This paper aims to make a specific analysis on the formation background and characteristics of English animal idioms, and finally explore the effective translation strategies for English-to-Chinese translation。 This study will be helpful, in the process of translation, to achieve both faithful English and Chinese readers’ deep understanding of the original meaning。 And the Chinese translation of English animal idioms can better convey the famous translation principle of “faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance”。 In this article, there are five parts。 Part one is introduction, which introduces the research background, the significance, and the main framework of this paper。 Part two tries to illustrate the formation background of English animal idioms。 Part three analyzes the characteristics of English animal idioms and lists some certain examples。 Part four explores some effective translation strategies in order to translation English animal idioms into Chinese naturally and appropriately。 Part five comes to the conclusion。

II。 The Formation of English Animal Idioms

   There are a lot of animal idioms in English。 The formation of these idioms are closely related to the historical background, the natural and social environment, the faith and customs of English-speaking countries。

2。1 Historical Background

Different nation has different historical background, and the idiom was one of the historical and cultural products as human cultural products。 Thus we cannot translate idioms literally word by word, and we should translate them flexibly on the basis of historical background。 There are many tunnel translations in English , for example, “to eat crow” its literal meaning is “吃下乌鸦”, but as we all know, crow meat is tasted bad, so it is a difficult thing。 This idiom comes from the Anglo American war。 One day, an English officer encountered an American hunter who was shooting a crow in defense, so he confiscated the gun with belongs to the hunter and said that only if the hunter ate the crow, he would get the gun back, then the hunter did as the officer said。 When he got the gun back, he threatened the officer with a gun to eat the crow, or he would kill him。 Later, “to eat crow” was used to indicate a person got humiliated。

2。2 Environment 

There is a close relationship between the formation of a language and its environment。 For instance, Britain belongs to the island from the geographical position, surrounded by the sea, so their daily life is close to the fisheries。 Thus “Fish” has rich meaning in English, for example:

a。 A big fish in a little pond。 (a person who has an important influence on a small scale)

    b。 Fish begins to stink at the head。 (it is not the behavior of the elder, the younger generation will follow do bad things。)

    c。 Fish in troubled water。 (people can get unexpected benefits)

Europe is the birthplace of English。 Influenced by climate and environment, fishing and hunting are the two main means for a living, so the dog has an important position in people’s life。 Dog can not only help them hunt but also accompany them, so there are many English idioms about dogs。                                                 

   E g: a。 A dumb dog (a silent person)

 b。 Lucky dog (a person with lucky)

       c。Give a dog a bad name and hung him。 (it is difficult to change once a person is notorious) 

       d。Love me, love my dog。 (if you love someone, you love everything what is relevant to person)   

2。3 Faith

   Different nation has different faith under different background。 For a long time, English people have regarded Christianity as their religion and believe that everything in the world is arranged according to the will of god。 Meanwhile, people are deeply influenced by Bible, so many English idioms derive from Bible。