Comp Stud Trans EN 5

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Chapter 5: A Comparative Study of Proverb Translation from the Perspective of Domestication and Foreignization

从异化和归化中看中西方谚语翻译的差异

马新，Ma Xin, Hunan Normal University, China

Abstract

As a continuation of the dispute between literal translation and free translation, the conflict between domestication and foreignization has risen from the linguistic level to the level of literature, culture and thought. It further analyzes the cultural differences between the two languages in the translation process. Among various elements in languages, proverbs have been circulated in the Chinese and Western people’s lives for a long time due to their pronounced national characteristics and distinctive cultural connotations. In proverb translation, disparate understandings about source languages and target languages will reflect the complex historical origins of strong culture, weak culture, post-colonial culture, etc. Therefore, this paper reviews the historical development about domestication and foreignization debates between China and the West firstly. It then goes further to compare the differences about proverb translation in terms of ecological culture, language culture, religious culture, material culture and social culture based on Nida's classification of culture. By doing so, we try to summarize some different national consciousness behind them and get better understanding about the parallels and distinctions among them.

Key Words

domestication; foreignization; proverb translation; cultural classification

中文摘要

作为直译和意译之争的延续，归化和异化之争由语言层面，上升到文学、文化、思想的高度，进一步剖析了翻译过程中两种语言背后的文化差异。谚语长期流传于中西方民间，带有浓厚的民族色彩和鲜明的文化内涵。在谚语翻译中，对于保留其本身异域性或是倾向于译入语读者问题的认识，体现着强势文化、弱势文化、后殖民主义文化等复杂的历史渊源。由此，本文基于中西方归化与异化论战史料，结合Nida的文化五类分理论，从生态文化、语言文化、宗教文化、物质文化和社会文化来比较中西方谚语翻译的差异，在源语文化和译语文化的不同处理上，揭示其背后所蕴含的不同民族意识。从而在比较中体味文化的差异。

关键词

归化；异化；谚语翻译；文化分类

Introduction

In China or western countries, there is a long history about the arguments between domestication and foreignization. By looking back to it, the earliest exploration of Chinese studies could be traced back to the dispute between “Text” and “Quality” in the Buddhist Sutra translation of Han Dynasty. Meanwhile, scholars like Cicero in ancient Rome also proposed the word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation. Although the debate has been around for a long time, the two terms was not put forward by American translation theorist L. Venuti until 1995 after the publication of The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. According to Venuti, domestication refers to “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bring the author back home”, while foreignization is an ethnodeviant pressure on those (cultural) values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad.” (Venuti 1995, 20) Generally speaking, the former emphasizes on the readers of target language in order to achieve communication that does not need great efforts, and the letter puts stress on the writer as well as the culture of source language to keep the original meaning the same even though it may cause some difficulties in understanding for readers. Different interpretations about this two items will reflect diverse national consciousness behind cultures.

Proverbs, as an essential part of language, is defined as “sayings, usually short, that express a general truth about life, give advice, make an observation, or present a teaching in a succinct and memorable way” in The Fact on File Dictionary of Proverbs (Martin H. Manser 2007, ix). When it comes to proverb translation, we should not only pay attention to it unique structure of sentence, but also notice the profound cultural foundation behind it as well as their functions like education in different proverbs. By choosing the two different approaches between domestication and foreignization to translate proverb, we also express our attitudes towards our culture and other nation’s culture. In fact, domestication has another implied meaning in the context of cultural injustice comparing to the other, that is “to tame an animal”. In the context of translation, it refers to the unequal status between “dominant culture” and “dominated culture”(Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997, 59). Then the question about how to achieve the balance between the two approaches in proverb translation should be taken more seriously in order to reduce cultural asymmetry in China and the West.

Therefore, this paper focuses on all kinds of proverbs in China and the West, classifies them into five categories based on Nida’s classification of culture (Nida 1945, 196) and analyzes the different translations on account of domestication and foreiginization so as to reveal the different national awareness behind them.

Theory Foundation

This part aims to introduce the relative literature review of this study, which provides a historical and theoretical views about the several distinctions among domestication and foreignization. Then we will go through the major arguments about them in Chinese and western countries. Finally, it’s about the translation study of proverbs that reveal the internal differences in languages.

