ng tail and can breathe out fire. To the westerners, the dragon is often a symbol of evil, a fierce monster that destroys and therefore must be destroyed. It originates from the Bible story, in which the Satan, who fought against the God, was called the great dragon. Dragon in the western world is a cruel and vicious creature. Several stories of saints or heroes deal with struggles against the monsters, which in most cases are slain in the end. “There is an example from the Collins Conbuild English Language Dictionary, ‘ If you call a woman a dragon, you mean that she is fierce and unpleasant.(如果把一个女人叫做dragon,是说她很凶,很令人讨厌。)’”[12]
In Chinese people’s eye, “bat” means “auspicious” for the letters “蝠”and “福”are pun in sounds. To English people, they are very frightened because the bat is annoying and ugly and connected with evil and darkness. Therefore, in English, expressions with “bat” have derogatory meanings, e.g.: “as blind as a bat (像蝙蝠一样瞎)”; “crazy as a bat (像蝙蝠一样疯)”.
The Chinese people give p
Reference to the petrel. Petrel is a bird that flies over the vast ocean with courage to brave the storms. So petrel is associated in China with braving hardships and ordeal and courage. The petrel emerges in many juvenile diaries, youthful fictional writings, and appears as the trademark for a number of products. However, the English people do not like petrel, because they think petrel is the symbol for disasters, for when a storm is arising, petrel will flush, flying like lightening between black clouds and the sea. So the petrel is considered as an omen of disaster in English. For example, “storm petrel” means a person regarded as a herald of trouble, strife or violence or someone who delights in such trouble, etc.
2.2.2 Different vehicles with same reflected meaning
“Reflected meaning arises in words of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense.”[13] “It reveals the fact that English and Chinese speakers may view the same thing in different ways”.[14] This will be illustrated by the following examples.
To Chinese people, tiger is a big and powerful carnivorous animal that is called the king of the beasts, so tiger is the symbol of the bravery, courage, vigor, decisiveness and power, e.g.: “虎虎有生气, 虎头虎脑,虎将”etc. In contrast, English people consider that the king of the beasts is lion, and lion is the symbol of the courage, ferocity, dignity of dominance, as can be seen from such expressions: “regal as a lion(狮子般庄严)”; “majestic as a lion(像狮子一样雄伟)”. The lion in English culture enjoys high prestige. “Richard I, king of England in the latter part of the 12th century, was known as lion-hearted for his courage and chivalry.”[15] There is an expression “to be brave as a lion”. When someone is called a lion, he is referred to a celebrity or a famous person. Therefore, there is another idiom like “a lion-hunter”, which means “hosts or hostesses who seek out celebrities with whom to impress their guests.” It’s no wonder, then, that the English have chosen the lion as their symbol as in the expression “the British lion”. The word has been used to form many English idioms with such connotations. For instance, “lion's share” means the largest part; “the lion's den” means a place of great danger; “to meet a lion in one's path” means to encounter a daunting obstacle etc.
To mean “boast”, in Chinese, people would say “吹牛”.But in English, people would like to use “talk horse”. In western countries, h
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