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religion, traditional culture, national character and other areas. To sum up, we may find a lot of phenomenon of lexical gaps through different cultures, so it is not easy to make a conclusion of all of them. They become the obstacles of cross-culture c ommunication, even the blind point of cross-culture translation. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the specific reasons of this phenomenon in order to clear up these obstacles in translation. Ⅱ The Causes of Lexical Gaps “Translation is an activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two culture traditions.” (Toury 1987:200). As this statement implies, translators are permanently faced with the problem of two aspects: cultural and linguistic aspects. Culture and linguistic are the two key factors in all translating processes, and the two themselves are always entangles with each other, as stated in Lotman’s theory (1978:211)that “no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its center, the structure of natural language.” On one hand, culture differences are the root of lexical gaps. On the other hand, linguistic widen the gaps between different cultures. 2.1 Culture Differences Vermeer (1989:222) states that “language is part of the culture.” Different cultures result in different languages and finally lead to the lexical gap. Culture itself is too conclusive a notion to be elaborated on, as it can be used refer to anything that may be related to human activities. In order to specify the possible causes of lexical gaps, we class culture into five categories of customs, religious beliefs, life experiences, philosophy of the world and historical culture. 2.1.1 Different Customs From the customs point of view, there is a big difference between China and western countries. When Chinese people get married, they call it “红喜”, and when elder died, they call it “白喜”. For the westerners, it not difficult to understand the Chinese call their marriage “红喜”, because in English “red-letter day” means “喜庆日” . But it is difficult to understand why Chinese call a funeral as a red-letter day. However, “白喜” is indeed a special Chinese custom. Another example, “The lady went up the aisle with one man and came back with another” means “这位女士同一个男人走上了礼坛,却同另一个男人走了回来”.This sentence contains the wedding customs of Western culture that the bride is brought by her farther on the wedding ceremony , and then handed over to the groom. If one does not know the wedding customs in western countries, one may think that the groom is changed in a few seconds (金惠2003:18). China is a country that relies heavily on agriculture and the season’ rotation has far-reaching influences in Chinese lives, so there are many terms to record the turning of the seasons. Among the twenty four solar terms, except “vernal equinox”(春分), “summer solstice”(夏至), “autumnal equinox”(秋分) and “winter solstice”(冬至), the rest ones are not marked in English, and they are translated by the literal meaning. For example, “雨水”, “惊蛰”, “芒种”, “清明”are translated into “Rain Water”, “Waking of Insects”, “Grain Ear”, “Pure and Brightness”. Most westerners do not know the actual connotation of these terms without notes (see 邓炎昌,刘润清1989:165-166). 2.1.2 Different Religious Beliefs Religion is a form of expression of human culture. Different cultures worship different gods, so language store different lexica for their religions. Most westerners believ