Assimilation vs. Alienation and Domestication vs. Foreignization

There exists great similarities between this two pairs of terms——assimilation and domestication, alienation and foreignization. Through distinguishing the differences among them, we can discover so many cultural inequality between source language and target language.

First of all, it’s the distinction between assimilation and alienation that originated from sociology and philosophy. Assimilation explained in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online refers to the process of becoming an accepted part of a country or group. In the context among different cultures, the assimilation often echoes the process that different individuals or groups merge into the dominant culture in society and gradually lose most of their own cultural characteristics. Therefore, this kind of translation will pay more attention to the target language at the expense of losing source language’s culture characters. On the contrary, the theory of alienation originated in modern Western philosophy after the Renaissance on which related discussions can be found in social contract theory, Feuerbach and Marx's materialism, etc. Although scholars in different periods have given different interpretations, alienation generally means that two different things still maintain their own characteristics in the process of mutual interaction and mutual influence, alienation from each other, or even elimination. Liu Yanli & Yang Zijian (2002, 20-24) had analyzed its implication in translation and they believed that we should try to involve the original language and culture into the target language and culture during translation. As a result, how to find the balance between source language and target language’s culture is the key point between the study of assimilation and alienation.

Secondly, it’s about domestication and Foreignization that arise later than the distinction above. This two terms first put forward by Lawrence Venuti in his work The Translator’s Invisibility in 1995. In the book, he gained most inspiration from German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher who argued that “there are only two. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.” (Lefevere 1977, 74) Based on his work, Venuti named these two translation methods as domestication and foreignization. Ordinarily, domestication emphasizes on “the closest nature equivalence to the source-language message” in Nida’s words (Nida 1964, 159) and freignization focuses on the cultural values of source language even at the cost of losing some readers from the target language.

It’s easy to see the similarities between the two pairs of terms, but the reason why Venuti still proposes domestication and foreignization when the previous pair of terms is present is to distinguish the asymmetry of different cultures behind those translation methods. In summary, to find out the language violence and internally cultural inequality is primary mission for translators whether they choose the way of domestication or the other.

The Main Arguments about Domestication and Foreignization in Chinese and Western Translation History

Looking back in history, the debate about domestication and foreignization has never stopped in China or in the West. Then, this paper recalls the major disputes in history to reach a further understanding about the differences between Chinese and Western translation thoughts and cultures.

For one, it can be briefly summarized as three large-scale controversies in Chinese history about these two translation ways(Wang Dongfeng 2002, 24), such as the dispute between “text” and “quality” in Buddhist scriptures, arguments between literal translation and free translation from 1920s to 1930s as well as the continuation between domestication and foreignization after 1980s. These two ways alternately play a leading role in the historical stage of Chinese translation, which shows diverse needs for translation in different stages. Sun Zhili (2002) reviewed the previous Chinese literary translation for more than a century and found that the keynote of translation from 1870s to the 1970s was domestication and foreignization had been stressed by the last 20 years of the 20th century in translation circles. He also pointed out that the translation of Chinese literature in the 21th century is still mainly based on foreignization and assisted by domestication if necessary. Now, we generally agree that translation is no a simply conversion among all kinds of languages, but it also involves the various national consciousnesses behind them. As a result, we should try our best to respect the form and author’s writing style of source language. More importantly, we should pay respect to the cultural characteristics of source language and avoid translation errors like “cultural dislocation”.

For another, there are countless discussions in the history of western translation studies as well and we will focus on three masters among them who are Nida, Even-Zohar and Venuti. We have already analyzed the disparate translation ideas between Nida and Venuti, and the formal could be seen as the representative of domestication and the latter foreignization on the contrary. Then, we come to the polysystem theory proposed by Israeli scholar Even-Zohar. (Even-Zohar 1978) He viewed the domestication and foreignization from a sociological perspective that are determined mainly by the status of a particular culture. To be more specific, the translator should choose the translation of foreignization when the literature of target language occupies a dominant position in the national literature, and vice versa. In this theory, we at least can see the two versions of cultures (strong culture and weak culture) and their statuses keep changing over time. In short, we should take the specific situations of different cultures into consideration no matter what methods we choose to translate the texts.

