《色戒》英译本出自Julia Lovell 女士之手。Lovell女士是剑桥大学中国历史和文学教授，已出版多部中国题材的著作和译作。比如最新的《长城：中国面对世界》（The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC-AD 2000）以及韩少功的《马桥词典》英译本等。
Lovell女士却信笔译来，举重若轻： “She had her hair pinned nonchalantly back from her face, then allowed to hang down to her shoulders. Her sleeveless cheongsamof electric blue moiré satinreached to the knees, its shallow, rounded collar standing only half an inch tall, in the western style. A brooch fixed to the collar matched her diamond-studded sapphire button earrings.”
我另外摘录小说中关键场景译文如下，作为汉译英范例，与英语同好们共同学习：
在珠宝店，王佳芝心神不宁，在钻戒的璀璨里，为情而伤。
“这个人是真爱我的，她突然想，心下轰然一声，若有所失。”
He really loves me, she thought. Inside she felt a raw tremorof shock―then a vague sense of loss.
易先生脱险后，余悸未消，心系红颜，悔愧交加。
“她临终一定恨他。不过‘无毒不丈夫’.不是这样的男子汉，她也不会爱他。”
She must have hated him at the end. But real men have to be ruthless. She wouldn't have loved him if he'd been the sentimental type.
But now that he had enjoyed the love of a beautiful woman, he could die happily-without regret. He could feel her shadow forever near him, comforting him. Even though she had hated him at the end, she had at least felt something. And now he possessed her utterly, primitively-as a hunter does his quarry, a tiger his kill. Alive, her body belonged to him; dead, she was his ghost.
