| The world we live in is full of plenty of colors, whose occurrence, character, and classification were once mysterious to humans and evoked the curiosity and interests of humans. As time passes by, the complexity of human life and the development of science have greatly promoted the cognition and understanding of colors, which will certainly facilitate the description of colors. Considerable colors can be expressed by limited words in a language, namely, the lexicalization and categorization of colors. The study of colors has aroused extensive concerns of multi-disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, and psychology, etc.The research of colors at all times and in all lands is no more than concerned with the hue cognition, the referents of color lexicons and the intra-relations of color words. The fuzzy character of color roots itself in the conflict between the limitlessness of color in nature and the limit of color expressions in language. The color words are located in a language system of constant changes. This thesis will base itself upon the etymological study of the basic color words hong and red in Chinese and English languages and systematically sketch the contours of the relations between hong and other red color words, its meaning changes, its association and its non-color meanings. By comparing and contrasting the similarities and diversities of the diachronic changing process of hong and red, the thesis illustrates the possibility and complexity of the transformation from Chinese hong to English red. Different social background, material and spiritual life enlarge the gap between Chinese and English, which exerts great influence on the difference of the usages, associations and collocations of hong and red. Hong and red acquire their own cultural implications. This thesis will center upon thetranslation of Chinese color word hong into English, a transformation better undergone in the scope of Chinese and English cultures rather than the simple inter-lingual shift.Altogether, the thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One functions merely as an introduction, which gives a general account of aims of the thesis, as well as the achievements made so far by the western and Chinese scholars. It then introduces several fundamental theories applied within the thesis and ends with the explanation of the overall framework of the thesis.Chapter Two and Chapter Three carry out the etymological study of color word hong in Chinese and red in English respectively by tracing their development in various historical periods. Each chapter begins with an overall account of diachronic change and brief classification of color words, and is followed by detailed illustrations of the development of basic color word hong and red throughout different historical periods, ranging from the remote times to the present. After the evolutions of hong and red, their schema of perception and classification are analyzed, and the further causes of the changes are disclosed. The fuzziness, an important and intrinsic attribute, in hong and red are studied, which generally fall into two aspects: the fuzziness within and beyond the color category.Chapter Four emphasizes on the translation of fuzzy color word hong into English. The mutual relations between color words, fuzziness and translation are proposed at the beginning. The different ways of thinking of the Chinese and English people and frequency of the use, association, collocation and emotion of hong and red are compared. Due to the cultural constant and diversity, the chapter illustrates the concrete translation from color words to color words or from color words to other categories and suggests some possible translation strategies.Chapter Five draws a conclusion that this study is of importance and... |
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