Acknowledgements

No usual thanks are sufficient to acknowledge my debt to the

generous and learned Ms. Zhou who has given me much help in this

semester of Writing Graduation Thesis.

First and foremost, I would like to express my special thanks to my

teacher Zhou for her skillful teaching, great patience, and insightful

suggestions on thesis writing.

Furthermore, I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to the library

and the teachers in it for their patience to help me search the referring

books.

Finally, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my friends

and fellow classmates. With their consistent support and encouragement,

I would be able to work out my problems and complete this thesis.Abstract: From the scientific definition, the color is the visual effect of

light resulted from the eyes, brain and our life experience. The

vocabulary of color in both English and Chinese is extremely rich.

Instead of the basic meanings of their own, more attention has been put

on the deep symbolic meaning, because the symbolic significances of the

color in different national language often have different characteristics.

Some of them have been the advocate and taboo through expounding and

transferring. All of those have caused a misleading in the cross-culture

communication and a difficulty in the translation.

This thesis is about the translation of the color terms. After the

general understanding and introduction to the features of the color words,

the paper is discussed from two perspectives. First it is discussed the

similarities and differences of the four basic colors in both English and

Chinese. Then this paper gives five practical translating methods

according to the deep cultural connotations.

Key words: Color; Comparison; Translating Methods

摘要：颜色是通过眼，脑和我们的生活经验所产生的一种对光的视觉效应。在汉英语言中，表示是颜色的词极为丰富。我们不仅要注意他们本身的基本意义，更要留心它们含义深广的象征意义，因为颜色的象征意义在不同民族语言中往往有不同的特点，有些甚至人们对经过引申，转义后颜色的崇尚和禁忌。而这些原因构成了跨文化交际的误点，也成了中英翻译的难点。

本文是对英汉颜色词翻译的浅谈。首先是对颜色词特征做一个总体的介绍，接着分析了四种英汉基本颜色词的差异对比，然后从英汉互译的角度的角度讨论了三种主流翻译方法，最后，根据深刻文化内涵方面阐述了五种翻译技巧。

关键字：颜色；对比；翻译方法

Contents

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... i

English Abstract ......................................................................................... ii

Chinese Abstract ....................................................................................... iii

Contents .................................................................................................... iv

Ⅰ. Introduction ........................................................................................... 1

1. The Feature of the Color Terms ........................................................ 1

1.1 Basic Color Words .................................................................... 1

1.2 Real Object Color Terms .......................................................... 1

1.3 Color Words in Shades ............................................................. 2

Ⅱ. The Difference between English and Chinese Color Terms ................. 2

2.1 Red .................................................................................................. 3

2.1 White ............................................................................................... 3

2.3 Black ............................................................................................... 4

2.4 Green ............................................................................................... 5

Ⅲ. Five Practical Translating Methods ...................................................... 6

3.1 The Way of Reserve ........................................................................ 6

3.2 The Way of Replacement ................................................................ 7

3.3 The Way of Ellipsis ......................................................................... 8

3.4 The Way of Exchange ..................................................................... 9

Ⅳ. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 9 Bibliography ............................................................................................. 11 On the Translation of the Color Terms

Ⅰ. Introduction

1. The Feature of the Color Terms

1.1 Basic Color Words

The basic colors words in Chinese and English are approximately

equal, namely red(赤), orange(橙), yellow(黄), green(绿), indigo(青),

blue(蓝), purple(violet)(紫), white(白), black(黑), brown(棕), gray(灰).

Seven primary colors that Chinese people in everyday life often mention

and know intimately refer to the color of red, orange, yellow, green,

indigo, blue, and violet.

1.2 Real Object Color Terms

In daily life, people often express some color with its dependent

objects which are usually known for people and can be seen everywhere.

For instance xiao ming is in an orange shirt. The orange is a kind of

common fruit. When mentioning the orange, people can make a promptly

distinction between orange and other colors. There are some other color

of this kind such as gold/golden(金黄), silver(银白), lead-gray(铅灰).