Abstract

Color, which fills people’s wonderful life with beauty, is people’s perception of the objective world. In human language there are great numbers of color words recording colors of the world. However, in cross-cultural communication, because of the differences of geographic conditions, religious beliefs, history and social practices, people with different cultural backgrounds, usually relate color words with different things and connotations. With the development of technology, the progress of times and the internationalization of communication, it is important to take culture differences into consideration in translation studies.
This paper consists of three parts. It firstly describes the relationship between culture and language. There are lots of connections between culture and language. Nothing can separate them. On the one hand, language is the carrier of culture, and culture is the source of language; on the other hand, language is influenced and shaped by culture and meanwhile it reflects culture. Thus, the understanding of culture requires the understanding of its language. Secondly, it aims at describing the connotations of basic color words in both Chinese and English, namely, “black”, “white”, “red”, “yellow”, “green” and “blue”. Finally, it analyzes the translation strategies of color words. Literal translation, word-addition and free translation can help achieve a correct understanding of color words.

Key words: culture; color terms; connotation; translation
       
摘  要

颜色是人们对客观世界的一种感知，颜色点缀着人们多姿多彩的生活。人类语言中有着大量的描述颜色的符号--颜色词。然而，在跨文化交际中，由于地理环境，宗教信仰，历史和社会风俗的差异，有着不同文化背景的人们，通常赋予颜色词以与不同的事物和不同的内涵。随着科技的发展，时代的进步，人们交流的国际化，在翻译实践中，把文化差异纳入考虑十分重要。本文分为三个部分。第一部分介绍文化和语言的关系。语言和文化有着众多联系，语言和文化不会被任何事物分开。一方面，语言是文化的载体，文化是语言的来源；另一方面，文化能影响和塑造语言，从而反映出文化。要了解一种文化，就必须理解它的语言。第二部分描述基本颜色词的中文内涵和英文内涵，包括黑色，白色，红色，黄色，绿色和蓝色。第三部分简析颜色词的翻译策略。可以通过直译，增词译和意译的策略来正确分析颜色词的英译。

关键词:文化；颜色词；内涵；翻译