A Study Of Translating Beijing Local Snacks’ Introduction From The Perspective Of Cultural Functional Equivalence

Chinese local flavor snacks are one of the most special parts with strong national characteristics in its catering culture.It can reflect the local culture and the social life style of one region.Beijing local flavor snacks serve as a significant part of Chinese traditional catering culture,with a profound cultural background.Since the Beijing Olympic Games was held in 2008,an increasing number of translation studies on Chinese cuisines have appeared in the field of translation.Relevant departments have published the book Enjoy Culinary Delights:A Chinese Menu in English,which offers English translations to part of Chinese cuisines.However,this book merely refers to Chinese local flavor snacks.Beijing Local Flavor Snacks and the Historical Origins introduces five typical categories of snacks,including sticky food,roast food,steam food,meat and liquid food.The author selects such three most representative snacks as the Lvdagunr(glutinous rice roll with red-bean paste),the Douzhir(fermented mung-bean drink)and the Fried Rings to translate,in order to carry forward the culture of Beijing local flavor snacks abroad.Based on the translation of the three snacks under the guidance of cultural functional equivalence theory,this thesis aims to explore the translation methods applied in the introduction of Beijing local flavor snacks.The author discusses the translation on lexical,syntactic and textual level.At the lexical level,the author specifically analyzes the translation of different sorts of names concerning snacks mentioned in source text,such as the names of restaurants and people.At the syntactic level,the author mainly refers to the analysis on the translation methods used in idiomatic sayings,cooking procedures and vendors’ cries,etc.Finally,the issue of cohesion at the discourse level is discussed.This thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which mainly explains the background and the significance of the thesis,and briefly introduces the basic information of the source text.The second chapter gives a brief introduction to Susan Bassnett’s cultural functional equivalence theory,which includes the interpretation of the basic unit of translation.In third chapter,the author analyzes the stylistic and linguistic features of the source text,and the applicability of cultural functional equivalence theory to the source text.The fourth chapter is the main body of the thesis,which specifically analyzes the translation cases with great cultural characteristics from the lexical,syntactic and textual aspects,and also provides corresponding translation methods.In the fifth part,the author summarizes the whole thesis and states the merits and limitations.Finally,this thesis hopes to make some contributions in promoting the introduction of Chinese local flavor snacks.