【正文】 keeping dogs, the English people have a very high opinion of it, and the Chinese people often associate it with bad things.(36) Love me, love my dog.(37) Every dog has its day.(38)狗仗人勢:Like a dog threatening people on the strength of its master39。s power.(39)狗嘴里吐不出象牙:A dog39。s mouth emits no ivory. The above idioms show their origins and national coloring. As idioms e from the lives of ordinary people, they unavoidably carry cultural characteristics closely connected with a nation39。s history, economy, geography, religion, customs and mentality. These constitute the next characteristic of idioms, namely cultural loading.. The cultural loadingCulture, in this paper, does not mean one39。s ability to read and write. It means, as the authoritative anthropologist Edward wrote: “Culture or civilization taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that plex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society(1871)轉引”[6] p14. People agree that culture has four basic characteristics: 1) It is learnt from society, not got from Heredity.2) It is shared by all of a society, not just a few individuals. 3) It has the feature of symbol, and language is the most important symbolic system. 4) It is an integrated unit and each of them is related to others.In human history, the greatest impacts on national culture include the change of the earth39。s surface, the migration of the races, and the conquests, assimilations and wars between groups. To analyze the cultural peculiarities of idioms, it is necessary to briefly review the major events that influence the origination and development of the two languages. 5. Translation methods of idioms Translation is different from mon munications. It involves a lot of factors, such as linguistic, cultural, psychological and art, etc. Therefore, it doesn39。t exclude the general rules, especially to the translators. After they finished the relevant inference and decision and began to do the code transformation, certain translation rules will avoid them from being blind. The important thing for them to pay much attention is to use the rules flexibly according to relevance principle. Techniques in translation vary, and we should use specific methods in treating specific problems, in another word, to find the optimal relevance. In the following sections, we shall discuss methods that can be used in dealing with specific idioms in translating from Chinese to English and vice versa, and try to analyze them in the light of relevance theory. Here are four main approaches. The literal approach The Chinese and English languages are very different in their form and ways of expression on the one hand, and are similar in many respects on the other. To preserve the national character and the special coloring in the original work, and also accelerate the cultural exchange of the two nations, the first approach in idiom translation is the literal approach. It is used under the condition that the wording does not violate the rule of the target language. Take the Chinese idiom “雨后春筍”for example, we can borrow the English idiom like mushroom but the literal approach can also be used (if proper in the context) to translate it as like bamboo shoots after a spring shower. Another example is “貓哭老鼠”.Though we can borrow the English idiom to shed crocodile tears, we can also, and with better results, translate it as the cat weeps over the mouse39。s death. Here, we introduce the image of bamboo to the English people, who will easily understand it, since pandas are being popular in the world now, and their food bamboo should also be well known to the people in the world. And the animals cat and “mouse, are also well known worldwide. The only problem is that the Englishspeaking people do not have exactly the same idiom. If we translate them in the literal way, we will not only translate the idiom39。s meaning but also introduce something interesting to the English people and help the two people understand each other. As a matter of fact, the exchange of foreign expressions between nations has never stopped. The translation of literary works since the May 4th movement, has introduced many new and modern words and ideas along with the foreign original works to the Chinese language [7] p4. And we now use many idioms originally ing from foreign languages, especially western languages like English.Hundreds of English idioms e from The Bible, which were not born in the native language, but have e from Hebrew and Greek. The English people do not feel unfortable in using them, but feel proud that they possess the vivid and rich language in the world. The Chinese idiom“丟臉”(lose face) has not only bee a set phrase in English, but also been literally translated into many other languages in the world. For years the idiom“紙老虎”is very popular after it was translated as paper tiger. Modern Chinese, too, has absorbed many foreign idioms, such as sour grape, translated as“酸葡萄”.And the two English idioms“ like the apple of the eye” and “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”, have been literally translated as“像眼珠子一樣” and“以眼還眼,以牙還牙”. Literal translation plus annotation As we mentioned in the prior section, both English and Chinese have a lot of idioms with allusions, which contain certain historical stories. All of them are culturally loaded. Doing this kind of work, the translator shoulders two important tasks: 1) to convey the message to the foreign readers。 2) to convey the cultural and historical information to them as well. Translating them in a literal way will sometimes do, but not always, for many idioms can be understood only when the historical background or their origin is pletely explained. And, some idioms have a close relationship, more or less, with a nation39。s (or a region39。s) customs and the translation of it is not easily done by a few words. T