Abstract：Taking for example the translation of le₁in the Chinese-English Parallel Corpora of Hong Lou Meng, this paper aims at analyzing the cognitive discrepancies hidden behind Chinese aspect and English tense. The data show that the majority of the Chinese perfective aspect marker le₁has been translated as the English past tense marker-ed. The non-equivalence in translation has reflected the differences between Chinese and English in respect of time and space: due to the spatiality of Chinese, aspect is prominent in Chinese grammar, while tense is obvious in English attributed to the temporality of English.

Keyword：le1;perfective aspect;past tense;spatiality;temporality;