We all know that color words has its own physical features, meaning and culture connotation, not to speak of their variability from countries to countries. The words and phrases of colors are particularly ample. Color may contain perse messages towards different culture. China and English, to only name a few, belong to different culture systems, therefore, each people’s perception of the same color is distinct, or even opposite. If we could not be able to have a clear idea to make a distinguish between them, it will be impossible for us carry out concrete and efficient communications, let alone the translation.  Because it is just the different meaning derived from cultural connotations that have caused those misunderstandings. So the cultural connotation of the colors is not only an crucial element for international communication, but also an primary and predominant component of cross-cultural translation. Cultural connotation , as a result, is one of the significant subjects tackled in language translation. 

Hong Lou Meng, a description of the declining fortunes of a large feudal family, is a cultural monument in the history of Chinese novels. In the novel, the application of color terms, especially the word "red", adds savor to the entire chapters. An estimated 155 times of color words were used by the author in the former eighty chapters, in which the term red was widely mentioned from the name of the book to the main characters, including the major themes of the novel---such as emotional stories, tragic fates and so on.

However, because of the perse culture backgrounds and rich associative meanings, the Chinese-English translation of the color items has become a hard nut to crack. Fortunately, there are two classic versions of translations, and one is A Dream of Red Mansions by well-known Chinese translators Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, the other The Story of the Stone by renowned English translator Hawkes. As a result, based on two classics above and previous studies, this paper will chiefly try to focus on a deep cultural connotation of the color red at length.

1.2 Structure of the Study 文献综述

The whole paper is composed of five sections. Apart from the first one, which is the introduction part. The second section is literature review. It will introduce several studies published by previous researchers ,and some problems this paper will talk about, which is based on those studies. The third section will deals with the relationship between red, culture and translation, and it will be pided into three parts: the definition of culture, different red in Chinese and English and the red in hong lou meng. The fourth section will probe into the connotation of "red" in hong lou meng during the process of translation due to the different culture background. Finally, the last section will try to present a number of translation methods to solve these misunderstandings and thus help readers to comprehend hou lou meng better.