【文章內容簡介】 can find that holidays such as the Spring Festival are printed in red while ordinary days are in black In English red is also used for celebrating events It has the cultural associative meaning of happiness such as in red letter day Important days are printed in red on calendars rather than in black for ordinary days For western people a red letter day means a day when a good event happens In China we have the custom to roll out a red carpet to extend our warmth to some important guests that is to roll out the red carpet to honor a visiting head of state or to give someone the red carpet treatment For example 2 A mother said It was a real red letter day for me when my son came home from three years in the navy We rolled out the red carpet to wele him home 我兒子在海軍服役三年了他回家的那天對我來說真是一個大喜的日子我們把他當貴賓一樣來歡迎 宋偉華 2021 109 From the case we can find that to roll out the red carpet can also be applied to an ordinary person Besides to paint the town red means to celebrate wildly to enjoy oneself to ones hearts content Likewise in the west on Christmas Day Santa Claus es to dispatch presents to innocent children He is in red making the day full of mystery and happiness Whats more there exists basic similarity in conceptual meaning of red in English and Chinese such as bloodred 血紅色 orangered 橘紅色 red wine 紅葡萄酒 32 Partial equivalence But in the process of translating one source language into another target language the meaning may change especially when colour terms are involved although the translator tries his or her best to be faithful There exists a close relationship between colour and emotion This can be well illustrated by the following example Mr Brown has been feeling blue lately The actual information this sentence conveys is that Mr Brown has been very depressed lately Only when we know its connotations can we understand a colour term correctly otherwise we will feel very confused Like white red is also associated with certain emotions anger and embarrassment included These two kinds of emotion exist both in English and Chinese Lets see an example Her face turned red when bombarded with such an embarrassing question We can easily guess the meaning of red and the meaning of this sentence for there is an Chinese equivalence for it棗 a 臉紅 There her face turned red because she felt embarrassed and she felt so because of the embarrassing question In English we can use either turn red or bee redfaced to show ones embarrassment But we must know that in English there are many expressions to describe a persons face turning red to blush to flush to redden to colour up etc Many objects that would be labelled by the red term in one language would not be labelled by the red term in another accordingly the red term in one language would not be infallibly translated by the red term in another Geoffrey Leech 1981 235 Some things and objects have only one or two ways of expression in one language while in another language they can be expressed in several ways That is to say they have more subtle differences in another language Let us see where these differences are from the examples below 3 我有什么心事呢盛淑君滿臉飛紅地抵賴周立波《山鄉(xiāng)巨變》 What cares have I got she blushed as she denied them 4 他和甫兩個雖然已經(jīng)喝了半瓶黑葡 萄酒可是他們臉上一點也不紅茅盾《子夜》 He and Wang Hofu had got through half a bottle of port between them but their faces were not flushed in the least 5 周仲偉的臉上立刻通紅了真像一根紅頭火柴茅盾《子夜》 Chou Chungweis face reddened like one of his own redtipped matches quoted in 宋偉華 2021 10910 In Example 3 we can know that to blush is used when someone feels embarrassed to flush in Example 4 is used in the exciting happy or inebriated situation To redden and to color up in Example 5 are monly used in most cases So when we translate these phrases from Chinese to English we must consider carefully which word to use Those are all about embarrassment Then what about anger In Chinese we say 氣得臉紅脖子粗 In English we can use the expression to see red or to wave a red flag They are partly equivalent to each other Also we cant directly translate the to see red into 見紅 which may cause misunderstanding because in China it implies a womans bleeding when she is giving birth to a baby Neither can to wave a red flag be directly translated into 揮動一面紅旗 If it is thus translated we will have difficulty in understanding the whole meaning of a text in which it is used Let us see the following examples 6 He clenched his fist and went very red 7 I found he was red with anger 8 When he criticized my work I really saw red 9 The mere mention of his enemys name is like waving a red flag to him If we are not familiar with the phraseto be red we can guess its meaning to some extent because the contexts have already been set here We can know red in both Example 6 and Example 7 implies anger But what on earth is the meaning of saw red in Example 8 and waving a red flag in Example 9 Both of them suggest anger The former means to bee very angry while the latter means to cause quick anger in somebody by doing something offensive 33 No equivalence Besides these two kinds of relationship I have mentioned above in terms of red there also exists no equivalence between English and Chinese Let us see some examples We Chinese say 紅糖 but in English it equals brown sugar We Chinese say 紅茶 but in English it equals black tea 紅榜 is translated into honor roll 紅豆 is translated into love pea 紅運 good luck 紅利 dividend Red ruin in English refers to 火災 in Chinesea red battle 血戰(zhàn) red tape 官僚作風 A blue sky refers to a sky whose colour is blue but a red sky is not related to a sky whose colour is red but refers to colourful clouds in the sky Let us see Example 13 10 Red sky at night shepherds delight Red sky in the morning s