The history, culture, social system and living environment of each nation
endow them with different cultural background, hence the color in each nation
contains different meaning. As one of the literary classics in China, Hong lou Meng
enjoys great population in the history of Chinese and the world literature, also with
high literary value and aesthetic value. The artful application of the word color explains
the social-cultural psychology and aesthetic standard of the era the writer lived in, as
well as his literary talents. The word “red” appeared most frequent featuring distinctive
charm. This thesis will compare and analyze the translation of “red” in Hong lou Meng
to further understand the difference of the word color in Chinese and English based
on the translation version of Mr. Yang Xianyi and Mr. Hawkes from the perspective of
Skopos Theory.