Robert Burns’ lyric poem “A Red, Red Rose” has been translated incessantly in China since 1908. The four translators — Su Manshu, Yuan Shuipai, Yuan Kejia and Guo Moruo lived under different social backgrounds. They also differed in academic backgrounds, personal identities, and, consequently, in their translation materials, translation purposes and translation styles. Su Manshu and Guo Moruo both employed classical poetic forms, an approach characterized by utility-obtaining and ultra utility-obtaining; Yuan Shuipai and Yuan Kejia adopted vernacular rhyming translations, an approach characterized by both truth-seeking and utility-obtaining.