摘要：

人类生活在色彩斑斓的大千世界之中，而这些色彩在语言中以颜色词的方式得以体现。颜色词作为一类特殊的词存在于语言之中，因其富含文化内涵意义和联想意义而又被称为文化负载词。对颜色词的翻译不仅要考虑到其语言环境，更要把文化因素考虑其中。因为颜色词在文学作品中广泛存在，对译者来说，对颜色词的处理可以直接影响一篇文学译作的优劣。本文以《红楼梦》为原语文本，杨宪益译作A Dream of Red Mansions以及霍克斯译本The Story of the Stone中的相应篇章为目的语文本，对其中的颜色词的翻译方法进行比较和探索。

关键词：红楼梦；颜色词；翻译方法

Abstract:

 Color words are the linguistic embodiment of various colors in the physical world. Classified into a special lexical group known as culture-loaded words, color words are rich in cultural connotative meanings. The understanding of a certain color word should inevitably involve the consideration of the culture this color word belongs to. Similarly, to translate color words, the translator should not only take two languages but also two cultures into consideration.  The proper rendering of color words is thus the necessity of a good translation version. Choosing the first 80 chapters in Hong Lou Meng written by Cao Xueqin as the source text and the corresponding texts in A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Xianyi and The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes as the target text, the author of this thesis intends to do some comprision and study about the translation methods of the color words.

Key Words:  A Dream of Red Mansions; Color Words; Translation methods.

1. Introduction
Hong Lou Meng is a wonderful work among Chinese classics whose achievements on language art make it the top representation of the classical Chinese novels. In Hong Lou Meng, the color words play an very important role in describing numerous magnificent pictures. According to the authors statistics, in the first eighty chapters, there are 155 kinds of color words which have been used and appeared nearly 1000 times (the same name of people and places are counted only once).
As to the English versions of Hong Lou Meng, some domestic scholars studied the translation of the color words in it. In terms of the origin, organism and content of Chinese color words, Tian Ye investigated the translation methods of color words. Liu Xiaoqun studied the translation of color words describing the raiment in Yang's translation version of A Dream of Red Mansions. Liu Li especially studied the translation of "red" in this book.
Currently, the translation of color words in Hong Lou Meng has following deficiencies. Firstly, the amount of research papers for color words in Hong Lou Meng is small. Secondly, works investigating comparisons between different translation versions are in shortage. Thirdly, there are too few scholars’ studies in the translation methods of color words.