The present study adopts a corpus stylistic approach to: (1) examine a relationship between textual patterns of colour words in The Great Gatsby and their symbolic interpretations and (2) investigate the ways those patterns are handled in Thai translations. Distribution and co-occurrence patterns were analysed for colour words that are key in the novel: white, grey, yellow and lavender. The density and frequent patterns of each word are argued to foreground an association between the colour word and particular concepts, pointing to symbolic meaning potentials related to the novel’s themes of socioeconomic inequality and destructive wealth. The textual patterns are compared with what occurs in three Thai translations of the novel. While most of the colour images are directly translated, non-equivalents tend to be applied to figurative uses of the colour terms. This results in some changes in textual patterns of the colour words in the translated texts, which can in turn affect readers’ interpretations of colour symbolism in the novel.

本研究采用语料库文体方法：（1）检查《了不起的盖茨比》中颜色词的文本模式与其象征性解释之间的关系，（2）调查泰语翻译中处理这些模式的方式。分析小说中关键颜色词的分布和共现模式：白色、灰色、黄色和淡紫色. 每个词的密度和频繁模式被认为突出了颜色词和特定概念之间的关联，指向与小说的社会经济不平等和破坏性财富主题相关的象征意义潜力。文本模式与小说的三个泰语翻译中出现的情况进行了比较。虽然大多数彩色图像都是直接翻译的，但非对等词往往适用于颜色术语的比喻用途。这导致译文中色彩词的文本模式发生了一些变化，进而影响读者对小说色彩象征意义的解读。