ИСТИНА

message and is incomplete without context (Hall 1976). One of the implicit codes embedded in high-context communication is colour tropes. Highly recognisable in the Sinophone world, colour tropes usually manifest themselves in the forms of metaphor, metonymy, and allusion and are often related with the conveyance of emotional content. The focus of this paper is three-fold. Using the examples of the following types of Chinese colour tropes – a) those that express the results of visual perception of colour characteristics of objects or phenomena; b) those that embody the culture-bound realities and artefacts; c) those representing the situations of social nature, – I will first demonstrate that color associations and connotations are often very subtle and determined by deep ‘culture memory’. Secondly, I will argue that, in the case of Chinese colour tropes, primary semasiology of a colour term often influences its consecutive semantic extension. Finally, the observations should also point to more mindful and dynamic-equivalent translations.