ture are to gain high position in the royal rank and pass the imperial civil service exam to climb the royal ladder. That is to say, in China, especially in ancient China, Lu has very close relationship with rank and success in the imperial civil service exam.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies on Word Meaning
Word, the smallest, independent and meaningful unit of language, can well reflect the national and historical characteristics of a language. It consists of two interrelated parts: form and its various meanings. As to the word form, there are great differences between Chinese and English: Chinese is made up of strokes and English is a unit of letters. In Chinese, compounds of two or more Chinese characters are most popular and the meaning of the latter character always comes from or is the result of the former character. For example, in the idiom高官厚禄gao(1) guan(1) hou(4) lu(4), 厚禄 is thought to come after 高官. While there is no such relationship between English words. The study of word meaning, which lies at the center of human communication, is one of the basic issues in linguistics. Translation is closely related to meaning, thus the standard of translation should be described as: based on a thorough understanding of the various meanings of both the source language and the target language, one should make an adequate and best equal-valued translation from the source language to the target language.
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2.2 Meanings of the Chinese Word of “Lu” and Its Existing Translations
As an important branch of Chinese auspicious culture, idioms and expressions of Chinese word of “Lu” appears to be popular both in communication and in the literature. Thus, the translation of the word or idioms can also be found in many bilingual dictionaries. In the following part, meanings of the Chinese word of “Lu” are talked about in detail, and its existing translations were collected from dictionaries and related literature.“Jixiang” (auspicious) is a phenomenon of the Chinese culture which originates in the native habits and customs. The auspicious culture is an integral part of Chinese traditional culture. It forms a complete cultural system with the development process during thousands of year, such as mascots, auspicious patterns, and auspicious words. Lying at its heart are the traditional “Five Fortunes”: longevity, affluence, good health, virtue and “natural death”. That is to say, if one remains healthy and peaceful both physically and psychologically, behaves virtuously and benevolently, possesses a considerable amount of wealth, lives for a long time, and eventually dies without any pain, conflict or worry, then he or she is fortunate in its truest and most comprehensive sense. As for Five Fortunes, the posterity provides a more general summary: Fu (happiness, good fortune), Lu (salary, job, fame, prosperity), Shou (health, longevity), Xi (joy, love, marriage), and Cai (money, wealth).
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Chapter Three Research Design........23
3.1 Goal and Hypothesis......23
3.2 Research Methods....24
3.2.1 Participants ....24
3.2.2 Test materials.......24
3.3 P
