Abstract:Color is an objective and special substantial form. Colors are abundant in both Chinese and English such as black, white, red, green，blue, yellow, brown, grey, purple, pink, etc.. People all can react to colors in emotion or vision. The view and cognition of different national people toward colors are much alike; they also have many common associations in colors and color terms. But the associational meaning and pragmatic meaning of color terms to the different nations are different because of their different environment, religious belief, custom, psychology and way of thinking, and all of these show us that the understanding and use of color terms are different in different nations. 

　　　Therefore, this paper mainly takes color words “red”, “yellow” and “blue” as the examples. Through the analysis of the different associative meanings between the words “red”, “yellow” and “blue” in Chinese and English, and their cultural and historical roots, we can promote our across-cultural communication.

Key words：red；yellow；associational meaning；contrastive research

摘要:英汉两种语言中都有许多表示颜色的词语，如黑、白、红、绿、蓝、黄、棕、灰、紫、粉红等。颜色是一种客观存在的、特殊的物质形态，人们无论在情感上还是视觉上都会在一定程度上对颜色做出反应。不同的民族对颜色的看法和认识趋于一致，人们对颜色和颜色词所产生的联想意义方面也有许多共同之处。但由于地理位置、宗教信仰、民族风俗、民族心理、思维方式等文化背景的差异，英汉两个民族对各种颜色在视觉上和心理上所产生的联想意义不尽相同，同中有异，异中有同。这就使得中西方民族在颜色词的具体使用和理解上存在差异。

　　　因此,本文主要以“红色”,“黄色”和 “蓝色”为例，分析其在英汉中的不同联想意义并探寻其文化历史根源，以便更好地了解中西方民族文化的差异及其对英语学习,对促进中西文化交流和翻译实践有一定的现实指导意义。

关键词：红色; 黄色; 联想意义; 对比研究