By the several disputes between foreignization and domestication that exist in Chinese and Western history, we can find that both examine the two methods in a very early stage and choose different methods in different historical periods. In terms of future research trends, we tend to more favor the translation idea of foreignization in consideration of cultural equivalence between the source language and the target language, supplementing by domestication if necessary.

The Translation Studies about Proverbs

Proverbs, as a modern scholar in paremiology Neal Norrick says, are characteristically used to form a complete utterance, make a complete conversational contrivution and/or to perform a speech act in a speech event, which differentiate them from non-sentential items like proverbial phrases, idioms, etc. (Neal Norrick 2015, 7) Those words have often been created and used from generation to generation that were full with wisdom and truth we found in our daily life. We can find traces of them in different periods of history, such as Lord John Russell’s words “One man’s wit, and all men’s wisdom”, William Shakespeare’s “Brevity is the soul of wit”, Alexander Pope’s “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”, etc. Even well-known individuals like Winston S. Churchill, John F. Kennedy and others have formulated concise and memorable statements that have become proverbial(Mieder 2009). Therefore, it has great value to do research on proverbs, which can guide us find out so many mysteries in languages.

So far, studies about proverbs collected in Introduction to paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Study (Hrisztova and Varga 2014) could be summarized in those aspects as follows: Outi Lauhakangas (categorization of proverbs), Peter Grzybek (semiotic and semantic aspects of the proverb), Roumyana Petrova (contrastive study of proverbs), etc. And this paper will be focus on the comparative and contrastive studies between China and Western proverbs.

On the one hand, there are a lot of commonalities between China and Western proverbs. Essentially, they all stem from the same metaphorical thinking of human beings (Kou Fuming 2007, 53). Even though China and the West have diverse living conditions, cultural backgrounds and so on, we all have the same physical experience or cognitive mechanism in some degree that are summarized into languages as several equivalent proverbs of different nations. For instance, a English proverb like “out of sight, out of mind” in western countries has the similar function and form with Chinese proverb of “眼不见，心不烦”. Both are close related with our bodies, then they convey almost the same feelings that we have about nettlesome things. Besides, we also have the similar feelings about a lot of images no matter what country we are in. Take the rat as an example, there is a proverb called “a rat crossing the street is chased by all” in British folklore, and we can also find a close correspondence between it and an ancient Chinese proverb named “老鼠过街人人喊打”. Rats are often regarded as hoodoos in China, Britain and other countries due to their act of stealing, so we will chase and try to kill them when we see them in the street. Hence, all those knowledge that we obtain from the interaction with the world are passed on to the next generation as a form of proverbs. In a word, there exists many analogous proverbs in China and the West as a result of the same body experience and feelings about some things, while we can not ignore the fact that the number of such proverbs are quite limited due to the influence of other factors as follows.

On the other hand, there are more differences existed in Chinese and Western proverbs. We do not create a proverb simply by stacking a set of words, while they are fundamentally inherited in our cultures and every single image in a proverb is actually a symbol reflected the same values in a community. According to Nida, we can distinguish the differently cultural backgrounds between China and the West into five aspects, and there are (1) ecology, (2) material culture, (3) social culture, (4) religious culture, and (5) linguistic culture. This paper will focus on the five angles to make comparative and contrastive studies among China and western countries under the guidance of domestication and foreignization methods of translation.

A Comparative Study from Five Cultural Aspects Based on Nida's Theory

In this chapter, comparative analysis is used to find the similarities and differences between Chinese and western proverbs in terms of five aspects. Then, it’s about the selection of dictionaries as the corpus for each proverb. So far, thousands of dictionaries of proverbs have been published in all kinds of languages. For example, James Obelkevich in Proverb and Social History (1987) had mentioned that more than 7,000 proverbs had already been collected in Sebastian Frank’s dictionary as early as 1541. Thereinto, all the proverbs analyzed in this paper are selected from the second edition of The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs edited by Martin H. Manser in 2007 as the corpus of western proverbs and the Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs edited by Wen Duanzheng in 2011 as the corpus of Chinese proverbs. The origins of examples below are marked by letter M for the first book and letter W for the second book.

