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对 牛弹琴 Duì Niú Tán Qín is a commonly used Chinese idiom. For example, only yesterday, I went back home, throwing my bag and coat on the floor of my apartment. This is something that my wife hates perhaps more than anything else. Just as she was preparing her standard speech of denunciation, my 8-year-old daughter, who I should add is always on her mother’s side, she quickly exclaimed:”Mommy, daddy is hopeless. You’ve been Duì Niú Tán Qín, playing the lute to an ox!”
Plainly, she has a perfect grasp of the idiom “Playing the lute to an ox.”

Mmm, but does English have an equivalent idiom?

There’s no common equivalent. However, I’ve found two rare but similar terms which I quite like. The first is “whistling jigs to a millstone” whereas the second is the even more amusing, “casting pearls before swine.”

Ah, I’m afraid you’re turning the show into an advanced English class. Instead, let’s listen to how Duì Niú Tán Qín came into being, with our first story in Chinese Idioms.

(Guzheng music)

In ancient times, there lived a musician named Gong Mingyi. He was very good at playing the Zheng, a plucked string instrument. But he also behaved foolishly sometimes.

(Cow mooing)

One day, he saw a cow grazing in the field near his house. He was inspired by the scene and ran outside to play a tune for the cow. “He must be interested in my music!” Gong Mingyi played beautifully and even he himself was intoxicated by the music.
Yet the cow paid no heed to these elegant sounds. (mouth sound) It simply focused its attention on eating the pleasant grass.

“What’s wrong with you, cow!” he yelled. Gong Mingyi was surprised to see this. He couldn’t understand why the cow was so indifferent to his performance.

Was his performance boring? Not at all! The cow neither understood nor appreciated his elegant music!

From that story comes the idiom Duì Niú Tán Qín 对牛弹琴. Niu means Cow or bull, whereas Tan Qin, means to play a musical instrument.

对牛弹琴 usually implies that someone speaks or writes something without really considering their audience. In doing so, they often end up trying to explain deep truths far above the listener’s understanding.

More often than not, the speaker has over-estimated his listener. Alternatively the latter has turned a deaf ear to what has been said, just like Peichun ignoring his wife’s polite requests, and therefore being appropriately chastised by his daughter.

So in the latter case, the idiom is criticizing the audience rather than the speaker.

(Source:english.cri.cn)