中华小吃文化翻译传播英文论文Cultural Transmission of the Chinese Local Snacks’ Englis(3)
In order to improve the level of service during the Olympic Games, standardize the English translation of Beijing hotel industry, Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office and Beijing Tourism Bureau（2008）translates more than 2000 kinds of food, common names of snacks, desserts, wines into English translation. Yang Liuchuan（2009） analyses the problems of bilingual signage of the snack in China. While Guofang（2011） classifies, analyses and compares the different translations of the dumplings, and summaries the translations of the various types of dumplings in the end. From the viewpoint of the named characteristics and classification of Chinese recipes, Zhangyun(2012)focuses on the special audience of the recipes, then analyzes practicability and importance of the domestication in translation of Chinese food recipes, through some examples of English translation of Chinese recipes. Yet Cai Zhihai(2012) mainly discourses upon the unique local cuisine in Chaoshan area-its Chaoshan specialties, as well as its rich cultural connotations. According to the different methods of classification, Guojing(2012)puts forward the corresponding translation of Chinese cuisine, and then translates the names of Chinese dishes. All of those above focus on the certain parts of Chinese food, which can be used for reference in my translation of the Chinese local snacks.
Guided by the relevance translation theory, Zhangting (2004) discuses about the English translation of Chinese dish names, while Cao Panpan (2013) tries to propose the specific principles and strategies of the snacks’ English translation, with a case study of Wuhan’s snacks. Shaoyan, Wu Yanzhen（2012）focuses on snacks of the translation methods, finding that snacks’ precise, graceful translations can promote the spread of Chinese culture. Kong Qianru (2012) uses Guizhou snacks as corpora to make a practical translation from the perspective of SKOPOS theory. For those mention above, they all apply the special perspective or theory into their papers. As for me, in order to give the foreign friends a deep sense of relevant culture in the Chinese local snacks while enjoying the food, I think the translation of the snacks should first of all apply the strategy of transliteration retaining annotations, and next use the target strategies and methods within the specific environment. In any case, the papers I mentioned above all give me good examples in it.
From the perspectives of cultural translation, Zhang Jianying and Luoyang (2012) probe into translation methods of Yunnan specialties, which not only passes the food information, also conveys the contained local cuisine information. Zhao Shanjiang(2012) mainly discusses cross-cultural factors in the menu translation, and analyzes the trans-cultural phenomena of Chinese-English translation and multicultural phenomenon in English translation between the minority languages. Using Taiwanese slang as a starting point, Zhang Jingrong (2012) analyses the clever grafting of Taiwanese snacks and colloquialisms, catches cultural connotation of utensils and sayings associated with snacks, and explains the thinking patterns of Minnan slang, people-oriented rule and cultural deposits from a historical perspective. Because my paper is mainly about the cultural transmission, so these papers do help me a lot in the study of the cultural background of Chinese local snacks.
With the help of the former researches, I can make a better study on my own. They’ve given me a lot of references in translation of certain Chinese food, in special perspective and theory, in the cultural background. As a result, I can further my study. First, I will introduce the current situation of the English translation of Chinese local snacks, and then I will apply the appropriate application of the multiple strategies and methods.
4 The current situation of the English translation of Chinese local snacks
However, there is no a unique world-wide acceptable guideline or agreement on how to translate the snack names from Chinese to English and till now, about the English introduction to Chinese local snacks, and there have been few world recognized articles or even references about the Chinese-English translations about snack names, not to mention their qualities. With very poor qualities among the few existing translations, the results are quite unsatisfactory. Just take the following problems as examples.