Proverb Translation about Ecology

Ecology is often understood as the scientific analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment, while it refers to the different regional cultures here. That is to say, the diverse cultures between China and the West are the results of various geographical environments and there is often considerable difficulty in finding some similarities in terms of such ecological features. The main difference between them in this regard could be summarized into one point: China is a landlocked country with obvious “continental attributes” in its culture, while people in most western countries live by ocean that results florid ocean culture of their nations (Qiu Nengsheng and Qiu xiaoqin 2019, 52). When it reflects in the proverbs, we can see that different images are selected by their nations to express the same ideas or views. Detailed analysis are showed as follows:

Firstly, it is reflected in the selection about the name of places in proverbs and we would use some places to refer to special things in our cultures.

All roads lead to Rome (M-6);

Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris (M-105);

有眼不识泰山 (Entertain an angel unawares) (W-1271)；

不到长城非好汉 (One who fails to reach the Great Wall is not a hero) ((W-35).

The first proverb is actually a Latin proverb (Mille vie ducunt hominem per secula Romam), referring to that many different ways can lead us achieve the same result. Rome behind it is used to refer the shrine for all people. In the second proverb, Paris is regarded as a kind of paradise by certain Americans and they want to get there even after death. In the following two Chinese proverbs, Mount Tai and the Great Wall are both used as stereotypes of majestic places in the mind of Han people. Regardless of Rome, Paris or Mount Tai, there is nothing in common between the ecology of different nations. If we just translate them simply by replacing with different names of places, such as “All roads lead to the ‘Great Wall’”, it was without a shadow of a doubt that people in China or the western countries would look puzzled facing with the translation. Therefore, foreignization method of translation is more suitable to translate proverbs related to ecology.

Secondly, our understanding about some images may be completely opposite due to climatic variables and domestication of translation is a better choice in such condition. The best example lies in images of east wind and west wind in Chinese and western proverbs.

when the wind is in the east, it is neither for man nor beast (M-297);

春东风，雨祖宗 (East wind brings rain in spring, which is as precious as our ancestors) (W-101).

In this pair of proverb, the opposite perceptions are showed in the different understandings between China and western countries like British. As for people lived in British, the west wind from the Atlantic Ocean is often warm and humid. But when it comes to the east wind, expressions such as words in A Collection of English Proverbs # are described as “the east-wind with us is commonly very sharp because it comes off the continent”. So, wind from the west is neither for man nor for beast. On the contrary, east wind from ocean often brings warm breeze and rain in need for Chinese in most places. Therefore, the east-wind is a thing to be grateful for peasants in ancient China and a thing to be disagreeable for people in most western countries at the same time. When we encounter with proverbs that carry with such images, translation of domestication will minimize misunderstandings by replaced them with others in their own nations.

Last but not least, proverbs inhering in Chinese farming culture and western marine civilization also differ widely in their preferences of the diverse images. Proverbs about agriculture hold a special places in the history of Chinese paremiology. John S. Rohsenow (2003, xiv) also mentioned that some of the earliest recorded types of proverbs are the so-called “agricultural proverbs” and “weather proverbs”. for instance, Cui Shi # first collected this type of proverbs in his book Farmers’ Monthly Guide in the Eastern Han dynasty about eighteen hundred years ago. As a result, proverbs like “春耕宜迟，秋耕宜早 (it is more suitable to start spring ploughing later until the ground is fully thawed and autumn ploughing earlier before the ground is completely frozen. W-101) ” 、“春不种，秋不收 (Without spring sowing, there will be no autumn harvest. W-102)”. similarly as a result of geology, proverbs in most western countries are closely associated with ocean, such as “Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make a mighty ocean and a pleasant land (nothing is too small to be of value. M-172)”、“Many drops of water make an ocean (M-172)”.

All in all, proverbs in China or the West have great variants related to different geographical environments and we should use more proper methods between domestication and foreignization to translate them in order to minimize misunderstanding caused by this factor.

Proverb Translation about Material Culture

Material culture is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make, or have made. In this paper, it also includes all types of animals or other images of nations. As we have know before, different ethnic groups have different living habits and most things they interact with in their daily life will also vary from one into another. This may lead to two consequences in total: the first one is that the most common things in one nation may be not necessary in another; the second one is that the same things or images may result quite opposite understandings in China and the West.

Examples about the first type can be found everywhere in corpus of Chinese and western proverbs. Taking the bread as an example, there are two proverbs about it as follows.

Bread always falls buttered side down (M-32);

Bread is the soul of wit (M-33).

