隐喻通常被认为是一种语言修辞手段，但随着研究的深入，语言学家逐渐认识到隐喻是种重要的认知工具。例如，“green-eyed”由“green（绿色的）”和“eye（眼睛）”两个单词组合而成，源自莎士比亚1596年的作品《威尼斯商人（The Merchant of Venice）》和1603年的作品《奥赛罗（Othello）》，“green-eyed”具有隐喻意义“嫉妒的”。 “green（绿色）”属于人类生理共同认知的一种颜色，但是在不同的文化中，却承载着不同的隐喻意义。英语世界对“green（绿色）”的认知都局限于本国文化背景，除了其本身表达颜色还隐含语义：尚未成熟的；环保的；稚嫩、缺乏经验的；生病的；十分嫉妒的；钞票等等。其中“green-eyed”取“嫉妒”之意，在大部分场合若直译成“绿眼的”不符合我国文化的认知，若意译成“嫉妒的”又不利于文学意象的塑造。所以，在不改变隐喻意义的前提下把“green-eyed”翻译成中文时，并不直接翻译成“眼绿的”而是“眼红的”更符合我们的文化认知。这样的译文受不同文化背景下人们对该词中颜色部分具有不同的认知影响，同时反作用于人们对该颜色所具有的隐喻意义的认知。然而国内学者对此习焉不察，并未展开详尽的研究。 本文将以色彩隐喻的认知功能为理论基础，结合“green-eyed”一词在梁实秋、朱生豪、辜正坤、方平四人《威尼斯商人》及《奥赛罗》译本中不同的翻译，进行文本分析，从词源及西方文化对绿色的认知和中国文化对红色的认知三方面来讨论将其翻译成“眼红的”而非“眼绿的”原因。作者认为带有隐喻意义的颜色词的翻译不能仅仅直译，采用意译时可能在翻译中删去颜色词，也可能据意思表达的需要和文化背景的差异进行转换，应该依照人们认知的需要来进行取舍。

Metaphor is usually considered as a rhetorical device, but with the development of the research, linguists gradually realize that metaphor is an important cognitive tool. For example, “green-eyed” is a compound word consisting of “green” and “eye”, which originates from William Shakespeare’s plays, The Merchant of Venice and Othello. It has metaphorical meaning, “jealous”. Green is a common color of human physiology, but it carries different metaphorical meanings in different cultural cognition. In English, “green” can be used to express the meanings like undeveloped, inexperienced, sickly looking, and so on. The word “green-eyed” means jealousy. If translated literally into Chinese “绿眼睛的”, it is incongruent with the Chinese cultural cognition. If translated freely into Chinese “妒忌的” according to its meaning, it is not helpful to create literary images. Therefore, without changing its metaphorical meaning, translating the word “green-eyed” into Chinese “眼红的” instead of “眼绿的” or “妒忌的”, which is more congruent with the Chinese cultural cognition. Such a translation is affected by people’s different cognition of color in different cultural backgrounds, meanwhile it reacts upon people’s cognition of the color’s metaphorical meaning. However, Chinese scholars have just taken it for granted and have not carried out a thorough study from the cognitive prospective so far. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the reason from the three respects: the etymology, the cognition of western culture to the color “green”, and the cognition of Chinese culture to the color “green” as well as “red”. Based on the theory of cognitive metaphor, the paper compares and analyzes the different translations of “green-eyed” from The Merchant of Venice and Othello respectively translated by Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Shenghao, Gu Zhengkun, and Fang Ping. This paper holds that it cannot just use literal translation for the color term, especially when the whole word carries metaphorical meaning. When using free translation, it may need to delete the color term or substitute it with another color term on the basis of the meaning and the cultural diversity, which all depends on the different people’s cognition.