A Prototype Approach to the Chinese-English Focal Color Term Translation

Color terms constitute the color category in linguistic categorization.As the prototypical members of color terms,biologically-motivated focal colors are derived from human’s perception and embodiment of the real world,and they represent relatively stable properties of objects.Based on the prototype category theory,the cross-linguistic properties of the specific focal colors"red"and"white"are examined,hence some problems are confronted in Chinese-English translation due to the different cognitive models operating in different nations.As a future step,some hints and strategies for Chinese-English color term translation are rendered afterwards:direct translation method as well as the cultural meaning-equivalent method can be conducted in an overall manner.Sometimes,the moderate form without translating the color name may be an appropriate counterpart of the source language.