Chinese idioms or even Chinese culture. What’s worse, that may even cause cultural conflicts and misunderstandings.
In fact, idiom in English is not the exact equivalence of  “成语” . The former means a group of words whose meaning differs from the meanings of the inpidual words. And the latter specifically refers to the combination of four words which has certain meanings. Since there is no other more appropriate word to name “成语”, we regard idiom equal to “成语” in this paper.
This article aims to find out the translation strategies in idiom translation and to explore their characteristics in Fortress Besieged. Two strategies are used in idiom translation, foreignization and domestication. With the guidance of these strategies, other skills are employed in translation, like word-to-word translation, methods of adding and omitting and conversion.
1.2 The Significance
This thesis concentrates on characteristics of idiom translation in Fortress Besieged. The value and importance can be seen in the following three aspects.
Firstly, idioms in Fortress Besieged are pided into several groups. Detailed analysis is given according to different groups. Foreignization and domestication, dynamic equivalence and translation aesthetics serve as references in this process. In this way, the characteristics of idiom translation in Fortress Besieged can be found clearly. It’s helpful to learn certain routines in idiom translation of certain groups.
Secondly, this thesis helps examine different strategies and skills used in idiom translation. It’s known that idioms have connotations. The translators should pay attention to the cultural background of both target language and source text.
Thirdly, as the version has gained much popularity, it must have reference value for the works after. Through this study, useful experience will be analyzed which may offer references to the following translations.
1.3 The Overall Structure
The whole thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction. It clarifies why such a study should be made and what can be learned from it. What’s more, the overall structure will be given in this chapter. In chapter two, information about this book Wei-ch’eng and its English version Fortress Besieged will be given. Related theories will also be showed in this chapter like translation aesthetics and dynamic equivalence as they play an important role in translation. In chapter three, idioms will be pided into several groups and translation strategies and skills will be explored in each group. The two strategies are foreignization and domestication. This step of analysis not only shows a clear image of how those idioms are interpreted, but also does some help to find characteristics in translation. In chapter four, the characteristics of idiom translation in Fortress Besieged will be explored. Chapter five is a conclusion part. In this part, major findings and limitations of the thesis are demonstrated. 《围城》成语英文翻译特点(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_21126.html