The Comparison between Chinese “Hong” and English Red--- from the Perspective of Language, Culture and Translation 英语毕业论文.doc

The Comparison between Chinese “Hong” and English Red--- from the Perspective of Language, Culture and Translation Ⅰ.Introduction People who live under the different cultural backgrounds do not consider things in the same way. “Color is the appearance that things have that results from the way in which they reflect light.”(A S Hornby, 2007: 318) Colors are the visual phenomena or perceptions of people when distinguishing the shape, structure and size of the object from others. While under the different cultural backgrounds, they are endowed with variety of different internal meanings which are here understood as “symbolic meanings”. These differences of colors’ symbolic meanings are due to the different cultural and historical backgrounds and aesthetic conceptions of different people and are formed with the development of the society and accretion of history. As a component of language, color words are not only the expression of human being’s emotion, but also bearing the weight of culture’s information. Every culture develops under different historical backgrounds and with geographical environment, affected by its own religion, custom and people’s way of thinking, which directly causes the big differences of color words’ symbolic meanings between Chinese and western culture. People’s associations of colors are of specific and of abstract. For example, when seeing red, people will connect it with the sun, fire, blood or flower in mind and also have the exciting, enthusiastic, and happy feelings. The moment the association becomes a fixed social relationship, the symbolic or implied meaning of a color word will be formed. Generally, the symbolic or implied meaning is initiated with the color itself, which is taken from the association of color word. For another instance, blue, in China, means something melancholy, while in English-speaking countries it stands for sobriety and calm. The examples of color words under different cultural backgrounds are beyond count. Pe