Abstract:Numbers, a special part in the science of linguistics, are words originally used to express quantity or sequence. Numeral culture plays an important role in the development and communication of human culture and reflects distinctive cultural style of nationalities. Hence, numerals and numerical culture are a universal phenomenon. Besides, they cannot be ignored in the culture of human languages. Nevertheless, various connotative meanings are bestowed on various numerals by different nations owing to the disparity in historical backgrounds, social customs, religious culture, etc. between China and Western countries. This paper discusses the cultural connotations of numerals in English and Chinese and also is to introduce several translation methods through analyzing some typical numerals. It is of practical significance to do cross-cultural communication and translating practice.
Keywords: numerals in English and Chinese; cultural connotation; translation
摘要:数字是语言学中的一个特殊领域，是表示数量或顺序的词类。它在人类文化交流与发展中起着重要的作用，反映着鲜明的民族文化特色。数字及数字文化是人类语言文化中的一种普遍现象，并且是人类语言文化中不可忽视的一类文化，但是因为中西方在历史背景、社会习俗、宗教文化、等方面存在差异, 所以在不同的文化背景下，数字被赋予了丰富的文化内涵。本文以几个具有代表性的数字来探讨英汉数字文化的内涵并给出了一些翻译方法，对促进中西文化交流和翻译实践有一定的现实指导意义。
关键词：英汉数字；文化内涵；翻译