The first proverb was recorded as early as mid-19th century and appeared in a rhyme written by James Payn. it means that the least desirable of two or more possible outcomes is the one that will occur in any situation. The second one is recorded in Artachthos, which means that food is essential for survival. We can see from these two proverbs that bread places an essential place in the food of western people, while the similar thing could be replaced as rice for most Chinese people. Since proverbs are the national heritage of people, images in a proverb from one nation like food and others should also be translated into similar images we can find in other nation. In other words, the domestication of translation method is more suitable to translate the fundamental images of different nations.

Examples about the second type constitute the most interesting parts of comparative analysis about proverbs in China and the West, such as the disparate interpretations of dog in proverbs.

Between be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion (M-24);

Dog does not eat dog (M-58);

A dog is man’s best friend (M-58);

狗改不了吃屎 (The leopard cannot change his spots) (W-253)；

狗急跳墙 (Even a worm will turn) (W-253)；

狗嘴里吐不出象牙 (What do you expect from a pig but a grunt) (W-254).

Proverbs mentioned above are all related to dog in China and the West, while people of different nations have quite opposite feelings about them. In ancient China, dog was analyzed in Paraphrasing Texts and Words (Shuo Wen Jie Zi) from the Chinese character “Du (独)”, which referred to that “when dogs are to be alone, they fight against each other”. Dog as an image violated the traditional Chinese value of unity, hence it often carried derogatory meanings in Chinese proverbs. The last three proverbs have demonstrated Chinese feelings of rejection for dogs. Maybe it has some conflicts with modern people’s views about dog, but at least it represents the common feelings of most ancient Chinese people. In contrast, the first three proverbs have showed great intimacy between human and dog in the West. Evidences can be found in the ancient time of most western countries when people lived a nomadic life and dogs were useful for hunting, so special feelings have developed in the long-term interaction between them and dogs. When faced with such images like dog, we’d better domesticate them into images in other nations in order to match up different emotions of nations.

In summary, proverbs originated from different material cultures should take a domestication way of translation whether it is the same image of diverse feelings or the different image of same functions.

Proverb Translation about Social Culture

Social culture is a general term that encompasses national history, folk customs and people approving psychology, etc. Proverbs about social culture could be found everywhere in the heritage of nations and those discrepancies cannot be overlooked in the comparative study between Chinese and western proverbs. Examples are as follows:

Good wine needs no bush ( M-109);

酒好不怕巷子深 (W-401);

Grass grows not upon the highway (M-300);

热闹的街道不长草 (W-691).

There are two pairs of Chinese and western proverbs that have some connection with one and another. However, we couldn’t understand any of them without the background knowledge of social cultures in either nation. The first proverb means that a good product like wine does not need advertising, which is still trusted by some producers nowadays. The similar one could be found in China and explained as “if the wine is good, people will come as a matter of course.” But images in these proverbs are quite different as a result of different national cultures. The word bush refers to a bunch of ivy that was formerly hung outside a wine merchant’s premises in the ancient period of England, so bush here represents a more sincere commitment inherited in their conscience. But in ancient time, streets in the south of China are always winding due to the effects of terrain. Therefore, the second Chinese proverb here emphasizes on the bouquet of wine that can be smelled even in the distance. Even though there are some similarities in meaning between the two proverbs but we can’t translate them only by replaced one with another. Instead of it, both domestication and foreignization of methods should apply for proverb translation originated from different social cultures. We can use the first one to understand the meaning of proverbs and associate it with the second one to find out the internal values of different cultures. Same example could also be seen in the second pair of proverbs. The English vision one is explained in The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson 1970:381) as “an invective against the Barrenness of whores”, which has a pejorative connotation, while the Chinese one is only a fact that we obtain in our life through observation. So it’s misunderstanding to translate them based on literal meaning of the proverb and find a substitute in Chinese proverbs.

Proverb Translation about Religious Culture

Religious culture plays a very important place in Chinese or western proverbs that includes a system of behaviors, practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, etc. In the context of proverb translation, we can find so many elements related to diverse religions of different countries. As Liang (1993, 170-177) points out that there are more than 300 Chinese idioms related to Buddhism, so proverbs in China are also influenced greatly by religions like Buddhism and Taoism by analogy. At the same time, we can find so many traces of religions like Christianity and Catholicism in Western proverbs. Then, some examples below will be analyzed.

