The Great Gatsby uses a great deal of metaphors in colors, characters, etc. The success of this novel lies not only in its profound themes, but also in its unique application of metaphors. Among them, the metaphor of colors is the one to which has been paid the most attention and the most successful one. Metaphorical color is the most important feature of this novel, so the metaphorical meanings of the color images in The Great Gatsby had been studied by many people before. However, few people studied that from the translation of the color images. What’s more, the translation methods vary according to the contextual conditions. So the purpose of this thesis is to make an analysis of the translation of the metaphorical meanings of the color images in The Great Gatsby.
The thesis is mainly pided into four chapters:
Chapter One is the introduction of the thesis. It mainly expounds the background of the study, the purpose and significance of the study and the layout of the study.
Chapter Two is consisted of three parts. The first part is about color images, which concerns about colors and their cultural connotations and basic colors in Chinese and English. The second part introduces the definition of metaphor and studies of metaphorical images. The last part discusses the translation methods: Literal Translation and Free Translation as well as Domestication and Foreignization.
Chapter Three is about the translation of color images, it is consisted of three parts. The first part is language of color. The second part is the essence of translating color images; and the last part is about two general translation strategies.
Chapter Four is the analysis of the translations of metaphorical meanings of color images from the following five aspects: Translation of Green images, Translation of Red images, Translation of Black images, Translation of Pink images, and Translation of Blue images.
Chapter Five is the concluding part, which is about the summary of the former and the limitations of the study in this thesis.
2. Color Image and Metaphorical meaning
2.1 Color Image
Image, which is the fusion of the objective image and the subjective mind, has some implication and sentiment. Color, itself is a natural phenomenon, but because of human social life, color becomes a symbol containing rich information, and it becomes the color image. (Fan Xiaodi, 2017)
2.1.1 Color and Cultural Connotation
Language is one aspect of the social culture, and many words of color have sprung up in the long development of Chinese and English. Color itself is a natural phenomenon, however, because these two different cultures have different perceptions of all kinds of colors, and the associative meanings of colors are more abundant, the color words are inevitably branded with their own national culture. In other words, the cultural connotations embodied in the color are quite different. (Fan Xiaodi, 2017)
Black has commendatory connotation as well as derogatory connotation in both Chinese and English cultures. In English culture, black means solemn and honorable. Black also expresses sorrow, death, disaster, evil omen, and hopeless. But in Chinese culture, it expresses reactionary, evil and so on. (Cao Jin, 2005)
White has the following cultural connotations in English: purity and cleanliness, happiness, auspiciousness, and goodwill. In Chinese culture, white is an evaluation of the beauty of women and the health standards of infants and young children. Besides, white is also about holy and honest. (Cao Jin, 2005)
In English culture, red has the meaning of honor, respect and celebration, and sanguine symbolizes the spirit of perseverance. But red also indicates violence, bloodshed, tension, danger, dissolute, debt and so on. In Chinese culture, red symbolizes riches, honor, auspiciousness, victory and celebration. (Cao Jin, 2005) 《了不起的盖茨比》中颜色意象的隐喻意义的翻译(3):http://www.chuibin.com/yingyu/lunwen_205922.html