A Study On The Translation Strategies Of Color Words In The Story Of The Stone

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 The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes as the target text, the author of this thesis intends to study the translation techniques and strategies of the color words as well as the translator's translation trend.The research of this thesis has reached the following conclusions:1) There is significant difference between the color words of the source text and target text either in type or in number.2) In contrast with literal translation, Hawkes prefers liberal approach to translate color words with culture-loaded color omitted or changed.3) Hawkes' translation trend is the target-culture-and-reader-oriented.