Abstract Along with the development and maturity of theories on translation, a growing interest among translators has emerged to explore the untranslatability in translation
Translators gradually begin to explore the translation limitations from the aspects of the language itself and different cultural origins
The translation of idioms has also been one of the research interests in studies of translation
Some color idioms from Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English are collected and analyzed in detail to explore the untranslatability and the reasons that cause untranslatability based on Catford’s translation theory
The present study analyzes the cultural untranslatability and the reasons that cause cultural untranslatability in English to Chinese color idioms translation