颜色东西方差异(中英文)

注：下划线斜字体不在ppt上展示！

Part 1:

Before we start our presentation today, first let’s try some interesting translation. “You look blue today. What’s wrong with you?”

“你今天看起来闷闷不乐，你怎么了”

Means “你今天看起来闷闷不乐，你怎么了”。blue表面上是蓝色的意思，但这里却作“忧郁的”解。

Then let’s move on to another case：

“The smoke made him cough. He coughed harshly, his face lit like a tomato.”

“烟使他呛起来。他难受地咳着，脸胀得像番茄一样红”

Which means“烟使他呛起来。他难受地咳着，脸胀得像番茄一样红”

如果按字面翻译的话，最后一句的意思应为“他的脸像番茄一样”，但是要使翻译达到信达雅的效果的话，应该译为“脸胀得像番茄一样红”。在英文表达中这个颜色词”红”是用tomato这个实物指代的。

可见，颜色词在中英文中的含义用法有诸多的不同，而这正是我们今天presentation 的主题：

Part2:

The Cultural Differences of Color Words in Chinese and English(单独作一页PPT，也可以在这里加上小组成员，分工等)

From the scientific definition, color is a visual phenomenon launched, reflected or caused through certain light wave by the object; it is one kind of visual essential features of human eye. While on the basic color words, there is not so much difference in English and in Chinese, in Chinese, there are 赤(chi)、橙(cheng)、黄(huang)、绿(lv)、青(qing)、蓝(lan)、紫(zi)、黑、白，and in English there are red,orange, yellow, green,cyan,blue and purple, black and white, color words in each nation’s language differ from one anther in the world.可见在对视觉上对颜色的描述，中英文是不存在什么差异的

But now the color words not only express the color, but also imply the cultural factors of each country, different cultures can reflect one country’s history, aesthetic taste and national psychology. It is the bright and colorful nature which provides the place for life and the foundation for developing. Therefore, it is of great importance

to study color words to find out how they reflect cultural differences in both the original and target language and why they can influence our daily life.

然而在象征意义和文化含义上，中英文对颜色的理解就十分明显了，并且了解这种

差异对于我们学习英语来说是非常有必要的

In specific. The main colors of English and Chinese are same or similar，but some color words in one language can refer to more one color in other language． So the English and Chinese color words are not always corresponding word. Take the colors

of red, black, white, yellow, green and blue for examples as showed below.

RED

Both in China and English speaking countries, red always be connected with joyous and celebrate events. For example, “red-letter days” in English means memorial day, often refers to Christmas Day. ”to paint the town red” means binge, quaff, or even monkey business（狂欢痛饮胡闹）“roll out the red carpet for sb.”（铺展红地毯隆

重地欢迎某人）.

red also used to express some sorts of emotion. For instance, “become red-faced”

or “sb’s face turned red” has the same meaning with “脸红” in Chinese. And “to see red ” along with “wave a red flag” equals to “为难、发怒” in Chinese.

In Chinese particularly, the word “ hong ” represents luck, happiness, success, celebration and festival. In traditional Chinese weddings, not only the decorations are full of red color, including red candle, red quilts, red words “喜”and so on, but also the clothing of the bride and groom, as well as the red veil of the bride（新娘的红盖头）, thus bringing a wedding atmosphere and implying the prosperous future of the newlyweds. Furthermore, the word “红火”represents exuberant and lively. The word “红利” , describes the enterprise division of profits to shareholders or bonuses to staff. The word “红颜” refers to a young and beautiful woman.

But in English, the word “ red ” represents danger, violence and debauchery（放荡；沉湎酒色） with strong derogatory（贬义的） meaning. When talking about the word red, people always imagine the fire and blood. For instance, “ red-faced ” represents embarrassed or angry; “ red alert ” is a warning that something very dangerous is likely to happen; “ the red rules of tooth and claws ”（残杀和暴力统治）means tyranny or a cruel, harsh, and unfair control over other people. With the cultural exchange, the word “ red ” in English comes to have some complimentary sense, such as “ red carpet ” used to welcome very important visitors as the speci al treatment when they arrive. However, in English “ red ” has different meanings in economy, such as “ in the red ” “ get into the red ” both mean somebody is in debt. So “ red ” is really the word making people happy at some time, but upset at other time.