In recent years, it is reported that English teachers and scholars at home and abroad have discussed the differences between English and Chinese animal words’ cultural connotations. In their papers, they prove their own ideas with ampler examples in broader range. Take A.P. Cowie for example, he illustrates how to use English idioms to help foreign learners. And Xu Juan attaches importance on the differences of cultural connotations of animal words both in English and Chinese in order to discuss the necessities of cultural inputting in vocabulary teaching. Zhang Qian pays more attention to the differences and the translation of the cultural connotations of animal words both in English and Chinese. At the same time, plenty of people have done such research about the differences of cultural connotations of animal words both in English and Chinese. However, less people focuses on the effect of cultural differences on the translation of animal words both in English and Chinese. Thus, it is easy to result in communicative misunderstandings while people need animal words to communicate with foreigners. Only people have a good knowledge of the cultural differences of animal words both in English and Chinese and accurately translate these words, can we avoid communicative misunderstandings and carry on our cross-cultural communications without obstacles. Therefore, the reasons of cultural differences and its influence on the translation of animal words both in English and Chinese are mainly analyzed in this thesis. 

Literature analysis method is adopted to analyze and comb the relevant research literature at home and abroad in this thesis. There are five chapters in it, respectively, introduction, some relevant concepts, reasons of causing cultural differences, the analysis of the effect of cultural differences and the conclusion of the paper. Chapter one introduces the topic of the paper. Chapter two focuses on the two significant concepts in the thesis and the relationships between them that are language and culture. Chapter three is the discussion on four reasons of causing cultural differences that are the impact of religion, the impact of history, the impact of geographical environment and the impact of customs. Chapter four is the analysis of the effect of cultural differences on the translation of animal words both in English and Chinese from the different translating methods, literal translation, liberal translation, figure of speech, the method of borrowing synonym, the method of adding or removing animal words and the method of verbifying included. Chapter five is the conclusion.