A Study On The Translation Of Chinese And English Basic Color Terms From The Perspective Of Coordination Translation Theory

Culture is the crystallization of human wisdom, as the culture projection, language reflects thereality and the connotation of culture directly; it is the power and carrier for the development ofculture. The color terms act as one of the most expressive forces of language formation that is closelyrelated with our ordinary lives. Due to the different social origin in Chinese and English, theassociative meaning of the color terms is not same, and in the frequent cross-culture communication,the difficult for the translation of basic color terms lies in its implication and associative meaning ofculture. Therefore, in the context of globalization, it is especially important to make researches on theassociative meaning of basic color terms on exchanges between Chinese and western cultures.According to Nida’s different classification models of culture factors in language, such as SocialCulture, Ecology Culture, Religious Culture, Linguistic Culture and Material Culture; this thesis willstart from the perspective of social-culture factors, and the author just chooses some of the commonpairs of Chinese and English basic color terms as the research object, such as black, white, red, yellow,green and blue, compares and analyses the similarities and differences of their associative meaning inlocal conditions and customs, tradition, history, and people’s different cognition for color terms,classifies them, then conducts the translation process through the application of the CoordinationTranslation Theory. The author tries to pursue the harmonious combination of“true”,“good”,“beautiful”as the optimal idea of translation from beginning to the end, the pursuit of“true”means torespect the original works,“good”means to coordinate the authors between original and thetranslation works,“beautiful”means to consider readers’feelings and aesthetic demands, which aremutually support, harmonious and united.This thesis will be divided into five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction, which elaborates the research background, purpose, significance,methods and structures of the thesis.Chapter two is the literature review, which elaborates the Chinese and English basic color termsand reviews the current situation of the researches on basic color terms and color perception in homeand aboard, in this section, the author makes a series summarization and comparison about theresearch results of the scholars’which provides some references for this thesis, and then put forward the necessity and probability of the research in this thesis; at last, the author introduces the theoreticalframework of the thesis-Coordination Translation Theory.Chapter three, the author compares some of the common associative meaning of basic colorterms in Chinese and English under the perspective of Nida’s social-culture factors.Chapter four classifies the associative meaning into four categories, which are associativecorrespondence, associative overlap, associative conflict and associative vacancy based on thediscussion above, and then discusses its translation separately through coordination, the author makesthe“coordination as the methods, harmony as the translation target”, which strives to achieve theperfect representation of original version, thereby ensuring the associative meaning of the origin colorterms and produced image which are conveyed by the translator could have harmonious combinationof the concept and image in readers’minds.Chapter five is the conclusion and integration for the whole thesis.The innovation points of the thesis are, first, the author classifies the associative meaning ofbasic color terms in systematic ways, discusses them respectively, secondly, applying theCoordination Translation Theory into the research, which has the important significance inconstructing the harmonious society today, by using the methods flexibly and skillfully which couldtransfer the source language culture information in a better way, it has great practical value, and opensup new train thought and method.Meanwhile, in view of along with the time development, the renewed ideas, the continuousexchanges between Chinese and western culture, and the dynamic development of people’s cognitionfor color terms, besides, the thesis just chooses some pairs of color terms as the research objects,which has the relative limitations and areas for improving, the author still hopes to serve as a modestspur to induce the translation researches of basic color terms in cross-culture communication.