On Literal Translation of English Idioms

Abstract

There are six translation tactics in translating English idioms into Chinese: literal translation, compensatory translation, free translation, explanational translation, borrowing, integrated approach. Each tactics should be reasonably employed in the process of translating, so as to keep the flavor of the original English idioms as well as to cater for the Chinese readers. In this paper, one of the tactics: literal translation will be discussed, which is the most commonly used tactics in translating English idioms.