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s or character”. In Greek epic, his mother took Achilles upside down into the Styx when he was a child. So he was arms-proof except his heel because it was held in his mother’s hand. Therefore in Troy war, he died for Paris shot a poisoned arrow into his heel. (2) Other examples, “Hercules’s choice” means “the reward of toil in reference to pleasure”, “the Herculian efforts” (九牛二虎之力)，and “the pillars of Hercules” (天涯海角). It is said that Hercules was one of the most famous heroes in Greek mythologies. He killed two snakes when he was a baby, and was known as a man of muscle. He refused the Pleasure Goddess’s allure, went through innumerable hardships and in the end, he won the eternal life. Idioms have been called the crystallization of language. An appropriate use of them in our speech and writing will add to the strength and vividness of idioms. Perhaps some people are quite familiar with “to cut the Gordian knot” and “A Pandora’s box” such allusions not only make the language richer, but also make communication much more vivider and easier. However, in daily communication, people usually don’t know why “Hobson’s choice” means no choice at all (别无选择); “pile Pelion on Ossa” means extremely difficult (难上加难), or “Mercury fig” means the first fruit (最初的果实). If the source of an idiom is known, it is easier to figure out its meaning. It is difficult to translate idioms faithfully because idioms reflect the wisdom of ordinary people that is all-inclusive. The knowledge of the sources of these idioms will help us comprehend what they really mean. 2.2 The difficulties in the translation of English idioms In the 1950’s the American writer Hockett put forward the concept “random holes in patterns”文化空缺which means “the accidental gap” in conservation when contrasting two languages. [4] And Nida had said: There must be information drains in any course of conservation and the absolute equity is never possible. The goal of translation is conservation in maximum to enable the foreign readers understand the source culture. There are two reasons as follows. Firstly, the formation and solidification of English idioms are in relationship with the different histories, environments and cultural backgrounds. It contains certain national culture characteristics and information. Furthermore, Chinese and English live in different regions, so their living environments and experiences are different, especially in their ways to observe the world, understand the world and transform the world. Their culture atmospheres are unique. Secondly, Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family while English belongs to the Indo-European language family, so their language structures are different. All mentioned above enrich the idioms and make them more complex. 2.3 The development of translation principle The principle of translation between English and Chinese has developed for a long time. About translation standards, translators from home and abroad put forward different opinions. From Yan Fu’s “faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance” to Mr. Zhang Peiji’s “faithfulness and smoothness”; from Fu Lei’s “approximation in spirit” to the American famous translation theoretician Eugene Nida’s “functional equivalence” or “dynamic equivalence”, we may see that these positions affect each other, supplement each other although their emphases are different. The focus is to translate the source text faithfully, meanwhile, to keep the original taste as much as possible.