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【Abstract】This paper discusses the problem of untranslatability between Chinese and English, including linguistic and cultural untranslatability. English belongs to the Indo-European language family, and Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. The phonemic system, character structure and figure of speech are all completely different, and most of these in one language do not have equivalent in the other language. This causes linguistic untranslatability. Different country and region have different cultural background, such as history, religion and society, and so on, these are not exist in other country and region. So it is difficult to translate. But untranslatability is not absolutely, we should understand the co-existence of translatability and untranslatability. Base on the understanding, we can use some method to compensate in order to less the barrier in translation and promotes language and culture communication. 【摘要】本文讨论汉英翻译中的不可译性问题，包括语言不可译性和文化不可译性。英语属于印欧语系，而汉语属于汉藏语系，其语音系统，文字结构和修辞方法都完全不同，这些绝大多数都无法在另一语言中找到对等语，这便造成了语言的不可译性。不同的国家和地区有着不同的历史、宗教、社会等文化背景，这些在别的国家和地区都是不存在的，所以给翻译造成了困难。但不可乙性并非绝对的，我们必须在理解可译性与不可译性是共同存在的，在此理解的基础上，我们可以采用补偿方法，目的在于对不可译性进行一定程度的补偿，尽量减少翻译障碍，促进语言与文化交流。 1. Introduction Untranslatability is a property of a text, or of any utterance in one language, for which no equivalent text or utterance can be found in another language. “J.C.Catford, a celebrated translation scholar of linguistics school, raised the issue of untranslatability in 1965.He argues that the linguistic untranslatability is due to the differences in the source language and the target language, whereas culture untranslatability is due to the absence in the target language of relevant situational features.”[1] “Nida presents a rich source of information about the problem of lose in translation, in particular about the difficulties encountered by the translator when facing with terms or concepts in the source language that do not exit in the target language.”[2] “Peter Newmark has once briefly talked about the deviation in translation.” [3] In China today, many translation experts and scholars have also discussed the problem to some extent in their papers. The problem of untranslatability is always a disputed issue. Nowadays, it is well accepted that translation is a possible and feasible task. However, there are still some language points that are difficult to translate, which is called the phenomenon of untranslatability. Linguistic and cultural differences, the two categories of untranslatability phenomenon are caused by different factors. These resulting from the linguistic differences will hardly change while those resulting from cultural differences may become translatable in the future by using the methods of compensation and the skill of translators. 2. Linguistic untranslatability Professor Liu Miqing wrote in his Modern Translation Theories that “The structure of language commonly shows the characteristics of the language, these characteristics only can be found in relative language, the similar transfer is difficult to find in non-relative language, for it need to change the code completely.” [4]P107 View from the etymology, English belongs to the Indo-European language, but Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language, so there exit the linguistic untranslatability, which includes the following aspects: phonology, character, figure of speech, and so on. 2.1. Untranslatability in phonology Any language has its own specia