On English Translation Of Chinese Dish Names From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the development of China's reform and opening up, cultural communication between China and foreign countries steps into a new stage, in which culinary cultural communication plays an important role.On one side, foreigners come to China for investment and tourism. They will not miss the chance to taste Chinese dishes. On the other side, a large number of overseas Chinese restaurants bring Chinese dishes and Chinese culinary culture to various regions all over the world. In this situation, there is an urgent need to conduct the research on how to translate varieties of Chinese dish names into English. Many scholars have done researches on Chinese-English dish name translation from different aspects, which enriches the study on this subject. Some researches focus on the preservation of Chinese cultural features in dish name translation; some emphasize the applicability and purposefulness of the dish name translation. However, quite few conduct a comprehensive study on this subject.In this thesis, the author attempts to introduce Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory into the research of Chinese-English dish name translation. Adaptation Theory emphasizes that using language is a dynamic process of linguistic choice-making consciously or unconsciously for language-internal and/or language-external reasons. Translation is a process of linguistic choices made by a translator under different degrees of consciousness for the need of communication. Therefore, Adaptation Theory acts as a guide of Chinese-English dish name translation.The features of Chinese dish names are classified and analyzed in this thesis. Then the author compares translation samples collected from Chinese Menu in English Version published in 2008 by Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality and Beijing Tourism Administration with translation samples from English menus of thirty top-grade Chinese restaurants, and summarizes the causes of problems in the existing Chinese-English dish name translation. In order to deal with these problems, the author attempts to propose four principles for Chinese-English dish name translation from the perspective of Adaptation Theory, namely, linguistic adaptation, adaptation to the target reader's mental world and adaptation to the social-cultural context, and puts forward different translation strategies for different types of Chinese dish names.