Chapter six draws a conclusion for the whole thesis.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Previous Studies

With rapid communication between China and the other countries in the world, Chinese culture, especially Chinese food, has enjoyed wide reputation worldwide. Confronted with this trend, many domestic linguist scholars are becoming increasingly aware of the significance and the need of Chinese dish menu translation and many of them have done researches on this practical field in different perspectives. However, most of the scholars concentrate their attention on the broader sense of Chinese dish, and researches on the special local dish, which are contributory parts of Chinese cuisine, are comparatively fewer.

Although Chinese cuisine can be generally pided into eight regional types and each of them has its specialties, they share similar features in the naming practice. Therefore, previous studies on Chinese cuisine, despite their varying focus, are essential for shedding some light on the study of the English menu translation of Hangzhou Cuisine.

Many scholars apply functionalism to their research on Chinese menu translation. Huang Haixiang (1999) and Pan Yanqiang (2007) believe that a good translation of Chinese dish ought to be the one with information about the dish’s ingredients, cooking methods and sometimes involving cultural elements that are necessary for the understanding of the dish. But Pan further points out that menu translating versions may vary according to different aims. Therefore, on some special occasions where a Chinese menu embodies the aim of publicizing Chinese culture underlying the dishes and promoting cross-cultural understanding, translators ought to adjust their methods to serve for the purpose, and an integration of transliteration, free translation and explanatory notes is a practical choice. Xiongliyou (2004) makes a discussion on the functions of the menu and points out that a menu is one of the significant advertisements of a restaurant, embodying the aim of attracting customers. Xiong believes that royalty should be made a priority and thus transliteration is a proper method. But he also gives due consideration to the translation of cultural elements, provided that there is not a gap between the Chinese culture and the western culture. 

Under the guidance of dialectical materialism, Liu Qingbo (2003) puts forward that translation principles should be updated to keep up with the time, so what used to be the “truth” theory in translating menu may not be well conducive now. 

In the perspective of cross-cultural communication, Rao Libo and Fan Yuehong (2010) introduce in their thesis two specific translating strategies in the Chinese-English menu translation under, and they are foreignization and domestication. 

These researches listed above provide different angles and theories in Chinese menu translations and suggest some practical strategies. However, there exist mainly two problems. One is that a systematic translating methods and principles are not rendered in their thesis, and the other problem is that they pay little attention on the current errors that exist in many restaurants’ menus, which can be a meaningful clue for translators to find out useful strategies.

In addition, the topic of Chinese menu translation has attracted postgraduate students in mounting numbers to study for their MA thesis. The following are some of the main research done by postgraduate students on the topic:

Fang Xuelian(2008) and Ye Yin (2009) both adopt functionalism as their theoretical basis. Fang believes that Chinese menus translators should take three main concerns into consideration, and they are “purposes of translation of Chinese menu”, “linguistic concerns” and “cultural concerns”. According to English version menu samples from different resources, Ye analyzes the text type of menus and explores the general Skopos and translation brief of the Chinese menu translation. Besides, she groups current translating errors in the process of Chinese menu translation and compare the characteristics of Chinese dish to those of the western dish. Based on the above analysis, she puts forward some translating principles and methods for Chinese menu translation.