I．Introduction
English—Chinese translation is the communicative activity between English and Chinese. It means that using one language to express the theme of another language completely and exactly. On the surface view, language only has a function of communicative tool in this communicative activity. But once this communicative tool is used, a big amount of information for national culture is emerged at any time. Therefore, from some certain view of point, translation activity is the information for social culture. All in all, translation can’t live without culture.
English and Chinese stand for the western and eastern culture respectively. The difference of both sides is wide and complicated at the aspect of cultural tradition and background. The difference between Chinese and English on culture can be stated as follows:
II．General culture background difference
The psychology of Chinese people is influenced as long as two thousand years by the Confucianists thought, the culture of feudalism, which is ruled by imperial power, and the traditional philosophy thought. But there is a different circumstance and a cultural background in western countries. For example, “天”(Heaven) the word in Chinese and English, its meaning is the dominating of the universe things. But under the different cultural background, two nations have a different idea about it. In the feudalistic period of China, “天”(Heaven) is the symbol of the throne, that is to say, the throne is the incarnation of “天”(Heaven) or the agent of “天”(Heaven) in man’s world. So the throne also called “天子” in Chinese. In west, the rulers of feudalistic times also thought that “The throne should be given by divine”, and the bourgeois scholars also agreed “Heaven gives the throne”. But “divine” or “天”(Heaven) here, they were the Christian holy divine—“God”(上帝), which is very different from Chinese in meanings.
III. Differences in customs
Because the differences in customs, habits and ethnic psychology formed after a long period, Chinese people’s understandings or favors are different from those in western country. Take tea as an example, “black tea” in English and “红茶” in Chinese are the same tea. In English, it is called “black tea” because of its color while it is called “红茶” because of the tea water’s color. This is because in Chinese and English, things are named differently because of the different angle of observation the two people hold.
IV. Different appellation
Chinese people usually use some words such as “getting fat” “running to fat”. They use them for praising other people’s health. But in English and America, if a person is getting fat his physique will be considered to descend. So “getting fat” is used the words of praise, which is not proper there. If you say “You’ve lost a lot of weight”, and after hearing that, they will be very happy; in the opposite, we flatter English people in Chinese way: “You have put on quite a lot,” and it won’t have the effect of praising. They will be unhappy and they think that you are not polite.
V.Difference of the social history
As we know that almost all the idioms both in English and Chinese have their own origins. For example, the English idiom: “burn one’s boat” comes from the ancient Romans. The king Kathas led his troops crossing the river by ship, when they disembarked, the king commanded them to burn the ships in order to strengthen their decision to fight until die. China also has the similar idioms “破釜沉舟”which comes from different history background, but those two idioms share the same meaning of cutting off the retreating road to fight to the end of one’s life.
VI. Different idioms
Some other idioms with ethnic or local characteristics should be explained so that they’re easily understood. For example, it’s not completely correct to translate “To carry coals to Newcastle” to “运煤到纽卡索，多此一举” for the readers don’t understand the deep meaning of “Newcastle” even if you add the phrase “多此一举”, so we’d better tell the readers that the Newcastle is a coal center.
VII. Different riddles
Some riddles that are created according to the distinguishing feature of forming a word or meaning of words are also difficult to be translated. Even some can’t be translated. For example, Chinese riddle: “向西一直走 (walk along towards west)——猜一字”, this is based on the Chinese character’s structure, “向” here is not only a central word, but also is considered as a preposition that puzzles people. “西一直” means “一向” the word’s left strokes of a Chinese character——in Chinese that is to say, “向”字左边的笔画一竖，“支” means “remove”, that is to dismantle. So the answer to the riddle is “句”. For the riddle, it can’t be found the answer in English. Under similar circumstances, some English riddles can’t be given the answer after they are translated into Chinese. For example what kind of boat is like a knife? —A cutter. English “cutter” the word has a double meaning: speedboat and a tool of cutting. There is no corresponding word in Chinese, either. So we have to find the answer in English.
VIII.Conclusion
In a word, translation is an language activity that uses a language to express another content exactly and completely. But because of the cultural difference, it’s not easy to translate a language into another language that is completely different. It is more difficult to translate sentences with thick national color and relating to its national culture, so there is usually an unavoidable phenomenon of taking one thing into consideration to the neglect of the other, therefore, this requires us to get the knowledge of different countries’ culture as well as its background and development as much as possible. Thereby, there will be a solid, dependable and unblocked bridge between two languages and the cultures.
Bibliography
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