Idiom is an important part of the language and culture of a society. The y are often hard to understand and hard to use correctly. They are almost impossible to understand from the meanings of the individual words. And with English idioms, even the same words may have different meanings as in the examples blow:
So, first of all, a student should learn not to look down on such idioms just because they’re made up of such simple and easy words. He should look out for identical phrases with different meanings and look them up in a dictionary if he’s not sure. He’s bound to run into a lot of trouble when he first uses them, but he shouldn’t give in, much less give up. If he keeps trying and keeps at it long enough he’ll make out and things will turn out well in the end.
Though the passage is short, it includes ten idioms: look down, made up of, look out for, look up, run into, give in, give up, keep at it, make out and turn out (well).
It is thus clear that difficulties in reading cannot be completely solved by one’s language knowledge, because works of a people cannot be separated from the people’s cultural tradition. So, in teaching reading, a teacher should explain grammatical difficulties as well as expound cultural background.
Similarly, writing and translating cannot be separated from cultural background knowledge.
In translation, even the very simple expressions cannot be dealt with without any consideration of specific context and customs.
We shall take the word “dog” as an example.
To English-speaking people, the dog does not carry the same associations as it does to Chinese. The dog is considered to be derogatory, for example, “癩皮狗” “丧家之犬” “走狗” “狗急跳墙” “狗头军师” etc. are often used to describe disgusting people. But dog in English, especially in proverbs, is a commendatory term. If we translate dog into Chinese “狗” without exception, we may make jokes. For example:
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and的理解与表达