There are some similarities and differences between English and Chinese onomatopoeia. The former mainly includes rhetorical functions and characteristics of absolute structures.and the latter mainly includes syntactic functions, motivations and changes in usage. In poetry translation teaching, paying much attention to the contrastive studies on the similarities and differences between English and Chinese onomatopoeia is very helpful to the improvement of students' abilities in their appreciating and commenting the unity of the beauty in meaning, sound, and style.