‘Chinese idiomatic phrases’, including idioms, proverbs, slang words, and two-part allegorical sayings are fixed collocations that are rather expressive in ordinary usage. Because of their rich and cultural implications, however, foreigners often ...
‘Chinese idiomatic phrases’, including idioms, proverbs, slang words, and two-part allegorical sayings are fixed collocations that are rather expressive in ordinary usage. Because of their rich and cultural implications, however, foreigners often have trouble to grasp their meanings and their usage in the right place at the right time and even advanced Chinese speaking foreigners find it difficult to make full use of them due to their certain degree of difficulty above the average level.
The original copy of ≪外國人說熟語; Chinese idiomatic phrases for foreign students ≫ is a book in which 557 most commonly used and accordingly basic ‘must-know’ expressions for foreigners are contained throughout 194 pages and consists of 91 idioms, 206 proverbs, 211 slang words and 49 two-part allegorical sayings.
Entering into translation of this book, the first draft was completed by the intention of providing every single Chinese idiomatic phrase and it reached up to 250 pages on account of the tendency to end up with the increased quantity of pages when translating Chinese into Korean and therefore to intensify concentration, 101 pages were selected to come to completion among those considering the frequency in the native Chinese speakers’ usage and the importance in the official Chinese language test, HSK which is equivalent to TOEFL in western countries.
While translating idioms, it was deeply realized that Chinese idioms reflect long historical China that has been through constant social revolutions and changes just as it and languages are inseparably related to society. For example, ‘半边天(/banbiantian/ the meaning of half the sky that refers to a woman or someone’s wife) exhibits Chinese social phenomenon that stresses on the equality between men and women since being communized, and 炒鱿鱼(/chaoyouyu/ the meaning of dismissal) was an euphemistic expression for the meaning of firing somebody and that originated form the way a cuttlefish curled when it’s stir-fried was just like the way it looked when somebody packed to leave for somewhere long ago. The unique language habit of Chinese people exquisitely coining new words through social revolutions or ways of living in real life is noticed by the examples above. Furthermore, 马后炮(/mahoupao/ the meaning of ‘cannon’ after 'horse' in the game of Chinese chess is likened to belated idea) and 跑龙套(/paolongtao/ the meaning of attendants or pawns in traditional drama refers to an ‘extra’) are derived from the Chinese culture ascertaining that traditional customs do influence on the formation of idioms.
Similarly, not a small number of proverbs such as ‘车水马龙(‘cheshuimalong/ the meaning of a lot of vehicles one after another as if flowing water and a lot of horses from end to end as if a dragon therefore is used to describe being crowded with many vehicles on roads coming and going incessantly and noisily) was formed by expressing social phenomena or aspects figuratively. Secondly, a number of proverbs such as 画蛇添足(/huashetianzu/ the meaning of adding feet when drawing a snake refers to attaching superfluity)and 滥竽充数(/lanyuchongshu/ the meaning of those who have no ability and just being there making up the number in a group of brains) are based on literary quotations from ancient times and thus interesting and diverse ways of interpretations of the implications were available by letting readers know the historical backgrounds and facts of the literary quotations. Thirdly, among proverbs with certain numbers in them, a large number of those such as 不三不四(/busanbusi/ the meaning of being immodest) and 成千上萬(/chengqianshangwan/ the meaning of reaching the number of thousands and ten thousands) are rarely used in Korea while there are some that are exactly the same as in Korea like 东奔西走(/dongbenxipao/), 教学相长(/'jiaoxuexiangzhang/), or 朝三暮四(/zhaosanmusi/). In addition, like 目中無人(‘muzhongwuren/) or 脍炙人口(/kuaizhirenkou/), there are some proverbs with exactly the same meanings as ours but either in different orders or with one or two different characters. Coming to know that proverbs in Korea and those in China are almost alike but there still exists some differences through the cases above, I’d like to make an in-dept study on differences between proverbs used in Korea and those used in China next time making progress with the existing research.
Unlike other books, a lot of foreign names are noticed in the book and those names seemed to be the pupils’ of those who were engaged in Chinese language education for foreigners as compiler in China. Besides Japanese names (Thanks to a native speaker’s help, transcribing Japanese pronunciation of Japanese names as the way they were could be completed.) which are easily found in Korea, difficulties of asking native speakers or referring to famous Chinese portal web sites, ‘baidu’ and ‘cn.yahoo’, have always been together for the reason that names, even proper nouns in Europe, American and Africa were transliterated in Chinese language by Chinese people, but it was a fulfilling works searching new names.
It was inevitable to face a dilemma between word-for-word translation and free translation throughout the entire work. Both literal translation and free translation were in need even for one word varying in the context. Such a process is probably necessary to come closer to the exact Chinese nuances, but when translation is too free, that may result in biased personal views and when translation is too stiff, that ends up losing ambiance of the situation. For this reason, the matter of selecting one of the alternatives became worse and worse. It was thoroughly convinced that translation can’t be accomplished only with knowledge of the language. To a researcher in the Chinese-related field, studying Korean language-the mother tongue, our culture, and the variety of general knowledge is considered necessary to be a great educator or an authority of Chinese as well as understanding Chinese classics and studying wide range of Chinese culture, current Chinese politics, economy, society and etc. with continuous interests in various topics.
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