Introduction
The Chinese and English numerals in idioms are items that are worthy of being studied. Wang Rongpei, the president of Dalian institute of foreign language, has conducted a creative study on the comparison between Chinese and English. He once wrote “A contrastive Study of Chinese and English Numeral Compact Expressions”, in which he not only induced their own five types respectively from many Chinese and English numeral compact expressions, but also explain their differences and similarities by comparison with the help of some simple formulates (Wang Rongpei, 2001:21-28). At last, he gives us suggestions on the mutual translation of Chinese and English numeral compact expressions.
Many other scholars also have put English and Chinese numerals together for a study. Chen Wenbo once wrote English and Chinese idioms, in which he firstly discusses their word-formation, and then deals with the translation of English and Chinese idioms. Jia Dejian also wrote The Translation and A Contrastive Study of English and Chinese, in which he defines the numeral idiom and talks about the mutual translation of English and Chinese numeral idioms. According to the above, we can see that English and Chinese numerals contain special function and cultural factors. Therefore, the comparison between English and Chinese numerals not only has theoretical significance, but also has practical implication. However, most of the articles about the comparison between English and Chinese numerals are written from the whole point, not from the specific point. Based on that, I am writing this paper to study the differences and likeness between English and Chinese numerals in concrete context, that is, in idioms. The main purpose of writing this paper is to predict and explain the sources of difficulties in translating numeral idioms and compound words.
This paper mainly consists of three parts. The first part discusses the differences between Chinese and English numerals in the ability of forming words and the frequency of use. In this part, I consult many reference books, such as The Dictionary of Chinese Idioms, The temporary Chinese Dictionary and Longmen temporary Chinese and English Dictionary, to study their ability of forming words and the frequency of use. In the end of this part, I conclude that the Chinese numerals’ ability of forming words is stronger than that of English numerals. The second part is mainly concerned about the comparison of English and Chinese numerals in pragmatic meaning of fixed form. This part is divided into four short parts. The third part mainly deals with the tactics of translating the numeral idioms. In this part, I first cite different tactics of translating the numeral idioms and two wrong trends in translating idioms. And then I discuss some strategies such as adaptation, literal translation plus explanation and transfer.
