Abstract：A nation’s food culture embodies the nation’s historical and cultural characteristics. During the diet culture exchange process, name of dishes is the most important external reflection. As a result of each nation’s diet culture differences, whether cultural connotations that names of dishes contain can be truly expressed, “accurate” and “elegant” translation of dishes becomes the key element of the communication process. That’s to say, the translation of Chinese dishes is not only the transformation of language codes, but a certain kind of communication from the cross-cultural perspective.

The thesis can be divided into four chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces the significance of dish translation and analyses the existing problems in dish translation. Chapter two talks about the differences between Chinese and western diet cultures and the possible reasons for the differences. Chapter three is the main body of the thesis, listing the translation methods for dishes, such as literal translation, literal translation plus explanatory note, free translation, conversion translation and pinyin plus annotation methods. Chapter four draws a conclusion and makes some suggestions for further research.   

Keywords: dish translation  diet culture  cross-culture  cultural connotation

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

  1.1 The Significance of Dish Translation in Diet Culture-1

  1.2 Problems in the English Translation of Chinese Dishes-2

  1.3 Literature Review-4

Chapter Two Differences between Chinese and Western Diet Culture-6

  2.1 Diet Culture Differences between China and the West-6

  2.2 Reasons for the Differences between Chinese and Western Diet Culture-9

Chapter Three Methods for Dish Translation from the Cross-Culture Perspective-10

  3.1 Literal Translation-10

  3.2 Literal Translation + Explanatory Note-11

  3.3 Free Translation-11

  3.4 Conversion Translation-13

  3.5 Pinyin+Annotation-14

Chapter Four Conclusion-15

  4.1 Major Findings-15

  4.2 Suggestions for Further Research-15

References-16