On the Translation of Colour Terms
Abstract
Colour terms are widely seen in our daily life, in literature works and other fields. They are not only used to describe the colours of all kinds of things but also used to express people’s feelings. So they are very important to us. Both Chinese and English are rich in the words denoting different colours which involve different cultural backgrounds. One colour term in different cultures means the same thing or it also can have different meanings. Different colour terms in different cultures sometimes have the same meaning. And there are some vacancies on colour terms between Chinese and English. Hence, it is rather natural for people from different cultures to understand the same colour rather differently. Because they have many different cultural meanings, there are many ways to translate them. Based on this, this thesis intends to have a general study of colour terms from the perspective of translation studies, putting forward some translation skills which could be applied to overcome some obstacles caused by them in C-E translation, such as substituting new colour terms for the original ones, omitting colour terms, subjoining colour terms and adding other words.
Key Words: colour terms; connotation; cultural background; translation skills
摘 要
在日常生活中，文學領域和其他領域，我們經常可以看到顏色詞。人們不只習慣用顏色詞來形容事物的顏色還用它們來表達自己的感情。所以，顏色詞對於我們來說很重要。漢語和英語中都含有豐富的不同文化背景的顏色詞。1個顏色詞在不同的文化背景下有相同的含義或者也可能有不同的含義。兩個不同的顏色詞在不同的文化背景下可能有同樣的含義。並且顏色詞在漢語和英文中還有1些不對應的'空缺。因此，不同文化背景下的人們對同1個顏色詞有不同的理解是很自然的事。加之它們有豐富的文化含義，所以也有許多方法來翻譯它們。基於此，本論文打算從翻譯研究角度對顏色詞進行1個大體的研究，提出1些翻譯技巧來解決1些中英互翻時遇到的阻礙，並說明顏色詞對我們10分有用處且非常重要。例如,用新的顏色詞代替已有的；去掉原句中顏色詞；在譯文中增加顏色詞和增加其他詞彙。
關鍵詞：顏色詞、內涵、文化背景、翻譯方法