2.2.3 Different Religions and Believes
Religious culture has played an important role in peoples’ historical development. It affects not only economy， science， literature， politics but also human thoughts and behaviors for a long time. It is known that most westerners are Christians. And Bible is a classical book they must read. So a lot of idioms from the book begin to influence them and there are some idioms involved in that religion: “God helps those who help themselves”， “自助者天助”， “God sends fortune to fools”， “傻人有傻福”， “power of the keys”， “权利的钥匙”. However， China is a country with many religious. Buddhism and Taoism influence Chinese culture well. There are many idioms from Buddhism， such as “佛要金装，人要衣装”， “as Buddha needs a gilt statue， man needs fine clothes”， “佛靠1炷香，人靠1口气”， “as Buddha needs incense， so man needs respect”， “借花献佛”， “present Buddha with borrowed flowers”， “放下屠刀，立地成佛”， “to throw away one’s butcher knife and become a Buddha”， “万劫不复”， “beyond redemption”.
2.2.4 Different Historic Allusion
There are some differences in historic allusion between Chinese and Western culture. When we couldn’t try out the meaning from individual， parts of the idioms， we’d better refer to the relative references. For instance， a “Pandora’s box”， “潘多拉之盒” does not refer to a box， it means the root of disaster， trouble and evil. “东施效颦”， it came from a story: Dong Shi was an ugly woman， who imitated her neighbor， Xi Shi， a beautiful girl， only to make herself all the uglier. So it is equal to blind imitation with ludicrous effect in English. These differences need us attention especially in translating.
3 Approaches of Translating Idioms
In the above， we have discussed the culture similarities and differences between Chinese and English. In the following part， we will mainly focus on the methods of translating. We will discuss what we think are the most useful and common methods for translating Chinese idioms into English.
3.1 Literal Translation
We know that literal translation
