Theoretical triads are commonly employed thought patterns and have played an important part in the history of translation. This paper presents a brief introduction to some of the most prominent triads in Chinese thinking over translation and clarifies the misinterpretations of them, with some of their Western counterparts given for comparative purpose. The triads covered include "faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance" proposed by Yan Fu, "sublimation, deviation, and mediation" by Qian Zhongshu, and "semantic beauty, phonological beauty, structural beauty" by Xu Yuanchong.