Man proposes, God disposes (M-182);

谋事在人, 成事在天 (W-518);

Love is blind (M-177);

情人眼里出西施 (W-659).

In the first pair of proverbs, there is a similar meaning between them in Chinese and English. The first vision is a French proverb recorded in the early of 14th century and means that human plans and ambitions will come to nothing unless God chooses to permit their realization. In some degree, the second vision written in Chinese has some thing in common with the first one but differs in the images of God. In French and other western countries, God is the highest one in Christian. In China, the Chinese character Tian had the same status with God but it came from Buddhism on the contrary. When we are trying to translate them, domestication method is only suitable to achieve a similar meaning in different nations and fails to convey the tiny cultural diversity among Chinese and western countries. Besides, the second pair of proverbs are also good examples to show the nuances of domestication and foreignization methods. The proverb “love is blind” originated from western mythology and the goddess of love in ancient Greek was also called the blind God. Then, the Chinese proverb is used to describe the blindness of love as well but it has nothing to do with religion, referring to that “beauty lies in the lovers’ eyes”. In summary, cultural untranslatability can’t be ignored in proverbs that entail images like Xi Shi (a prototype beauty in China) and the blind God.

Proverb Translation about Linguistic Culture

Language is a part of culture and they interact with each other in different nations. Linguistic culture can be understood as literary allusions, historical stories, legends, etc., which lead to diversification in the contents and forms of proverbs. When we try to translate proverbs about linguistic culture, domestication method is useless in most time due to profound cultural background behind them.

There are innumerable proverbs inhering in linguistic culture and we can’t understand any of them without the cultural or historical background of nations. For instance, the proverb “beware with Greeks bearing gifts” (M-26) is an ancient one in the first century B.C., which comes from the Trojan War. In the ancient time, it is a warning given to the Trojans when a large wooden horse (filled with Greek soldiers) was delivered to the gates of their city. Now, it is used to warn people to be suspicious of offers given by opponents. Therefore, people from other nations would not understand this proverb until they know the war behind it. The same examples can also be found in Chinese proverbs. For instance, the proverb “成也萧何，败也萧何” means that one person did all the good and bad by himself. Xiao He in this proverb was one of Liu Bang’s counselors that recommended the famous general Xiang Yu to the future Emperor Gaozu of Han Dynasty and killed him as well in the end. Images in a proverb such as war or famous people in history can’t be simply domesticated into another nation, rather we should explain the linguistic cultures inherited in different nations.

In a word, we should try to translate the meaning as well as the historical background behind proverbs and two ways of translation can associated with each other in this process.

Conclusion

In sum, this paper makes a comparative study between Chinese and western proverbs translation in terms of domestication and foreignization with the purpose of finding out the internal culture difference among them. Throughout analyzing proverbs about five types of cultures given by Nida, we can clearly see that foreignization is more suitable to convey the different culture factors behind proverbs without losing its original meanings, and domestication is more useful to minimize misunderstandings about proverbs that have little to do with cultures and even have opposite meanings for people in China and the West, such as east wind and west wind. Therefore, we suggest a translation method based on foreignization to translate proverbs of nations and associated with domestication if necessary.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Study

There are many limitations in this paper and we will focus on two aspects. A general limitation is that we haven’t explored in detail about the history of domestication and foreignization in China and the West due to the length of the paper, which will be of great importance to understand the different roles they played in history. Additionally, this paper doesn’t take the development of proverbs into consideration. As time goes on, some ancient proverbs about agriculture, climate, etc., are not in the same status as in the ancient times because of the advance in science and technology. Meanwhile, many new proverbs are also constantly coined nowadays and we need further distinguish them with those appeared earlier.

As for the suggestions for future study, we believe that there are of great values to study proverbs in China, western countries and so on. One aspect particularly interesting is the development of proverbs. Just as what John S. Rohsenow (2003: 62) said, proverbs are slowly disappearing in the Western countries because of the rise of individualism, which is also the core idea in Obelkevich’s explanation. On the contrary, they have continued to be used in China precisely because they entail the values of traditional community that is still importance in Chinese society. Relative studies can explore further the reason or tendency behind this comparative analysis.

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